The Best Friend's Bed

The first time Ramesh told me I had nice ankles, I was standing in my own kitchen, holding a glass of water I'd poured for him because Suresh had already gone back to his laptop in the bedroom.

"Nice ankles," he'd said, and then he'd smiled, that slow smile that made every woman in our friend circle go quiet for a second. "Strong. You can tell a lot about a woman from her ankles."

I'd laughed it off. Told him he was full of it. But I didn't move away from the counter, and I didn't tell Suresh about it later, and that's the part I keep coming back to. The not telling.

That was three months ago. Now it's Saturday evening, the kind of humid Bangalore evening where the ceiling fan just moves the hot air around, and Ramesh is on my sofa with his feet up on the coffee table like he pays the rent. Suresh is in the bedroom again. Conference call with the US team. He'd poked his head out an hour ago, given me that apologetic look I've memorized, the one that says *I know, I'm sorry, work is crazy right now*, and disappeared.

Ramesh watches me chop onions. I can feel his eyes on my back, on the curve of my waist where my kurti pulls tight when I reach for the masala dabba.

"You're staring," I say without turning around.

"I'm admiring." His voice is low, unhurried. "There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"Admiring is respectful. Staring is just rude." He pauses. "I'm a respectful man, Meera."

I snort. The onions sizzle when they hit the oil. "You're a lot of things, Ramesh. Respectful isn't the first word that comes to mind."

"No? What's the first?"

I don't answer. I stir the onions and let the silence do something for me. The truth is, I've been thinking about Ramesh more than I should. Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way that would make a good scene in one of those serials Suresh's mother watches. Just in the small spaces. When I'm drying my hair. When I'm lying awake at two in the morning and Suresh is still at his desk, the blue light of his monitor leaking under the door. When I'm alone in the shower and my hands wander and I have to bite my lip to keep quiet.

Ramesh lost his wife two years ago. Cancer. It was fast, everyone said. One month she was at the Diwali party laughing at something Ramesh said, the next month she was gone. I went to the funeral. I held Ramesh's hand and he didn't cry, just stood there with this terrible stillness, and I remember thinking that grief like that had to go somewhere. It had to come out somehow.

It came out in the way he looks at women now. Like he's got nothing left to lose.

"I made you uncomfortable," he says. It's not a question.

"No." I turn to face him. The onions are doing their thing behind me. "You didn't."

He's got his head tilted, watching me with those dark eyes. Ramesh is not handsome in the way Suresh is handsome. Suresh has that clean, reliable look, the kind of face you'd trust with your taxes and your future. Ramesh looks like trouble. Not obvious trouble. Subtle trouble. The kind that creeps up on you while you're busy telling yourself you're not interested.

"Good," he says. "I'd hate to make you uncomfortable."

"You'd love it."

He grins. Caught. "Maybe a little."

I go back to the stove. The dal needs salt. I add salt. My hands are steady, which surprises me, because my heart is doing something complicated in my chest.

"Suresh works too much," Ramesh says. Casual. Like he's commenting on the weather.

"He's ambitious."

"He's absent."

I don't correct him. I can't, because he's right, and because correcting him would mean admitting that I've noticed, that I've been keeping score, that I know exactly how many dinners I've eaten alone this month. Eleven. I counted.

"He loves you," Ramesh says. "That's not nothing."

"No. It's not nothing."

But it's not everything either. I don't say that out loud. I don't have to. Ramesh hears it anyway, I can tell by the way he looks at me, the way his expression softens into something that might be sympathy or might be something else entirely.

"Come sit," he says. "The dal will keep."

"I'm cooking."

"You're hiding."

I turn off the stove. I don't know why. Maybe because he's right. Maybe because I'm tired of pretending I'm not tired. I sit on the other end of the sofa, as far from him as the furniture allows, and he doesn't move closer, just watches me settle in.

"There," he says. "That wasn't so hard."

"You're very pleased with yourself."

"I'm pleased with you. There's a difference."

I roll my eyes, but I'm smiling. I hate that I'm smiling.

We sit there for a while. The fan clicks on each rotation. Somewhere down the street, a dog barks. Normal sounds. Normal evening. Except nothing about this feels normal. The air between us is thick, charged, like the moment before a thunderstorm when the whole world holds its breath.

"Meera."

"What."

"You know what I'm doing."

I look at him. He's not smiling now. His face is serious, more serious than I've ever seen it, and I realize with a start that he's nervous. Ramesh. Nervous. The man who once told a room full of married women that he could make any of them forget their own names, and then laughed when they all blushed.

"I know what you're doing," I say.

"And?"

"And I'm not stopping you."

He exhales. Slow. Controlled. Like he's been holding that breath for a long time.

"I'm not going to kiss you," he says.

"I didn't ask you to."

"I know. I'm telling you." He leans forward, elbows on his knees. "I'm not going to kiss you because if I do, I won't stop. And I don't want to do this halfway. I don't want to be the guy who ruins your marriage in your own living room while your husband is twenty feet away."

"So what do you want?"

He looks at me. Really looks. And I feel it everywhere, in my stomach, in my thighs, in the place between my legs that's been aching for something I couldn't name for months now.

"I want you to think about it," he says. "Tonight. Tomorrow. For as long as it takes. And when you're sure, when you're really sure, you come to me. Not here. Not like this."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I'll still be your friend. I'll still come for dinner and flirt with you and pretend I don't think about you every night before I fall asleep." He stands up. "But I won't push. That's not who I am."

He walks to the door. Picks up his keys from the little bowl by the entrance. Pauses with his hand on the handle.

"Ask him about the conference call," he says.

"What?"

"Suresh. Ask him who he was really talking to." He opens the door. "Goodnight, Meera."

The door closes behind him. I sit on the sofa for a long time, listening to the fan click, feeling the empty space where he was, and thinking about what he said. Tomorrow. For as long as it takes.

I don't ask Suresh about the conference call. Not that night. Not the next morning when he kisses my forehead on his way out the door, already on his phone, already gone. But the question sits there, in the back of my throat, and I know it's not going anywhere.

Neither is Ramesh.