“Say something, Asha.”
“Kissed? Like on the cheek?”
Kamila shook her head.
“Forehead? Top of the head? Back of the hand? Help me out here, Kamila.”
“I kissed his lips. A kiss kiss. A real one. He drove my car home and was sleeping in the spare room when I got home.”
“This kiss happened in a bed?”
Kamila pressed her lips together, nodding.
“Holy shit, you had sex with him.”
“No! Just a kiss…Plus, we also…” Kamila’s voice trailed off.
Asha was silent a few moments before speaking. “Kamila, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you be prudish about spilling bedroom details.”
“Yes, well, I’m not exactly used to getting to second base with a friend, am I?”
“Oh my god, you’ve been to all the bases with friends before! You’re the friends-with-benefits queen!”
Okay, yeah, maybe that was true, but this felt so much more complicated than any friends-with-benefits situation she’d been in. Probably because the stakes were higher—she simply couldn’t lose Rohan.
“I can’t believe this,” Asha said. “I mean, I know you said that you don’t think of him as a brother, but I didn’t in a million years think…And holy shit, you saidagain. This is a regular occurrence? Wait—what’s second base again?” She picked up her phone, presumably to find a definition.
“Of course it’s not a regular thing. It’s only happened once before. Seven years ago.”
Asha stared, blinking a few times, then read from a search on her phone. “Second base is groping. Maybe on the breasts. There seems to be some debate about manual stimula—”
“Asha, can we not right now?”
“Okay, okay.” She put her phone down. “Tell me everything. Start with the seven-years-ago part, then the now part.” Asha stood up and turned on her kettle. “I’m making tea. Spill, Kamila.”
“Okay, so last night—”
“No. Start from the beginning, Kamila. Seven years ago, when this sporadic kissing affair started.” Asha sat across from Kamila.
Kamila winced. “Fine. Back when Shelina and Zayan came home after university, Mom used to insist they have a chaperone so they weren’t alone, even though they practically lived together at school and had been going at it for years. So, either me or Rohan, or both of us, was forced to go with them wherever they went. We didn’t really hang out much before then—he’s five years older than me, but he used to look out for me when I was little.”
“Like he still does.”
“Yeah. But that summer we were alone a lot. That’s when we started watching Bollywood together. While our siblings were banging nonstop in Shelina’s room, we went through all the comedies in my parents’ collection. We would all go out sometimes, too. This one time at Canada’s Wonderland, Rohan and I lined up for the biggest roller coaster six times. An hour each. I had so much fun with him—I don’t think I’d laughed that hard in months.”
“So that summer you became friends.”
“Yeah. He was about to start at that law firm, but he had the summer off.” Rohan had always been so driven and ambitious, and that was the first time she saw him unbuttoned. “We pretty much spent two months together.”
“And you started hooking up while your siblings were going at it?”
“No. But…” She paused. “But I did actually develop a little crush on him.”
“And he on you?”
“I doubt it. I wasn’t…That was the old me. Remember, I was the bad kid back then. This was right after I dropped out of university. I was with my sister and her boyfriend all summer because my mother was always grounding me.”
“How old were you?”
