Chapter 5 — Falling Anyway

Maya had not intended to tell Priya about Daniel. Priya was her oldest friend, her most trusted person, and precisely because of this, she was also the most dangerous person to tell. Priya had opinions. Priya had them early, loudly, and with citations.But Priya had also known Maya for fourteen years, and she had a way of finding out things Maya hadn't told her through methods that felt borderline supernatural.They were at Priya's kitchen table on a Sunday, working through leftover biryani, when Priya said — without looking up from her bowl — "So who is he?""I don't know what you're talking about.""You smiled at your phone three times in the last hour. You're eating with your left hand because you're holding your phone with your right. And you're wearing the green earrings, which you only wear when you're feeling a certain way about something."Maya put her phone face-down on the table."His name is Daniel."Priya put down her fork. "Tell me everything."So Maya did. The coffee shop, the red umbrella, the photographs, the rooftop, the almost-kiss that she still thought about sometimes at inopportune moments.When she finished, Priya was quiet — rarer and therefore more alarming than her opinions."What?" Maya said."I didn't say anything.""You're doing your thinking face.""I'm always thinking. I'm a thinking person." Priya reached across the table and picked up Maya's hand. "He sounds real. Like not a performance of a person. You know how some people you meet and they're presenting a version and you can feel the gap? He doesn't sound like that.""He isn't like that," Maya said with more certainty than she'd expected."But?""But he pulls back sometimes. Like there's a door he opens part of the way and then remembers it's supposed to be closed."Priya squeezed her hand. "Some doors need more time.""Or they're locked for a reason.""Both things can be true."Maya thought about his face on the rooftop. The way he'd said: I think about tomorrow. If tomorrow is good, I think about the day after.She thought about the careful quality of his silences. The something she kept sensing behind his eyes."I know he's keeping something from me," she said.Priya was quiet again. "Does it change how you feel about him?"And there it was. The question Maya had been circling for weeks."No," she admitted. "That's the problem."* * *She introduced them the following Friday. Priya was on her best behaviour, which meant she was only slightly terrifying. Daniel handled her with a kind of amused steadiness that made Maya like him more than was probably advisable.On the walk home, she asked him what he thought."She loves you very much," he said simply. "And she'd bury a body for you. That's the best kind of friend."Maya laughed. "She'd also make me confess to the crime first. She has standards."He smiled. They walked. Somewhere between the restaurant and her building, his hand found hers. She didn't say anything about it. She just held on.At her door he said, "Same time Tuesday?"She looked at their joined hands. "You could just call me. Before Tuesday. If you wanted."He looked at their hands too. Then at her face. Something moved across his expression — something that wasn't entirely happy, something complicated and tender all at once."Yeah," he said softly. "I could do that."He did. He called that night, at ten-thirty, just to say goodnight. She talked to him until midnight and then lay awake another hour after that, holding her phone like it was something she didn't want to put down.She was falling. She knew it. And she was terrified and she was doing it anyway, because some things you can identify and still not stop.