‘Uh, hi, Mrs Kaur.’ Harris does a slightly blushing version of a namaste in her direction.
‘Well, this is very good.’ Nani’s cheeks are round with delight. ‘I will find my handbag and then you will have time to chat.’ She meanders towards the couch in the living room.
I exchange a fast frantic glance with Harris before rushing to help Nani. Harris trails behind. My grandmother’s handbag is on the coffee table.
‘Nani,’ I say, as I pass it to her. ‘So it’s okay? Harris is just stopping by for an hour or so.’
Nani waggles her fingers in the air. ‘Pfft, he may stay for a visit, that is all right with me. Your auntie and I might stop for tea after the hospital. We won’t be home until at least four-thirty. But you are a good girl, I am sure you will be responsible like your father taught you.’ Nani swivels back to Harris suddenly, skewers him with her saucer-eyed glare. ‘Her father is a police officer, you know.’
Harris nods his head. ‘Yes, ma’am. You told me.’
‘I did? Very good,’ Nani says, smiling. ‘We have nice chilled mango cup in the refrigerator, Amita will show you. Now I must go. I don’t like to make Hansa wait.’
Nani settles her handbag strap over her arm, adjusts her dubatta and toddles out of the house. We hear the door clunk behind her, the whack of the fly-screen door. There’s the snick of Nani’s shoes on the concrete outside, her quavering call to my auntie near the gate, then the sounds tail off. And then it’s just me and Harris, standing together in the living room.
‘Right.’ Harris’s eyes are dancing. ‘Okay, then.’
‘Hm.’
When we look at each other we can’t look, because we keep cracking up.
‘Your nanna,’ he says.
‘Yep.’ I finally stop giggling. ‘My nanna.’
Harris rocks on his heels. ‘She’s subtle.’
I completely lose it.
‘You’ve got a subtle nanna,’ he says, and I think he says it just so he can keep watching me laugh.
Then we both seem to subside on the echoes of our laughter and we turn to each other fully. Harris is looking at me like he wants to absorb my eyes, my whole face. I can’t stop staring at him, either. He looks at my lips, open and waiting. Our hands reach out and when our fingers touch, these feelings inside us flare brilliantly to life.
We pull together, tumble together, and Harris starts kissing my lips straightaway. I can’t seem to stop running my hands over him. There’s so much panting and gasping I have to push back for a second, to catch my breath.
Harris looks at me with a stunned expression, his mouth open and his chest moving fast. ‘We should take our time. She said until four-thirty, which means we’ve got hours, we should –’
I cut him off when I kiss him hard, unclasp our lips with a smacking sound. ‘We should go slow.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, we should.’
‘We should go out into the back garden and have a glass of mango cup. Relax.’ I start unbuttoning my shirt.
Harris watches my fingers. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Then cosy up on the couch for a while, until things get serious.’ I’m working open the button on Harris’s jeans. When he lets out a long shaky exhale, I feel his abdominals clench.
‘Yeah.’ He tugs his hoodie off, yanks his T-shirt up and over his head. ‘Yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna do that.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Nah, yep.’ He pulls us both towards the hallway. ‘Which way’s your room?’
Once we make it to my room, Harris slides his hands into my hair, tilts my chin back. He nuzzles his way down from my throat, drops to his knees with a groan. Luckily, my legs are right up against the bed; I sink down with him, and we both squirm back until we’re on the sheets, still kissing, half-dressed and desperate.
‘Oh shit.’ The words slip out of Harris’s mouth. ‘I left my shirt in your nanna’s living room.’
I laugh even as I’m kissing him. ‘Later. Go get it later.’
Harris’s skin is tanned and smooth, with a lovely lustre of sweat. The sight of his golden cheek against my brown breast makes my heart feel like bursting.
Our sounds fill the room, expand outwards, and something inside me shouts that I get it now, I understand. Life, love, the way we all live, the way we intertwine, the way we move together.
Because this is how the world works. This is how all the terrible things people do is cancelled out: by the energy – the radiant sparks and flares – we emit during this exultant act.
