We stared at each other without speaking for some long moments before Naveen broke the silence with a laugh and pushed back in his chair to prop his feet up again. Hands behind his head, charming smile pasted firmly back on his face, he winked at me. I frowned.
“Oh, come on. Throw a guy a bone.”
“Are you a dog?” I asked him smartly, refusing to smile.
Naveen blinked, his smile fading. “Are you a bitch?”
That was how we became friends.
Chapter Six
“What’s wrong with you?” Naveen’s voice has lost its cotton-candy sweetness. Now he sounds like licorice. He gestures at the pile of receipts and papers spread out on the desk in front of me, but doesn’t touch any of them.
I’ve been sitting here all morning, passing papers back and forth between my hands. Filing only a few. Finishing nothing, unable to concentrate on anything but the memory of what happened with Will. It’s been three days, and I haven’t yet felt guilty.
Until now, and that’s about ignoring my work and not because of my infidelity. I shrug, carefully not meeting Naveen’s gaze. “Nothing. What’s wrong with you?”
Naveen scowls. He paces in front of the desk, one hand on his hip, the other pressed to his forehead. It’s a common enough pose for him, because he likes to make drama. But today, something seems off. He’s agitated and anxious, not just dramatic. His dark brows knitted, black eyes narrowed, he won’t quite meet my gaze. When he turns suddenly and pushes the piles of paper to the side so he can lean across the desk to grip my upper arms, I’m more startled by the shuffle of the papers falling than how close his face is to mine.
“I’m in trouble, Betts. Bad trouble.”
He’s gripping a little too hard, but releases me when I look at where his fingers pinch. This close, I can see how his carefully groomed eyebrows need some attention. Red threads the usually bright whites of his eyes. There’s a tremor in his voice that for an instant looks like the quicksilver flash of a fish in a dark pond. Surprising, and gone before you really can be sure it was there at all.
“Are you sick? Is it money?”
Naveen always skates on the edge of financial disaster. Backed not only by his wife’s trust fund, but her steady employment as a doctor, he’s been free to pursue just about whatever he likes without much fear of facing the consequences. Not just in business, either, and I was stupid for a few seconds too long before I looked into his face and understood.
“The girl from the gallery show?”
He shakes his head and moves away, to sit on the edge of the desk with his back toward me. His shoulders hunch as he heaves a heavy sigh so deep it alarms me. This is not the Naveen I’d met in college, the one who’d had a habit of lounging half-naked in my doorway with his pants hanging low on his hips and a wicked smile that made me feel I was on an elevator that had just dropped ten floors. I’ve known this man for more than twenty years and have seen him cry only once, the night his father died.
I go around the desk to sit beside him, my fingers gentle but firm on his shoulder, not forcing him to turn toward me but letting him know he can. “Someone else.”
He’s not crying, but his smile is too fierce. “Her name is Francesca. She’s Italian. She buys a lot of art.”
I say nothing, waiting for him to go on. She can’t be pregnant. Naveen had a vasectomy a few years ago, came into the office moaning about ice packs and his swollen balls, expecting me to fetch him coffee and sympathy.
Naveen looks me in the eyes. “I love her, Betts. Oh, God. I don’t want to, but I do.”
I’m so set back by this that I actually scoot an inch or so away from him across the polished desk. The word love has always tasted like the scent of fresh ink and soft paper to me. Like a newly written poem. But hearing it now, in this context, I taste the moldering smell of musty books left unread for years.
“Her husband is older. He travels a lot, so he’s gone. He has a few mistresses....” Naveen’s voice trails off with a tremor that’s not so much like a quicksilver fish this time. More like the slow rise of an enormous shadow beneath the surface of a quiet lake. “I’m crazy about her.”
“You’re crazy, all right,” I tell him flatly. I’m no longer touching him, though I can’t remember taking away my hand. “What is wrong with you, Naveen?”
“She makes me...feel,” he says, as though that should explain it all.
Maybe it does.
It’s my turn to pace, to run my hands through my hair. Naveen’s slept with dozens of women that I know about, and I’d guess there are at least as many I haven’t heard of. He’s never been faithful to anyone for as long as I’ve known him. I’ve never asked him if Puja knows about his affairs, nor if she knows about us. The us that never happened, that is.
Jealousy smells like the water in the bottom of a flower vase after the flowers have died. It doesn’t taste much better. I recoil not just at the odor and the flavor, but with the knowledge that I am jealous of this woman I don’t even know.
This is what makes me sit again to take his hand. Our fingers link and squeeze before I let him go, though his hand still rests on my thigh. “So...what’s the problem? She doesn’t love you back?”
“She does.”
I watch the tips of his fingers trace small circles on the fabric of my skirt. Naveen’s nails are a little too long, and I can feel the scratch of them against my skin even through the fabric. I put my hand on his to stop the restless movement. We’re close enough to kiss, though I’m not expecting him to try, and I’d pull away if he did. His head dips, eyes closed so his lashes make a shadow on his skin.
“I’ve been with a lot of women....” he begins, and I laugh. Naveen opens his eyes and manages a smile. “It’s true.”
“I know it’s true, you jerk,” I say, but fondly.
“But Francesca is different. I can’t stop thinking about her. Everything about her makes me crazy. The way she talks, the way she smells. Her laugh. She’s smart and funny and...fuck me, Betts. I love her.”
His sincerity is evident in every syllable. I want to pull away, but I don’t. “So what are you going to do? Leave Puja and the kids?”
I can’t imagine it. Naveen has too much tied up in his family. Pride and money and, despite his philandering, I’m willing to bet a lot of love.
“Francesca ended it.” His misery is as bold as his sincerity. “She said she wants to stay with her husband. She said we could be friends—” Laughter barks out of him. He gives his head an incredulous shake. “Friends? Like we’re in the tenth grade?”
“If you love her, you should already have been friends.” I sound sanctimonious.
Naveen gives me a look. “I’m not sure I know how to be just friends with a woman I want to fuck, Betts.”
His words are a slap that rocks my head back, just a little. I’m off the desk again, several steps away, before I realize I’ve moved. My arms cross over my stomach for a second until I realize I’m looking defensive, and I refuse to give him that.
Naveen and I have been just friends for a long, long time.
“Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“So what are you doing?” I ask.
He has the grace to look a little sheepish. “I’m being an asshole to her.”
Flashback. A memory of my hand, rapping on his dorm room door. I’ve brought a pizza and some movies to watch in his VCR, and my heart’s pounding, pounding,