"We keep this love in a photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Hearts are never broken
And time's forever frozen still"
~Photograph: - Ed Sheeran 

~Day 3~

The second day had been easier than the first. The third easier still.

It happened the way settling always does gradually, then suddenly. Corners and corridors of the penthouse that had felt unfamiliar became claimed. Devika Aunty commandeered the kitchen every morning with a cheerful authority that brooked no argument, producing chai that smelled exactly right. Dadi established herself on the sunlit side of the living room with her knitting. Ivaan found the gaming setup in Aadyant's room and had more or less moved in. Rishvik discovered the bookshelf and became uncharacteristically still.

And Ziva.

Ziva found Kashvi.

~

"Okay but explain the dart technique to me again."

We were sitting cross-legged on my bed with my sketchbooks spread between us. Ziva had knocked on my door at nine in the morning with an expression of someone who had been waiting for this conversation for several years.

I had let her in without hesitation.

There was something about Ziva Rathore that made you want to answer her questions. The earnestness of her attention—she didn't just listen, she absorbed. Every time I explained something, I could see it clicking into place behind her eyes, see her mentally filing it away for later use.

"A dart removes excess fabric to create shape," I said, sketching the lines quickly. "Like this. You're essentially taking a flat plane and turning it into something three-dimensional. The key is placement—where you put the dart determines the silhouette."

Ziva leaned over the sketch, studying it. "So you could put it at the bust for a fitted waist, or at the shoulder if you want to add structure there?"

"Exactly."

"But in draping, you don't plan all this ahead of time—you work directly on the form and then transfer it."

"Right. Which is why I prefer it. Patternmaking is mathematical. Draping is more like—" I thought about it. "Conversation. Between you and the fabric. You have an idea, the fabric has a nature, and the finished piece is what happens when you negotiate."

Ziva stared at me.

"That's the coolest thing anyone has ever said to me."

I laughed. "It's just how I think about it.

"Can I show you something?" She pulled out her phone and, with an endearing flash of vulnerability, opened her photos. Design sketches. Rough, clearly early-stages, done in pen in what looked like a school notebook. But with genuine instinct underneath the technical uncertainty.

I took the phone and went through them carefully.

"These are good, Ziva."

She made a dismissive sound. "They're messy.

"They're not finished. That's different. But you have an eye for silhouette and you're already thinking about volume." I pointed to a sketch. "This one—the way you've exaggerated the shoulder? That's interesting. That's a choice that not everyone would make, and it's the right one."

Ziva stared at the sketch in my hands for a moment. Something shifted in her face.

"You're the first person who didn't tell me fashion designing is impractical."

Ah. I recognized that.

"It can be," I said honestly. "It's a hard industry. Competitive and expensive and exhausting." I handed her phone back. "But so is every industry where you care about what you're doing. The impracticality is real. It's just not a reason not to try, if this is what you want."

"Do you love it?"

"Every day. Even the hard days. Maybe especially the hard days."

Ziva looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite name. "Aadya didi was right about you," she said eventually.

"Didi?"

Aadya.

Ziva grinned, catching it. "She said to tell you she answers to that now."

I put my face in my hands. Because of course she did.

~

I found them in the kitchen.

My mother and my girlfriend, standing at the counter, making something that smelled remarkable. Maa was talking. Kashvi was listening with the particular quality of attention she gave to things that mattered—completely present, nothing held back.

I stood in the doorway and didn't announce myself.

"The trick with this one is the temperature of the ghee," Maa was saying, adjusting the flame with the ease of someone who'd done this ten thousand times. "Too hot and the spices burn. Too cool and they don't bloom. You want the moment in between."

"How do you know when you've hit it?"

"The cumin seeds will just start to crackle. Not spit—crackle. It's a different sound. You learn it by feel, eventually."

Kashvi leaned closer to the pan, watching. Waiting for the sound.

"There," Maa said. "Hear it?"

"Yes. Yes, I hear it."

"Good. Now the onions."

I watched Kashvi take the onions from the cutting board and add them to the pan with a confidence she hadn't had an hour ago. Watched her stir, watching Maa's face for cues.

My mother caught me in the doorway. Her expression shifted—something complicated and warm—and she shook her head very slightly, as if to say: don't interrupt this.

I went back to the living room.

~

The afternoons became the province of Ivaan and Rishvik.

It started, as most things did in that family, with an argument about something trivial that escalated into a competition that evolved into an activity that absorbed everyone nearby.

The activity in question was a card game. Specifically, a card game called Bluff, which required lying to your opponents' faces with complete conviction.

"You're in," Ivaan announced to Kashvi on day four, dropping a deck in front of her at the dining table.

She looked at the deck, then up at Ivaan. "I don't know the rules."

"I'll teach you." He sat down across from her. "First rule: lie with confidence."

"That's it?"

"That's the main one. The rest is logistics."

~

I won the first game.

Ivaan stared at me. Rishvik stared at me. Even Ziva, who'd been watching from the couch, looked surprised.

"She won," Ivaan said.

"I can see that," Rishvik said.

"How. She'd never played before."

I shrugged. "I'm good at reading people."

Ivaan pointed at me with an expression of complete betrayal. "REMATCH."

We played for two hours. I won three of five. By the end, Ivaan had declared himself my sworn enemy and also my biggest fan, approximately simultaneously.

"Can she stay forever?" he said to Aadyant, who'd wandered over to watch at some point.

"That's the plan," Aadyant said, and caught my eye across the table with a look that made my breath catch.

That's the plan.

Simple. Certain. Like it had already been decided a long time ago.

I looked back at my cards so no one would see the smile I couldn't control.

~

~Day 5, Evening~

Family dinners in the Rathore household had always been loud.

Seven people around a table meant overlapping conversations in at least three languages, Ivaan trying to steal food from everyone else's plate, Dadu occasionally producing silence with a single look, Maa managing everything from her end of the table with the calm efficiency of someone who'd been running a small country for years.

With twelve people, it was something else entirely.

But it was the best kind of something else.

I watched Kashvi navigate it from across the table. She'd claimed a seat between Aadya and Dadi, which was the cleverest possible positioning she could have managed. Aadya kept her in conversation when the noise got too loud. Dadi's presence had a calming effect on everything.

"You're watching her again," Mihir Chachu said, appearing at my shoulder with his glass.

"I'm not—"

"You've been watching her all evening." He wasn't accusatory. Just observant, in the way Rathore men were trained to be.

"Is it obvious?"

"Only to people paying attention." He took a sip. "She's handling this well."

"She's remarkable."

"She is. Your Dadu agrees."

I looked at him sharply. "He said that?"

"He said that she has 'the kind of quiet dignity that comes from having been tested and not broken.'" Chachu's mouth curved. "Which from Baba is essentially a declaration of approval in all caps."

I looked at Dadu, who was listening to something Rishvik was saying with his characteristic stillness. And then, as if sensing my gaze, he glanced across the table.

I held his look.

He gave me the same small nod he'd given me at the airport.

Something settled in my chest that I hadn't known was tense.

Across the table, Kashvi laughed at something Dadi said—the real laugh, the one that reached her eyes—and Maa glanced at me from the other end of the table with an expression so knowing it should have been embarrassing.

It wasn't.

~

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