Jia softened. It sounded like Dev was an especially attentive guardian. “Does she know... what we’re doing?”
“No. She’s had so much upheaval in her life, I thought...” He shrugged.
“Totally right call. It would be pretty difficult to explain anyway.” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of light, and jumped, but there was nothing there.
He brought her attention right back to him by lightly resting his hand close to hers, close enough that his pinky brushed against her thumb. “Are you okay?”
She looked down at his hand. It was long and elegant, the knuckles prominent. He had artist’s hands. She wanted to...
Do nothing!She slipped her hand to the safety of her lap. “Yup. I thought I saw something, but it’s cool.”
They were quiet as their food came. He picked up his fork. “Should we get our story straight on how we met?”
She cut into her crab cake and tried not to look at the pasta he was twirling on his fork. Her food envy would always rear its head, no matter how delicious her own meal was. “I was thinking we could stick close to the truth and say we became friends online.”
“Is that a bit odd?”
“Sliding into DMs isn’t too different from a dating app.”
He took another bite of the pasta, and a drop of red sauce touched the corner of his lip. “Have you spoken to many people in your DMs?”
“Nope. You were the first. But that doesn’t mean others will find it weird.” She gestured to the corner of his mouth. If he didn’t clean it up, she feared she might, and she definitely didn’t need to know what his lips felt like, even under a napkin. “You have a little...”
He dabbed it. “Thank you.”
“No problem. So, yeah, we say we met online, became friends, and now we’re meeting up in real life.”
“Got it. You’ll have to show me how direct messages work at some point.”
Jia squinted at him. “You’re not on social media much, I guess.”
“I am not.” Dev pulled his bread plate closer to his pasta dish and twirled off a generous portion. “Here, try this. It’s good.”
She accepted the small plate, touched. Had he noticed her side-eyeing his food? “Have some of mine.” She placed one of her crab cakes on her bread plate and slid it over.
“Thank you,” he said politely. They ate for a few moments in silence, and then he stirred. “Can you tell me about your high school experience here? I’d like to know what Luna might be facing.”
She smiled. “Sure.” They spoke for a while about their respective teenage years. There were differences in their educations, which she expected, given their different countries, but there were a lot of similarities, too, given that they’d both stood out at their respective schools.
“I stopped going to traditional school after my parents passed,” he explained. “Which was for the best. In India, my last name would have made learning almost impossible.”
There was such darkness in his eyes when he spoke about his parents’ deaths that Jia wanted to reach out and hug him, but she reminded herself again that she didn’t know him well enough for that. Instead, she tried to do what she did best: bring the light. “I know exactly what you mean. The burden of a last name! Imagine every teacher you have thinking you’ll be a carbon copy of your four smart, popularsisters, and then letting them down.”
The lines around his eyes crinkled. “You got into medical school, so I imagine you didn’t let them down too much.”
“There’s hundreds of ways to let someone down.”Jia, stop talking. Jia, you’re too loud. Jia, focus.Sure, she’d learned to mask, but it hadn’t been easy.
He shook his head, and took the last bite of food on his plate. She’d already polished off hers. The other side effect of being the runt of the litter: eating extremely fast, lest someone else grab the last serving. “This was a very productive getting to know each other meal, I think,” he said.
“Yup. I think we covered a lot of ground today.” Despite how nervous and stiff she’d felt when the night started.
“We did, yes. I—” He frowned and reached into his pocket. “I’m sorry, someone keeps calling me.”
“That’s fine.”
He glanced at the number and picked it up. “Hello? Oh.” He listened quietly for a moment, then nodded, his frown deepening.
“I’ll be right there.” Dev hung up. “I’m so sorry. My niece is sick. A headache. She doesn’t normally get sick.”
