It was no one’s business how much Naina missed Mina. The best part of being with Yash had been getting to see Mina Auntie when Naina came home from Nepal. Naina had survived her childhood because of Mina, because she had given Naina something to aspire to. Not a family exactly—because no family was shiny enough for Naina to buy into that illusion—but Mina Raje had given her another kind of woman she could, maybe, someday be. Someday Naina wanted to tell Mina that without sounding like a simpering sycophant.

Where there was one Raje at a party, there would be others, and Nisha and Ashna were right behind Mina. They hugged Mummy and complimented her sari. Mummy in return complimented their ghagras, which were lovely but not quite as heavily embellished as Naina’s. A fact that had to be getting her mother through the trauma of this meeting.

Finally, they turned to Naina, and there it was: that special awkward moment that Naina always experienced when she met Yash’s sisters. A moment that seemed to stiffen their usually warm demeanors at the horrifying prospect of hugging her. Ever since Naina’s dismissal from the role of their brother’s girlfriend, they’d acted as though she’d suddenly contracted a communicable disease.

They reached out and touched Naina’s arm, then did a half lean, half pull back, as though they’d suddenly forgotten quite how to manage a hug.

Oh for heaven’s sake, she wanted to say. Your brother is safe from me now, I’m not about to bite your arms off if you hug me. But of course she didn’t say it. Instead she returned the awkward arm-touch-pull-back maneuver.

“Vansh, you didn’t tell us you were going to be here!” Nisha said, eyes sliding quickly to the lack of space between Naina and him. When had his arm gone around her?

Had he always stood so close to her? How had she never noticed? Thanks for making it weird, Nisha.

She took a step away and Vansh stepped closer again, almost automatically, as though he didn’t even notice that he was doing it, and kept his hand on the small of her back.

“Naina and I are working on a project together for Jiggy Mehta, so I was issued a command to attend by the man himself.”

That caused them all to drop into silence.

Total and utter fully loaded silence.

Naina hated being manipulated. It was the single thing she loathed more than anything else. Which was unforgivably naive, given the family she’d been born into. The world they’d been born into.