Giving him a hand, she pulled him up to standing. “Shut up. Stop blaming me for your clumsiness. You tripped. Are you hurt?”

He pressed his hand into his chest, her hand still in his. “Which warm-blooded human here is unhurt at the sight of you?”

She pulled away. “Not funny. Is anyone actually charmed by this stuff?”

“I believe so. But no one else tries this hard to hide it.” He winked and they made their way through the red and gold hall. “All kidding aside, you look beautiful,” he added only slightly more seriously.

She threw him a warning glare. “Thank you. I had to bring my A-game. It’s a matter of saving my funding,” she said briskly, not adding that it was the only ghagra in her apartment and not in a box in her parents’ house. And she’d sworn never to go back there.

Before Vansh could respond, Naina’s mother hurried up to them, blood-red sari with a wide gold sequined border catching every bit of the too-bright lighting. “For a moment I thought Deepika was standing before me.” She pressed a solitaire-studded hand into her chest.

“Hello, Mummy.”

Her mother’s brown eyes lined with dark kohl filled with doting tears. She swiped her pinkie finger against the kohl on her eyelid and pressed a black dot behind Naina’s ear. She’d always done this whenever Naina dressed up. The black mark was supposed to ward off the evil eye by putting a blemish on perfection. The practice had always annoyed Naina, but today she felt like she needed all the luck she could get.

“I knew you would look most beautiful in this style.”

“Mummy, please. Don’t cry. It’s just a ghagra.”

“It was supposed to be your sagai ka joda.”

As always, Naina had the urge to apologize. It was natural for any mother to have been excited about her daughter’s engagement dress, but Mummy tended to process all her emotions through clothing. Naina should never have brought her so close to her dream of seeing Naina married off. Then again, if not for her mother, Naina never would have had to lie about being with Yash.

No! She would not blame Mummy for her father’s faults. The world already did too much of that, blaming women for men’s failings.

“Namaste, Auntieji,” Vansh said, pressing his hands together and bowing his head and managing to not come across like a ham.

Naina always forgot how comfortable he was with Indian customs. He’d spent two years in boarding school in India and a few years working for his aunt in Sripore. Unlike his siblings, he spoke both Hindi and Marathi fluently. Also Spanish, Swahili, and French with some ease. A memory of his helping her out with Spanish in high school flashed in her mind out of nowhere.