Heal the Heart

27.

Beck found me staring at the sliced cheeses. "What are you looking at?"

"What do you think your mom will like?" I showed him the two options in my hands that I'd narrowed it down to. "Truffle-infused or this creamy blue cheese?"

"Hmm. I think she wouldn't mind either."

I sighed and was about to put both in the cart.

"She'll accept it with a smile, and then probably re-gift it." Beck shrugged after seeing my shoulders sag. "She's vegan."

"Of course." I replaced the cheese and resumed my panic-induced shopping.

I was starting to think that maybe I should've found a good excuse and just continued my Christmas traditions that I'd been religiously following for the past two years. Drink myself to death and pass out on the floor.

Freshman year, Deep, Krishna, and my roommate at the time, Owen, had all gone home, so I bought a bottle of Bombay Gin, one Greygoose, and a super fancy bottle of wine and finished it all in commemoration of Jesus's birth. Obviously, crying over Arya came as a prelude. Next year, I did the same, only difference was I did it on Deep and Krishna's floor instead of my sorry excuse of a dorm room and cried into Krishna's shoulder instead of my palms.

Going home wasn't an option for me. Three weeks was too short a timeframe to travel all the way to India and back. Also, my sulking had no place in my family's festivities. I didn't need more people to rub my chest and utter prayers for a lost cause.

When Beck asked if I was going home for winter, I'd laughed in his face. He wasn't amused. I told him all about my short-lived tradition and narrated with a pride I probably shouldn't have held in such high regard. He still wasn't amused. He looked at me for a good long time, nothing but the light from his laptop brushing his cheekbones.

"You're coming with me, then," he said.

I had little say when he booked the tickets the immediate next second. Not like I would've actively disputed whatever his plan was. I did want to meet Beck's mother. I wanted her to meet me. To know me. To know the kind of person I was and that I'd rather have maggots feast on my insides than let anything other than a smile find a place in Beck's life. She had to know that nothing was more important to me than Beck's health and happiness.

The moment Beck and I landed in Edmonton, I had a desperate urge to hijack the next flight and beg the pilot to take me somewhere warm. My Indian blood wasn't made for such negative temperatures. Perhaps my European ancestors somewhere were serving me karma for not acknowledging them enough.

Beck had said his mom didn't want us to get her anything. He'd told her that I was going to be freeloading in her home for a week, and she was more than glad to have me. By the time we landed, picked up a rental—Beck wanted to surprise his mom, so we landed a day early—got on the highway, my nerves got the better of me and so did my regret of not getting Beck's mom anything.

I had to force Beck to detour. Google directed us to the closest grocery shop where I spent almost three months of pay on a bottle of champagne, the biggest bouquet of white roses, and then I began scouring the rest of the store, trying to get my heart to stop pumping so hard.

This time, Beck found me in front of the roses. One of the petals looked a little shrivelled, so I was too busy pulling another rose from a different bouquet to make it perfect.

"There you are." He rested his chin on my shoulder. "How do I keep losing you every twenty seconds?"

"I've never done this before." I turned the bouquet a full three-sixty. I didn't need any shrivelled stragglers on board. "I've never had to meet any parents." I'd known Arya's parents since I was seven. His mother had pulled my ear almost an equal number of times as mine did. There was never any need for introductions. What was mine was his and what was his was mine. An unspoken rule.