The pictures were truly brilliant, capturing the pain of falling through the cracks. With a human face and the possibility of a human solution. The hope of making it out with your self-respect intact. The hope that a society this capitalistic could also be responsible. Ideology that felt political and hollow in words took on inescapable impact with visuals as honest and raw as these. Vansh was right. Sid had been the perfect person for this. The exposure this piece offered had brought together twenty of the city’s largest employers. Maybe that was all Sid had wanted, to be of service to his hometown.

In either case, what Vansh had put together in a matter of months was miraculous. Pride the likes of which she’d never known gripped her from head to toe as she watched him. And that brought home something she’d been pushing away. The sheer volume of something too close to happiness that she felt just looking at him. It was terrifying.

Vansh winked at her over Jiggy’s back. There was just such utter joy to him. It leaked into the air, seeped under her skin, pulsed inside her chest. It made her light-headed. Like the kind of person who laughs for no reason and skips. Anger at letting herself get to this point kept kindling inside her, but the irrational joy of his smile kept dousing it. Anger—which had been a powerful force all her life—felt oddly futile.

Tell me why you’re so afraid of happiness. Vansh had said that to her a few days ago when they lay in each other’s arms doing the one thing that was uncomplicated.

Why, indeed. Naina wasn’t so much afraid of happiness as she believed it was fleeting. And she didn’t give herself over to fleeting things.

He’d pressed her hand into his chest. The happiness inside here when I’m with you, how does it matter if it’s fleeting? I wouldn’t give up even one second of it.

“Aren’t you happy?” Jiggy threw at her across the conference room table, his usually syrupy tone—especially in Vansh’s presence—impatient.

“Sorry?” Her mind had wandered away from their old-boys’ back-slapping. Please let her not have spoken her thoughts out loud.

“Aren’t you happy that Vansh’s work is in the New York Times?”

Naina wasn’t sure if he’d stressed the words Vansh’s work or if she’d imagined that, but it got on her last nerve. “Technically, Sid Dashwood’s work is in the New York Times.”

Vansh looked like she had knifed him. She shouldn’t care. He should have corrected Jiggy himself. But her heart twisted, and that made the anger she’d been beckoning return.

“Technically,” Vansh said, smiling at Jiggy, “it’s not my project alone. It’s ours, Naina’s, mine, Hari’s, Sadiya’s, Makayla’s, Mariel’s, yours.”