LITMIR.BIZ

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were right to stick to our price. Fucker, you’re always right. Luck of the fucking devil.” He grabbed the thick wooden banister with both hands, seemingly ready to leap over and verify the rightness of the purchase with his own eyes, rain be damned.

      Zayaan stopped him with a casual press of his hand on Nirvaan’s shoulder, saving me the trouble of lecturing my husband on the inadvisability of getting soaked with his weak constitution or falling and breaking his bones by vaulting willy-nilly over banisters dewy with rain. I threw Zayaan a grateful smile, but he’d turned his attention elsewhere. As had Nirvaan.

      The truck and its marvelous contents held both men utterly rapt. Then, with raucous laughter and an F-bomb-sprinkled explanation, they described the events leading up to this momentous occasion.

      Apparently, my thrill-seeking husband and his idiot best friend had bid on the Jet Skis in an online auction. Zayaan had spent the morning fetching the prize—our birthday surprise—from San Francisco. I refrained from pointing out that I was the only one surprised here, and I wouldn’t quite use the word surprise for what was roiling in my nervous system.

      After a point, the dialogue turned bilingual, as it often did with us. The guys’ absolute favorite Gujarati curse word, chodu, made its appearance, replacing fucker intermittently.

      While Gujarati was our collective mother tongue, all three of us spoke it distinctly, apropos to our individual ethnic backgrounds. Nirvaan’s dialect was harsh and guttural, even diluted by his strong American accent. He was a bona fide Gujjubhai, a typical man from Gujarat. Mine, due to my Persian Zoroastrian ancestry, was the softer, fancier Parsi Gujarati. Zayaan’s was softer, too, idiomatic to his Khoja or Aga Khani Muslim roots and flavored by the accent he’d acquired from the dozen or so years of living in London.

      Having known the guys for half of my life, I’d become immune to their rough talk even though I rarely blasphemed myself. My mother, Feroza Batliwala, had been a true lady and had been determined to raise one. So, while I’d failed in the etiquette department as a teenager, I tried hard to emulate my mother as much as I could now in honor of her memory.

      When Nirvaan exclaimed, “To hell with the fucking weather. Let’s test the bikes right now,” I drew on every ounce of self-control I had and kept my mouth shut.

      If I brought up his health, it would only make him mad and more determined to throw caution into the rain. I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t jump on a water bike and ride it to Hawaii just to prove fate wrong. I honestly didn’t know which scenario scared me more—Nirvaan trapped under a motorbike, bleeding to death on a highway; Nirvaan getting Jaws-attacked in the Pacific after flying off the Jet Ski; or Nirvaan catching deathly pneumonia right before his scheduled chemo-radiation.

      I placed my hands on my hips and glared—first at my husband and then his cohort. Even in my heels, I had to crane my neck to look at them. Both men were taller than average. Nirvaan was over six feet tall, and Zayaan was just shy of six feet. I was a hobbit compared to them at five foot three and slim as a beanpole.

      Our heights and widths hadn’t matched even when we’d first met, but in every other way, I’d been their equal. No, I’d been their boss because I was older—a full ten hours older than Zayaan and close to twenty hours older than Nirvaan. Hence, I was a cougar in my husband’s delightfully twisted mind. Anyway, I’d been a budding teenage girl with promising girl-powers, and they’d been hormone-driven idiots. Of course I’d led them down a merry path. I still would when I plucked up the courage.

      “I claim dibs on one and want mine painted periwinkle pink. The two of you can share the other one,” I declared cleverly.

      This way, I’d command my own ride, and Nirvaan would be chaperoned by default. The cherry on top? I did not come off as the world’s naggiest wife.

      Two masculine faces crinkled with confusion. The looks poured dread into my belly.

      “Please don’t say you bought three Jet Skis.” How much money did they blow?

      Zayaan took my statement as a personal affront, but Nirvaan laughed outright.

      “No stinting, remember? Of course we bought three. Baby, are we or aren’t we the Awesome Threesome?” So saying, Nirvaan grasped me by the waist and hauled me up in the air. He spun us around and around until I was sure we’d fall and break our necks, all the while singing, “Happy birthday to us,” like a demented Donald Duck.

      “Put me down, you idiot,” I shrieked, swatting at his shoulders.

      He didn’t simply set me down. He slid me down his body, kissing me all through my descent. I felt dizzy, unsteady from his kisses, from the spins, and I wrapped my arms around him until the world righted itself. His heart beat strong and steady under my cheek.

      Thud, thud, thud, thud.

      I closed my eyes and burrowed into his chest. I didn’t want to let go, not just yet. Not ever, I vowed, tightening my hold on my husband.

      He moved then, not to disengage us, but his body went taut, as if he were reaching for something and—

      Oh, crap. I realized too late what he intended and wasn’t nimble enough to pull away in time.

      Just breathe, I told myself. It’s only Zai. You know him. It’s okay. You know him.

      “You’re insane, chodu,” Zayaan muttered right before I became the sandwich filling between two hard, half-wet, male bodies.

      I couldn’t help the shiver that coursed through me.

      The Awesome Threesome.

      A long time ago, we’d been that and more to each other, and in the coming year, we’d probably draw on that bond like we’d never done before. We needed to become a well-oiled machine again, working in tandem to fulfill the promises we’d made to Nirvaan, trying to live a normal life when our situation was anything but normal.

      I, Simeen Desai—a plain-Jane rebel, the mad Parsi chick—was living in a ménage with two gorgeous men, the twin knights of my life.

      I concentrated on that fiction. In my mind, I perpetuated the fantasy we’d once imagined for us because to think about the truth of our situation, about the inoperable metastatic tumor inside my husband’s brain, was anathema to me.

       3

      The late spring drizzle didn’t let up for the whole day, leaving the guys and me housebound.

      Personally, I didn’t mind it so much. Trips to doctors’ offices often left me sore, sour and in frantic need of my comfort zone.

      I changed into a simple top and a pair of knit shorts. Then, too restless to just sit around playing video games with the guys, I started on my chores. I did two loads of laundry and vacuumed every square inch of the house, preparing it for Nirvaan’s parents, who were set to visit over the upcoming Mother’s Day weekend.

      The beach house had come fully furnished and comfortably so. The furniture, if not new or color-coordinated, was made of sturdy cedar wood and wicker that had withstood the water-heavy ocean air and deposits of inadvertently smuggled-in sand for decades. There was enough storage around the house that I didn’t need to worry about clutter when bombarded by our constant weekend guests, and the carriage house with its own bathroom was a bonus even if in disrepair. Zayaan wanted to quick-fix it up—spray-paint the walls, polish the furniture, or replace it with cheap new pieces—and move in there, so we might all have some breathing room. But Nirvaan wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted the three of us together at all times, space or no space. And what Nirvaan wanted, Nirvaan would get.

      He’d say, “Jump.”

      We’d ask, “How high?”

      He was dying. We were not. It was that simple.

      It wasn’t that space was an issue when it was just the three of us. The house was sufficiently large with an inviting open layout. The front

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