Page 95 of Reasons We Break

Simran doesn’t need 20/20 vision to know how much clothing is strewn on the bed. That her backpack spills onto the floor. Her harmonium and rabab are still out from her last half-hearted practice, and her underwear drawer’s ajar.

Heat floods her face. “It’s notthatbad.” She drops her purse with a heavy thud.

“No, of course not. It’s totally normal to not be able to see your carpet. Why am I not surprised?” He walks over to her desk chair, and she only remembers there’s a bra slung over the back when he pauses next to it. Then he steps away. “So where are these glasses?”

Simran grabs a coat from a nearby stool and throws it over the desk chair in the least subtle move ever. “I think in the closet. Top shelf?”

She usually uses a stepping stool for that, but he easily reaches up and starts taking down boxes. They sort through the knickknacks inside. Dried-out putty. Kinder Surprise toys. Gum. A Slinky. Dollar-store jewelry her dentist handed out during childhood checkups. Each box contains more obscure things than the last.

“Why do you keep all this stuff?” Rajan examines a solved Rubik’s Cube with interest. “I’m learning so much about your psyche right now, dude.”

This is getting embarrassing. She takes the box from him and flings it into the depths of her closet. The Slinkyboings somewhere behind a suitcase. “Never mind. I’ll ask my mom about it tomorrow.”

Rajan grabs her wrist. “Shit, I forgot about your arms.”

She looks down. There’s still a fine sprinkle of glass in her arms—the sting has faded to the background, though. “I’ll clean it later.”

“We’ll clean itnow. Where’s the bathroom?”

“I brought you in here to look atyou—”

But he’s already spotted it, right across the hall, and she lets him tug her inside. As he flicks on the bathroom light, she sinks onto the toilet seat lid and watches him. Incredibly surreal. Rajan Randhawa in her bathroom, sorting through her medicine cabinet.

He doesn’t seem to notice her gawking. He sits on the edge of the tub and clacks his tweezers. “Ready?”

She offers him her arms, and he sets to picking out the glass. At one point he accidentally catches one of her long arm hairs and she winces. He lets go immediately, apologizing and running his palm over the underside of her arm.

“It’s okay,” she says with a little laugh, trying to distract herself from his touch. “I have a lot of hair. You can pull it out if the glass comes with it.”

“I’d rather not,” he says, completely serious. Her laughter dies. How much attention he pays, the care with which he tries to preserve each individual hair.

A tender feeling washes over her as he works. She longs to reach for him, to somehow articulate the feeling taking flight in her chest. It’s like...she could tell him her most frivolous, insignificant worries, and he would take each and every one just as seriously. She feels like he cares not only about her body, or her brain, but about hersoul.

Such a stark contrast to earlier tonight—when he was about to shoot someone in the head. In that moment, she remembered everyone’s warnings about him. The ones she could never quite reconcile with the boy she knew.

But now she’s seen it. She’s seen his brutality, his desperation, his fear. He was going to kill that man. That wasn’t what shook her. What shook her was this: She was going to let him.

After all, it made sense to tie up the loose end. What if her attacker remembered her? What if he’d gotten a good look? It would be safer that way. The cruelty of writing off his life didn’t occur to her at all. What actually made her stop Rajan from doing it was the thought that she could not protect him from a murder charge.

“What’s going on in your head?” Rajan dabs the last of her cuts with a Dettol-drenched cotton ball, then her bloodstained fingers.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” she asks bluntly. When his head comes up, she adds, “I know you didn’t really run that guy over.”

A beat. Then: “Zohra should’ve kept her mouth shut.” He drops the cotton ball in the trash and stands to wash his hands. “I’ve helped put people in the hospital. I’ve watched people die.”

“But you’ve neverdirectly—”

“Don’t get it twisted. If I were in the driver’s seat, I would’ve killed Jai, too. Piece of shit had it coming, after what he did to Zohra.”

He spits out the words, his loathing clear. Once again, Simran’s left wondering what the deal is between him and Zohra.

At her silence, Rajan scoffs. “What? Does it bother you, that I think that?” He leaves the washroom, sounding irritated. “Too bad.”

She catches up to him in her bedroom. “Was Zohra your girlfriend?”

He halts in the doorway. She wishes she could see his face in the silence that follows. Then: “Me and Zohra are bad for each other. We were both in a shitty place when we met. She used me and I used her, that’s it.”

“So you had sex,” Simran says, she can’t help it.