anyone had been in college…so why shouldn’t I give in to this?
I squeezed his hand, but remained silent.
“I think we should tell our parents that we’ve been seeing each other,” he said hopefully. “I think they’ll be absolutely thrilled.”
And the thing was, I knew that he was right.
Pushing up my sunglasses and tilting the sun visor to better shield my eyes, I switched off the radio, calculated the time difference to London, grabbed my cell phone and dialed Raj.
No answer.
“Listen, honey, it’s me,” I began. “I, umm…I’m sorry. You have every right to be angry with me. But we need to talk about it. So call me. Today.”
So I’m not the touchy-feely type. I never said I was. Besides, men are supposed to respond better to facts they can use, right? And the fact was that I was ready to talk, so now it was up to him. But he was so thin-skinned sometimes. And the truth was that he was the one who had overreacted. Although I wasn’t going to hold a grudge over it. Because in comparison to the irrational behavior I witnessed every day from my celebrity clients, Raj and I were doing fine. He was just testing my commitment by making a mountain out of a tiny pile of salt. Dust, even. And being a management consultant to major international corporations, he was paid to identify proverbial landmines and sand-traps, even where there weren’t any. So he probably couldn’t help himself.
All right, and in some small part, it could also have been about the peanuts.
“Whatever you fancy, darling,” he had told me over the phone two weeks ago as we both converged toward my apartment in the evening. “Just remember to make sure there’s no peanuts on the pad thai. And I’ll get a bottle of that chardonnay you like. I think you’re running low.”
He was right, I thought, tossing my cell phone aside. And how very like him it was to notice that sort of detail. After picking up the takeout from our usual Thai restaurant in Santa Monica, I made my way home. Sipping on my Thai iced tea, I heaved the door open to find that he had beaten me home. The candles were lit and the table was set. The Maxwell CD reminded us of high school as it played in the background. And the Riedel stemware was dripping with condensation from the chilled chardonnay breathing inside. As usual, he had thought of everything.
He hefted the takeout from my arms, planted a kiss on me and zipped off to the kitchen. I dropped my briefcase, kicked off my shoes and slipped off my suit jacket. I thought about heading into my room to change clothes before we ate, but something about the image of a man in the kitchen never failed to do it for me. So I snuck up behind him, nuzzled into his neck and indulged in the urge to be playful while he was defenseless, since his hands were busy ladling out the food.
“Madam, as difficult as I know it may be in light of my raw animal magnetism, I’ll have to ask you to keep your hands to yourself,” he said, putting down a dish of chicken with basil in order to pry my fingers from his lower abdomen and pull them instead toward his mouth. “Because as of six weeks ago, I’m permanently off the market.”
Since, in his opinion, I had such elegant fingers, Raj always kissed them individually. And to keep it interesting—since he knew how much I detested PDA—he would also lick, nibble and occasionally violate my fingers until I squealed or recoiled in disgust and wiped them on my clothes to make a point. Of course, my protests only encouraged his behavior. Normally it was also his way of teasing me because he knew that I was insecure about my hands. As a child, I used to bite my nails. But on that particular evening, amidst all the nibbling and giggling, he stopped when he reached my ring finger.
“Where is it?” he asked abruptly.
“It’s right here, baby.” I stepped around to face him, motioning at the three-and-a-half carat princess-cut ring dangling from a chain around my neck.
“I thought we talked about this,” he murmured, then switched his focus to the business of the basil chicken.
“Umm…we did talk about it,” I said haltingly, following him to the table. I took a seat and folded my arms across my chest. “But we did not resolve it.”
“So until we resolve it, you’re not going to wear the ring,” he huffed and sat down. “God, Monica.”
“I am wearing it,” I protested, “around my neck.”
“Like a noose.” He folded his arms to mimic mine. “Once again, your commitment to this relationship is astounding.”
“Don’t be melodramatic.” I waved his comment away, knowing before the words were out that I’d made a major mistake.
Because it wasn’t the first time that I had accused him of that, and the hurt registered clearly on his face. Raj had proposed to me during a moonlit stroll along the San Diego waterfront during a weekend getaway. We were sharing an ice cream cone, which he was holding, when he almost tripped over a shoelace. He asked me to hold the cone while he knelt down to tie it, and that was how he managed to catch me off guard.
Monica, he began and looked up from bended knee, I think I have always loved you. And although it took a tragedy to bring you back into my life, I like to believe that maybe this was the good that came out of that sadness. Your father was an honorable man, and he raised an incredible daughter…who will become a phenomenal mother…and who will make her husband a very lucky man. I have never met anyone I would rather share my life with than you. Will you be my wife?
I knew that I’d said yes because a moment later he was slipping the ring onto my finger and smothering me with kisses. I assumed the dizziness that followed was the result of some engagement-triggered chemical release in my brain. And I decided the best thing to do was to try to stay calm until things came back into focus. Why ruin the moment for Raj? It was fine. I was happy. Everything was fantastic. Really.
Until he said it. Tucking my hand into the bend of his arm, he took a deep breath and exhaled those fateful words: Monica Shah. The air was gone. The world stopped spinning. It was as if I had watched while the door to some small, previously unnecessary room was swung tightly shut. It didn’t slam, and it didn’t squeak. It simply slid closed, bolted itself tight and refused to entertain the idea of being reopened. Perhaps my own last name had crawled inside, and was packed away neatly in a cardboard box marked “Things I’ll Never See Again.” Maybe it had been greeted by what little connection I had left to my father, since Indians always believed that after marriage, a daughter no longer belongs to her birth family. It was possible that my detachment to being engaged was a defense mechanism against the idea of my former self being jailed away. None of this had anything to do with Raj, I reminded myself, and went about playing the role of the blushing fiancée.
But the next morning I awoke with his arm around my neck in what for the first time felt so much more like a thick rope than a bear hug. I tried to keep it to myself. I slipped out of bed and into the shower. However, in the time it took to shower and get wrapped in towels, I had realized exactly what I had to do. And I probably should have waited until the room service delivery guy had left before blurting it out, but…
I won’t give up my last name, I declared, for myself or my future children.
To his credit, Raj tipped and dismissed the confused delivery guy before responding to me.
Good morning to you, too, he replied, and collapsed into a seat before the beautiful breakfast spread. Okay, look, baby. I can understand you wanting to keep your last name, and I’m willing to
