Chapter 3 — What Five Years Does

They spent three hours in the café.It was not the same as five years ago. It was not supposed to be. The conversation moved through the edited version of five years — jobs, cities, the architecture firm he'd started with two friends in Pune, her work at a small publishing house in Delhi, the places they'd been, the things they'd read. Surface things. Things that were true and were not the whole truth.Priya was good in the conversation. She was interested and interesting and she asked Aanya the right questions — about books, about what it was like to work with writers, about Delhi — and Aanya answered with the warmth she'd always had for people who were genuinely curious.He watched them talk.He watched Aanya be generous with Priya.He watched Priya be real with Aanya.He thought: this is not the worst thing that could have happened today. This is, actually, the version where everyone behaves.At two o'clock, Priya excused herself — a phone call from her mother, the wedding details that had infinite appetite for attention — and stepped outside.And Aanya, without the performance of an audience, went a fraction quieter.Not sad, exactly. Not relieved. Something more complex."She's very good at this," Aanya said."Yes." "She genuinely likes people," Aanya said. "I can tell. It's not tactical. She just—likes them.""Yes," he said. "It's one of the—" He stopped. Choosing the word was its own thing. "She's very much herself. All the time."Aanya looked at the table. She turned her empty cup. "That's rare," she said. "Hold onto that."He looked at her. "Are you okay, Aanya?"She looked up. The steadiness was there, the chin, the careful quality."I'm fine," she said.He let it go.He let it go because she clearly wanted him to and because Priya was coming back through the door and because the alternative was not something he knew how to do in front of his fiancée in a café in Rishikesh.But he did not believe her.