“They’re lotuses. I happen to like lotuses,” he said, running a hand down his shirt without a whit of self-consciousness.

“You really don’t have to do this,” Naina said.

He pointed a finger at her face. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll do it a million times over. I’ll let Chandni Auntie paint roses on my cheeks if she wants.”

Vansh had waited two days, as Naina had suggested, after that disastrous run-in with their mothers, and then he’d gone over and apologized to Naina’s mother. When she had curtly accepted his apology, fed him some paneer kababs, and tried to send him on his way, he’d complimented her clothes and told her how much he’d always liked the things she wore.

What had followed was her giving him a detailed history of her lifelong love affair with clothes. She’d always been obsessed with fashion shows. For years she’d taken the over-the-top designs of big designers and tweaked them to make them wearable, made her own designs from them, and sent drawings to her cousin in India, who then had them made and sent them back.

A large part of Naina’s childhood had been spent playing mannequin for Mummy’s creations. What Naina hadn’t known was that her mother’s real love was fabrics. Appliqué, zardozi, and embroidery. Which shouldn’t have been a surprise because Mummy’s own clothes were always embellished with some sort of thread work. Naina had just never imagined that Mummy had done that herself.

As soon as she’d told Vansh about her passion, he’d asked her if the kurti she was wearing—with birds embroidered on the sleeves—was her work.

When he’d recounted his meeting with her mother to Naina, he’d sounded awed. “I’ve really never seen anything like it,” he’d said. Which did not help with Naina’s condition of wanting to climb him like a tree. Not even a little bit.

Mummy had given him an hour-long tour of all her designs, the ones in her closet and the ones on her iPad. Something she’d never shared with anyone, not even Naina. Probably because no one, not even Naina, had ever asked her about it.

Then Mummy had pulled out her stash of brightly embroidered shirts that she’d been working on and asked him if he would model them for her. When he’d said yes, that had led to her gifting them to him. Which he now wore because she had taken to calling him about their “modeling partnership” and seeing him in them made her face light up.

Whether she was punishing him or this was forgiveness, Naina didn’t know, because her mother wasn’t really talking to her. She was pretending that the disaster in the hospital had never happened.