“You are so nice.” Hari sniffled as he drank.

Vansh patted his back. “You said you had no home. What did you mean by that?”

Hari did another jack-in-the-box jump and promptly face-dived toward the patio. Fortunately Vansh had the reflexes of someone who’d spent many an evening with drunken friends in various parts of the world. He caught the man before he hit the ground and put him back in the chair.

“Let’s sit for a few minutes without jumping out of the chair, please. And keep drinking.” He handed him the bottle of water. If he thought the mimosas were orange juice, that meant they had gone down fast.

He needed some food to soak up all that alcohol, but Vansh couldn’t leave him alone. So he took him back to the corner table where he’d found him. “Don’t move until I get back.”

Then he went to the food tent and grabbed a couple of samosas and brought them back. Wasn’t Hari the guy who’d always taken the leftover donuts and pizza home from Yash’s campaign office? A faint memory of the rest of the team teasing him about it nudged at Vansh.

Thankfully, Hari hadn’t moved. He sat there slouched and felled by mimosas. Well, time to fix mimosas with samosas. Vansh handed him the plate.

“I grew up in a big house,” Hari said as though it hurt him to make the declaration. “In Bhopal. Now I live in a tent.”

As the words left his mouth his eyes widened to saucers and he shoved the entire, rather large samosa into his mouth. And promptly started choking.

Vansh slammed his palm into Hari’s back, making him expel the clump of potatoes and pastry congealing his mouth shut and cutting off his oxygen supply. Vansh was all set to perform the Heimlich, but Hari sucked in a huge slurp of air and color rushed back into his face.

“You saved my life,” Hari said. Tears streamed from his eyes, this time probably because he’d just been choking.

Everyone knew how very much Vansh enjoyed saving lives, but this situation was a little too absurd even for him. He handed Hari another bottle of water and looked around to see if he could find reinforcements to help with the situation, but everyone seemed otherwise engaged.

Naina and Mehta were deeply engrossed in their conversation, and they were the only other guests still left in this part of the yard. Everyone else seemed to be packed around the stage, mobbing Yash and listening to the band, which was really getting into it.

“It was just a very large bite of samosa. I didn’t really do anything,” Vansh said, making Hari let out another grateful sound.