"I know," she said. "It was."
"And the circumstances are different now," he said. "Than they were this morning. You've won. I'm leaving the flat. The election is over." He paused. "The things that were in the way are not in the way in the same way."
"No," she said. "They're not."
"But other things are," he said. "We're on opposite sides of the Parliament. I'm going to run again — there will be a by-election somewhere, or a state cycle, and I'll run. I'm still BJP and you're still Alliance and that doesn't change."
"No," she said. "It doesn't." She held his gaze. "I'm also going to be the MP for Lucknow North in a Parliament where your party has the majority. Which means I'm going to fight your party's position on water infrastructure and school funding and municipal budget transparency every single time any of those come to the floor."
"I know," he said. "I'd expect nothing less."
"And you're going to come back and run against someone, eventually," she said. "Possibly me again."
"Possibly you again," he agreed.
"And none of that," she said, "means that last night wasn't real. Or that the thirty-two days before it weren't real. Or that what happens next isn't a question worth asking."
He looked at her for a long moment. Then: "What does happen next?"
She set down her chai cup. She stood up. She walked around the table — not the full table, he was already standing, they met somewhere in the middle, which was the specific geography of people who have both moved toward each other simultaneously and arrived at the same place.
"We figure it out," she said. "Like we figured out the flat. One ground rule at a time. No campaign materials in the common areas after ten PM." She paused. "Or — whatever the equivalent is. For whatever this is."
"The equivalent," he said, "is that we're honest with each other." He was very close. His voice was the low one — the real one, the voice she had been cataloguing for thirty-two days. "Which we have been. Which doesn't have to stop."
"No," she said. "It doesn't."
He kissed her. She kissed him back. Not like last night — last night had been the last night before the election, the held breath released, the correct order maintained to the last moment. Tonight was different. Tonight the election was over and both of them were who they were with clarity and the kiss had the specific quality of something that was not contained by a situation any longer, that was simply itself — two people who had been through thirty-two impossible days together and had arrived at this and were going to figure out what to do with it one honest conversation at a time.
