Page 75 of A Lab Rat's Guide to Fated Love
Still, he was sure it was the same pebble. The same color, shape, and size. Even the feel of it in his palm was the same. He couldn’t explain how, but he knew he’d be able to recognize it even with his eyes closed.
His phone buzzed just as he pinched his arm to check if he was dreaming again. It hurt.
“Cab’s here,” Nori said. “It’s terminal one, right?”
“Yes. I’ll be right out.”
He put the pebble safely back inside the pocket before zipping it closed.
Ablast of the hot and humidEast Coast wind greeted them as they stepped out of Pondicherry Airport a few hours later.
“I’ll get the cab,” Vir said, pulling his phone out.
“No need,” Adi said, waving excitedly towards a sea of people in the distance.
Even without looking, the raw, unfiltered emotions that began surging out of him told Vir exactly who his brother was waving at. He’d witnessed it countless times before. The love, longing, and intense joy—he’d felt it all. But only as a bystander. Until now.
Now it stopped him in his tracks.
Because for the first time, he could sense—andrecognize—something else, too. There was a calm, quiet reassurance his brother felt when his eyes found Anita amongst the crowd. A sense of belonging, of coming home. Only thehomewas a person.
He wondered if that was how his own heart sang for Nori, too. And as he glanced sideways towards her, a lump formed in his throat. She was looking at him.
Fuck, she was looking at him the way Adi looked at Anita. She was looking at him likehewashome. How had he not noticed before?
“Here,” Nori said, untwisting the cap off a bottle of water before handing it to him.
He took it and drank the whole thing without a word.
She was uncannily good at concealing her feelings, to the point she could switch them off entirely, at times. So, the fact that he could read from her what he just had, meant he’d either become so attuned to her, she couldn’t hide from him anymore. Or that she no longer wanted to.
A whirlwind of emotions suddenly threatened to overwhelm him with their intensity.
Adi’s. And Anita’s as she neared them. His own. And Nori’s.
“Wow, you were really thirsty,” Nori observed, offering him another bottle. “More?”
Vir shook his head, too fragile for words.
Adi marched ahead of them, meeting Anita before they did. She asked him something, motioning towards his bruised nose. With a laugh, he looped his arms around her waist and picked her up before swinging her around in a full circle.
In Vir’s peripheral vision, Nori was staring at him again. He cleared his throat and kept his eyes meticulously focused away from her. It was all he could do to resist pulling her to him and never letting go. A vivid image of him sticking to her like an insect bathed in super-glue came to mind, and for a short, unhinged moment, the idea seemed almost too tempting to push aside.
“Vir!” Anita exclaimed somewhere in his vicinity, making him blink out of the insane trajectory of his thoughts.
Slender and kind-faced with intricate sleeves of tattoos running up both her arms and the letters S T A R and M O O N inked over her knuckles in a slightly faded black than the rest, Anita stood at nearly the same height as Adi with her volume of silvery white hair fanning out in waves around her.
“Anita.” He beamed a split second before she pulled him into a hug.
“Adi told me last night,” she said, releasing him. “I’m so darn happy! I had a hunch I was going to meet you soon, but I couldn’t have imagined—and you’re Nori! Thank you. Thank you!” She turned to throw her arms around Nori.
“Hi Anita,” Nori croaked. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”
Nori
It was about an hour’s driveto Vir’s parents’ old house in the heart of Auroville, a small Indo-French city near Pondicherry. As Adi drove their jeep into the property, a set of black wrought iron gates parted to reveal dense greenery on either side of the sweeping driveway.
Orchards, Nori realized. They were Mud Apple orchards.
