Chapter 2 — Priya

Aanya — PresentPriya was kind.This was the worst possible thing she could have been, and she was it completely, without apparent effort, the way some people were kind — not as a quality they deployed but as a condition of their existence.She ordered chai and then asked the café owner about the painting on the wall — a local artist, clearly, naïve style, the Ganga rendered in three shades of blue — and listened to his answer with genuine interest. She complimented the cups. She touched Kabir's hand, once, when she sat down, the unconscious touch of someone confirming a presence.She looked at Aanya with curiosity that was warm rather than competitive. "He's told me about the pact," she said. "I thought it was the most romantic thing I'd ever heard." A small smile. "Then I decided the appropriate response was to come with him and see what happened."Aanya looked at Kabir.He was watching her with the expression of a man who had made a decision he believed in and was now experiencing the weight of it in real time."It was her idea," he said. "Priya wanted to—""I wanted to meet you," Priya said. Simply. "Anyone important enough for a five-year pact is important enough to know."Aanya thought: she is not performing this. This woman has genuinely good instincts and genuine confidence and she is here because she is the kind of person who moves toward things rather than away from them.She thought: I have to be better at this than I have ever been at anything."How long have you two been together?" she heard herself ask."Eighteen months," Priya said. "We met at a friend's wedding. Terrible cliché." She laughed. "But the best ones usually are."Kabir was still watching Aanya. She could feel it without looking at him — the specific quality of his attention, which had not changed in five years, which was not something she had the right to feel as anything except information."Congratulations," Aanya said. She said it with the full force of her sincerity, which was real, because she was not a person who wished unhappiness on other people, and Kabir's happiness had always been something she wanted even when it was complicated. "On the engagement. Truly.""Thank you," Priya said.There was a beat — a brief suspension of the conversation in which all three of them understood the exact geometry of this moment — and then Priya stood."I'm going to look at that painting properly," she said. "Give you two a minute to — catch up." She smiled at Aanya. It was a smile that was doing several things at once: granting permission, establishing trust, demonstrating a security that was neither performed nor fragile.She walked to the other end of the café.Aanya looked at Kabir.He looked at her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I should have—""Don't," she said. Quietly. "You don't have anything to apologize for.""I should have told you. Before today. I had your—" He stopped. "I still had your old email. I could have told you.""That would have broken the pact.""The pact was made before—""Kabir." She said his name with the weight of five years of not saying it. "She seems wonderful."He looked at her for a moment. Something moved through his face that she was not going to interpret, because interpreting it was not something she could afford."She is," he said. "She really is.""Then you did the right thing," Aanya said. "Coming here. Bringing her. It's—" She looked at her chai. "It's the honest thing."She felt her phone buzz in her bag. She did not look at it.She thought: twelve weeks ago, when I found out, I thought about calling you. I thought about it for two days. And then I thought: what would calling you cost him? His life is arranged. He is building something. And this — this is mine to carry.She thought: I was right then.She thought: I am still right.She picked up her chai. She took a sip."Tell me about your work," she said. "You're in architecture?"He told her. And she listened. And outside the window of Shiv Café, the Ganga went on in its October light, not knowing or caring that the specific gravity of this room was enough to bend time.