Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Deepti had only meant to buy coriander. The market was thinning out under a grey sky, vendors pulling plastic sheets over their carts, when she heard her name called across the lane.
Amod stood by the vegetable stall, umbrella in hand, smiling at her the way he had smiled at her in his bedroom last week.
"Deepti. You walk fast for someone buying one bunch of coriander."
She laughed, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Pooja asked me to get it. She's not with you?"
"Your friend went to her mother's. So it's just me, and rain coming." He tipped his chin at the clouds rolling in over the rooftops. "Let me drop you home. Raj won't mind."
The first drops hit as they reached his car, fat warm drops that turned into a curtain within a minute. She slid into the passenger seat, coriander on her lap, and he pulled out into the flooded street.
The wipers could not keep up. Water sheeted down the windshield so thick that the world outside became a smear of headlights and grey. Near the underpass he slowed, then stopped altogether.
"I can't see a thing," he said. "We wait."
The drum of rain on the roof filled the car. The air inside smelled of wet earth and his aftershave. She realized their hands were close on the gear lever, almost touching.
"You're staring," she said.
"You wore that dress on purpose, didn't you? Knowing you'd see me."
"I wore it to the market." Her voice came out lower than she intended. "But maybe I hoped."
He reached over and traced her wrist with one finger, slow, up to the edge of her sleeve. "Pooja's gone two days. Raj thinks you're learning samosas."
"Then I'm learning something," she whispered.
He pulled her to him across the console. The kiss was hungry from the first second, her fingers in his collar, his hand sliding up her back under the damp cotton. Rain hammered the roof and hid them from the whole city. When he moved his mouth to her neck she tipped her head against the window, breath fogging the glass.
"Amod," she gasped, "someone could..."
"No one can see past their own nose in this. Look."
She looked. The world was white noise and water. His hand found the hem of her dress and pushed it up her thigh, and she stopped caring about the world entirely.
"Take it off," he murmured against her ear. "I've been thinking about this since your bus left my house."
She wriggled out of the dress in the cramped seat, laughing and shushing herself at the same time, dropping it behind the coriander. His shirt followed. In the fogged windows their reflections were pale ghosts moving together.
"You're so beautiful," he said, hands roaming her waist, her hips, the curve where thigh met hip. "Raj must worship you."
"He tries." She kissed his jaw, his throat, tasting rain and salt. "But he doesn't do what you do."
"What do I do?"
She answered by pulling him closer, and whatever he did after that, she held his shoulders and let the thunder cover her sounds. The windows had gone completely opaque now, a private room with a heartbeat of rain. When he finally lowered the seat back and moved over her, she hooked one leg around the steering wheel and laughed at the absurdity of it, the horn giving a soft exhausted beep under her heel.
"Even the car wants you," he said.
"Then drive."
He drove. Slowly at first, then harder, the seat creaking its protest while rain swallowed everything. She dug her nails into his back and watched his face change, and the sight of that, his control coming apart because of her, pulled her over the edge with him, crying out against his shoulder.
Afterwards she lay half across him, both of them breathing hard, the rain softer now, drumming instead of roaring. He played with her damp hair.
"Two days," he said. "Come tomorrow evening. I'll cook for you."
"You'll burn it."
"Then you teach me, and we see where the lesson goes."
She kissed him once, slow, and started hunting for her dress in the footwell.
The rain had thinned to a drizzle by the time he dropped her two streets from her own house, so no neighbours would see. She walked the last stretch barefoot in her sandals, carrying wet coriander and a story she had already decided to tell.
Raj was on the sofa when she opened the door, remote in hand, the TV muttering cricket scores. "Where were you? I've been waiting. And what happened to you, you look like you swam home."
"It poured," she said, setting her bag down. She stood in front of him, dripping, heart pounding. "Sit properly. I have to tell you something and I don't want to lie anymore."
He put the remote down. "Deepti?"
"I wasn't at Pooja's today. I met Amod in the market. He offered to drop me because of the rain." She sat beside him and took his hand, the way she did before hard truths. "The rain got so bad he had to stop the car. We couldn't see anything. And... it happened again, Raj. In the car. I let it. I wanted it."
Raj's face went through several things at once, shock, something darker, something else she had seen once before and never named.
"You're not angry," she said carefully.
"I don't know what I am." He rubbed his face. "You told me last week and now you're telling me again, same day it happened. Like you want me to know."
"Because I don't want secrets from you. And because it's not stopping." She squeezed his hand. "He asked me to come tomorrow evening. He's alone for two days. And I want to go, Raj. I'm not asking you to like it. I'm asking you to tell me what we do now."
Raj was quiet a long moment, staring at the muted TV, at the scoreboard ticking over without sound. Then he looked at her, and his voice came out low.
"This afternoon, in the car. Was it good?"
"Yes."
The word came out steady, which surprised her. She had expected to stammer it.
Raj didn't flinch. His thumb moved over her knuckles, slow, the way he did when he was thinking hard. "Tell me."
"Raj..."
"Tell me. I'm asking."
She looked at their hands, then at the muted TV, then back at him. The rain still tapped somewhere far off at the edge of the window. "It was good. It was really good. The rain, the car, we couldn't even see out, it felt like the whole world had stopped just for us." Her voice softened. "He looks at me the way you used to look at me. Like he can't believe his luck."
"And the sex?"
She took a breath. "Better than us."
Raj laughed. It was a short, strange sound, half pain, half something else, and he let go of her hand to lean back against the sofa. "You don't soften anything, do you."
"You asked."
"I did." He stared at the ceiling. The scoreboard ticked silently on the screen, a batsman celebrating nothing. "Last week, when you told me about his bedroom, I lay awake all night and I couldn't decide if I wanted to throw you out or throw him off the balcony. And now you come home soaked, tell me straight to my face, and I feel..." He searched for it. "Alive. That's sick, isn't it?"
"Maybe we're both sick."
"Maybe." He turned his head to look at her. Her hair was still dripping onto her shoulders, the wet dress clinging to her, coriander wilting in the bag by the door. "You want to go tomorrow."
"Yes."
"To his house. His bed."
"Yes, Raj."
He was quiet again. She could see his jaw working, the muscle tightening and loosening. When he spoke, his voice had dropped.
"Last week, after you told me, I couldn't sleep. I kept picturing it. His hands on you. You making those sounds you make." He swallowed. "I got hard thinking about it. In the dark, next to you, furious at you, and hard."
Deepti's breath caught. "Raj."
"I'm not proud of it. But I did. And this afternoon, when you walked in dripping, I didn't want to know where you'd been. I wanted to hear it. Every detail."
"Every detail," she repeated.
"Was there anyone else on the road?"
"No. Rain everywhere. The underpass was empty. It was like being in a room that only existed for an hour." She was watching him differently now, this man she had married eight years ago, seeing something in his face she had never let herself see. "He pushed me against the window and I didn't care about anything. The horn went off under my heel and we both laughed in the middle of it. Can you imagine."
Raj's breathing had changed. She could hear it.
"You're getting hard now," she said quietly.
"Don't stop talking."
So she didn't. She told him about the dress on the footwell, about his mouth on her neck, about the fog on the glass and the thunder covering her, and Raj sat there listening with his hands gripping his knees, his face flushed, and when she reached the end of it she had moved closer without noticing, her thigh against his.
"You're not disgusted with me," she said.
"I should be." His voice was hoarse. "I've been trying to be for eight days. It's not working." He turned to face her fully. "Deepti. If you go tomorrow, I want to know everything after. Not because I'm checking up on you. Because I want to hear it."
"That's a strange marriage."
"It's the one we've got." He reached out and touched her wet hair, tucked a strand behind her ear the way Amod had done it at the market, and his hand shook a little. "I don't even know who I am right now."
"Neither do I." She took his face in both hands. "But I told you the truth. Both times. I never lied to you, Raj, not really."
"Only about samosas."
She laughed, and it broke something open in the room. He pulled her to him, kissing her, and she tasted rain on both of them, and his hands were urgent in a way they hadn't been in years. She pulled back just enough to look at him.
"Tomorrow, then. I go."
"Tomorrow," he said. "And you come home and tell me everything."
"Everything?"
"Every detail. Start to finish." His eyes were dark. "And Deepti. Wear that dress again."
She kissed him once more, slow, and reached for the phone to text Amod that she would be there at seven.