The last thing I want to do is think about this wedding, but we’re smack dab in the middle of it. All it’s reminding me of now is that Abbu and Ammu think that somehow I’ll come back to this. Somehow, after everything, I will be exactly like Sunny Apu. Ready to marry a Desi guy like Abir Bhaiya.

“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t think so. You can go if you want.”

“If you’re not going, I’m not going.”

Ammu rolls her eyes like she’s tired of our antics.

“You’ll go to the wedding with no henna on your hands then?” she asks with a frown. “You’re bridesmaids, how will you look?”

That’s true. Sunny Apu will have henna spiraling all the way up her arms, and I’m sure the other bridesmaids—whoever they are—will be decked with henna as well. Plus, I don’t think either of us have ever attended an event like this without a full hand of henna.

When we were younger, our Nanu used to spend hours applying intricate, beautiful henna patterns to our palms. But that was years ago, when we lived in Bangladesh. Or when we visited during peak wedding season. Back then, one coat of henna could last us for at least three or four weddings of people we barely knew but were somehow related to.

“I can put henna on us?” I offer with a shrug. Ammu looks at me with narrowed eyes. I don’t know what she sees, but a moment later she nods her head.

“Fine, but make sure it’s nice, okay?” Ammu says. “There are henna tubes in the storeroom. I’m going to your Khala and Khalu’s house.”

Sunny Apu’s parents aren’t really our Khala and Khalu—which are titles usually reserved for your maternal aunt and her husband. But Ammu and Abbu became joined at the hip with them when they moved to Ireland a year ago. They’re the only relatives we have here, even though they’re very, very, very distantly related to us.

“We should just go to the parlor,” Priti says when we get up the stairs and slip into my room. I grab a bunch of henna tubes, a piece of disposable cloth and my open laptop before spreading it all out on the bed.

“Sit.”

“I’m going first?”

“I can’t go first and then do your henna after. My hands will be all covered.”

She casts a wary glance at the things I’ve laid out on the bed and then up at me.

“You know you don’t have a lot of practice in this, right?”

I know. I definitely know.