She wanted to shake him and his cornucopia of ahs. “I know that’s hard for people like you to wrap your head around, but love is not the real world to me. It’s a fantasy. In the logical part of my brain, I get that it exists. I see your parents. I see your siblings. I get that they believe themselves in love. I just don’t function that way. It’s like vampires.”

“Vampires,” he repeated.

“I get what that word means. I totally understand it. But in that deep place where we know if things are fact or fantasy, I know that they aren’t real.”

His response was to continue to watch her. He knew she wasn’t done and he was waiting, the gold in his eyes picking up the sunlight streaming into her kitchen.

“It’s a matter of base beliefs,” she explained. “Like God. That’s the opposite of the vampire thing. I have no idea who God is. No one can tell you for sure what he, she, they are, tangibly. But deep inside I know something larger than me exists. To people like you, the concept of love is like the concept of God. Fundamentally possible. Even in the absence of proof. For people like me, the concept of love is like the concept of a vampire. Fundamentally fictitious. Even if someone were to present proof.”

“Wow,” he said finally. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

She got off her stool and started to put away the leftovers.

He followed and started to help, taking the dishes to the sink and washing them. “So, what you’re saying is that you were never actually in love with my brother.”

The question got on her very last nerve. “I love Yash as much as I can love anyone.”

Putting the dishes on the drying rack, he turned and leaned his hip on the sink, and met her eyes from beneath those lashes. “But you’ve never been moved to come against his thigh.”

The plastic container slipped from Naina’s hands, scattering slivered onions all over her floor. “Oh my God, Vansh! Are you ever going to stop bringing that up casually in conversation? What is wrong with you? I was inebriated.”

He squatted and started picking up the onions. He did not remind her that what they’d just done against her door had happened while she was quite un-ebriated. But it was in his eyes.

“I wasn’t exactly thinking.” She wiped the floor as he picked up the last onion piece.

They were squatting face-to-face in her tiny kitchen, their knees almost touching, and there was something a little too intimate about it.

“Do you realize?” He leaned closer, as though sharing a secret. “That’s actually a really good thing sometimes.”

A groan escaped her. “Are we really having this conversation? You think just because—”

“You used my body to jack off,” he offered helpfully.