Maya Patel always believed love was something that happened to other people—an event with cinematic timing and ruinous beauty. She had been careful with her life: color-coded calendars, lists folded and refolded, relationships kept at the polite edge of things. At twenty-six she had learned how to keep her heart intact by never leaving it unattended.
The cafe was full that London evening of muggy weather, the sort of heat that caused the city to breathe slowly and with deep breaths. Maya sat down to her favorite, a seat where she could watch people come and go without their paying any attention to her. She had cracked open her laptop, and was now set to hustle to finish her campaign brief by Monday. A notebook with the leather cover smacked against her table and a voice--warm, humble--inquired whether the seat was occupied.
No, she said, and was surprised at the speed with which her voice responded.
He was called Arjun. His hair never obeyed him and his laugh came before his mouth formed it. He was a photographer recently returned to the world after a year of travel; he communicated through photographs, the manner in which some markets smelled of spices at night and the manner in which some strangers had the appearance of having just escaped something beautiful and awful. They discussed books and the nicest secret gardens in the city and how rain would honesty everything up.
Arjun asked to take her home when the cafe lowered the lights and voices faded. Yes, yes, said Maya, who had long been practicing caution. They kissed the first time under a bridge where the river went like a secret--awkward and soft, and all their own. The thunderstorm was not the one she had thought of in a life of solitary metaphors; it was rain which rested in the soil and waited and insisted.