Free The Bollywood Bride by Sonali Dev

instead, she just stood there like a buffoon. He pointed to the cabinet with his spoon and started studying the cereal box, shifting it so it stood between them like a shield. He had loved to read cereal boxes aloud, cracking up at the silly jokes on them the way only he could.
    What do ghosts put in their cereal? Boo-berries.
    There wasn’t a trace of humor in him now. The furrow between his brows was almost as deep as the wrinkles in his shirt. Her eyes traced the creases draped around the bulges on his arms and shoulders—which had widened to twice their size. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d noticed yesterday that he had filled out. But how had she missed this? He hadn’t just filled out. He had expanded and burst out of all his youthful leanness into some sort of ridiculous athletic buffness. His arms looked like they lifted lumber for a living, not a scalpel.
    A groan escaped her. She tried to turn it into a cough, but just ended up making it louder. Vikram’s hand paused for a second on its way to his mouth. Other than that, he gave no indication of having noticed. Heat rose up her cheeks. She forced herself to move before she embarrassed herself even more, and put the dishes away, stacking them perfectly, adjusting them until they were just so. It wasn’t easy with fingers that turned suddenly into rubber bands and eyes that wouldn’t stop seeking him out, punishing her for starving them so long.
    He was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. A midnight-blue shirt, the cotton embossed with a bold paisley batik print. Something she could never have imagined him in. He had always been such a conventional dresser—T-shirts and jeans alternating with jeans and T-shirts. Come to think of it, there was nothing conventional about the way he looked anymore. His hair was long, curling at his neck and falling over his forehead, completely different from the closely cropped haircut he had sported with the neatly spiked front. It wasn’t just his body that was different, it was everything. Every feature had weathered into manhood. His jaw was wider, his neck thicker, everything had a rougher, wilder edge to it, every evidence of the clean-cut boyishness of her Viky wiped away.
    Except for his mouth. Time hadn’t touched his mouth. It was as lush and wide as ever, with that pronounced gap right in the center—a tantalizing little notch where his lips didn’t quite fit together. She had loved his mouth, loved tracing that vulnerable dip with her fingers, loved to watch it when he talked, sketched it over and over again in her sketchbook the way other girls wrote boy’s names. But most of all she had loved how it felt against her lips.
    He looked up and caught her watching him again. His eyebrows drew together over angry eyes. She looked away and stared at the empty dishwasher, her arms dangling uselessly at her sides, longing pooling in her belly like warm, thick honey.
    His body was none of her business. His mouth was certainly none of her business, especially since it had been all over someone else not too long ago. And now he was apparently only just getting home. Which meant he and that mouth of his had been out all night. With Mira. All night. What time was it anyway?
    “It’s five o’clock,” he said.
    Her gaze flew up and met his. She hadn’t said the words out loud. The moment stretched out, pulsing between them like a raw, exposed nerve.
    They had never needed words.
    Vikram came to the exact same conclusion at the exact same moment. Panic flashed in his eyes, throwing him wide open for one beat of a second. With a deliberate gulp he regained his composure and pushed away from the table, rising up to his full height. The oversized kitchen shrank around Ria.
    He picked up the empty bowl and looked at the sink behind her. She was leaning so far back into it, she was halfway inside it. He set the bowl back on the table.
    “See you around. It’s been a long night.” His voice came out even