Page 30 of A Thousand Painted Hours

“True, but they are only two men.”

Gurdaya sighed. “You two are so boring. I am going to my room.”

We fell silent as she departed. Tanveer stepped slightly closer so that our hands brushed. After we’d been standing there alone for a long moment, he turned that hand and took mine. We walked to the wall and looked over the edge. Far below, light spilled from the room where everyone danced and feasted. A few people milled around the enclosed garden. We looked down on them, weaving our fingers together. I felt his body next to mine, as if he were a star exerting gravity over the planet of me.

I noticed people far below looking up toward us, and pulled him into the shadows. In no part of my body or mind or soul or heart was there a single moment of caution. I fell against the wall, and he followed laughing softly, pressing his body against mine. A soft wash of light touched the angle of his cheek, his forehead, the straight line of his nose, and I absorbed all of it as if I’d never seen his face at all. I raised a hand and touched his cheekbone, the edge of his eye, his nose.

In return, he touched my hair, my ear, the line of my neck, his fingers leaving a trail like a comet. In a quiet voice he said, “I have been waiting since last summer for this.”

“What? Why didn’t you say?”

A rueful smile touched his mouth. “Would you have wished for this then?”

I had to be honest. “No.”

“You had to catch up.”

“What if I never had?”

He shrugged. “We would have continued as we always have, as we always will.”

A slight darkness rippled through the silvery moments, the recognition that the future—

“Do not think of it,” he said, and kissed me. I kissed him back, greedily, our bodies melting together. I could feel his shoulders and the muscles in his back, and he ran his hands over my waist, and lower. There was no thought, only sensation, in the places where our forms met and our hands, and our mouths, but all through my limbs, too, and my belly.

I pulled away, panting. “I am quite ... this is ...”

He flung himself away to put his back against the wall beside me. “Yes. As am I.”

“I did not know that anything could feel that way.”

“Nor I.” He laughed helplessly.

“I know we should not,” I said.

“Oh, no,” he said, and rolled toward me, kissed me again. “There will be a time that our lives will take us somewhere else, to other things, but we have now. It can be our secret thing, like writing in Urdu. No one needs to know.”

I pressed upward toward his mouth. “It will be our secret.”

He pulled away again, taking a breath. “We shall have to be quite aware of our faces when we are with our mothers. I do not worry about my father, or yours, but our mothers will scent a thing without our knowing.”

The words landed with a thud of truth. “Yes, you are right.” I paused and pursed my lips exaggeratedly. “When I see you, I will think of smoked fish.”

He laughed. “And I will imagine an unshorn old ewe.”

I slapped his arm. “Horrible.”

“Effective.”

I nodded. “We should go back, so no one suspects anything.”

“Suspects what?” he said. “I brought you up to see the telescope, as I’ve done before.”

“Of course.”

“Wait,” he murmured, capturing my hand. “One more.” My skin rippled, and I leaned in, lingering in the galaxy of his being before reluctantly pulling away. I followed, alight.

A small worry whispered through me—now that this had bloomed between us, how could I ever live without it?