Page 15 of A Crazy Kind of Love
“Not too far out of the way, huh? I live in the exact opposite direction.”
He dropped to his knee before me. “Would you do me the great honor of letting me give you a ride home?”
I could not for the life of me figure this guy out. If there was an angle he was working to get something more out of me, I couldn’t find it. “You know I’ve already uploaded all the pictures from tonight.”
He knit his brow. “So . . . you’re off the clock?”
“I won’t be taking any more pictures tonight.”
If I thought he’d change his mind once I was no longer of any service, I was wrong. He held out his hand. “Okay. You wanna go?”
As he opened the door to the townhouse and we emerged into the night air, a dozen cameras pointed at us, shuttersclick-clicking.I picked Wally out of the crowd and waved at him. He didn’t smile or wave back. He moved his finger up to the zoom and continued snapping.
Chapter 6
Adozen cameras clicked and flashed in a syncopated rhythm. Voices overlapped with undecipherable questions from both sides, calling out to Micah. Micah put an arm around my shoulder and ushered me to a waiting town car. The driver touched his cap and opened the door for me. Unnerved and somewhat thrilled by my moment in the spotlight, I turned to gawk at the crowding paps. A bright light blinded me temporarily, and I saw spots as I slid across the leather seat of the sedan.
Micah climbed in, and I had a brief moment to wonder if any of my friends or loved ones would yell at me later for taking the risk of riding home with a relative stranger. Both Zion and my mom popped up on my shoulder, alongside the devil, shouting, “Go! Go! Go!” I secured my seat belt.
Once the driver had taken his place behind the wheel, he turned around to ask for my address, and then we were off, leaving the crazy cacophony behind us.
The inequality of our status slammed home all at once, and the sudden dark silence exacerbated my awkwardness. I had no idea what protocol I should follow when crammed into such a small space with my natural prey. Should I make small talk? Or maybe Micah wanted me to interview him. I stared into the night, overwhelmed with shyness and uncertainty.
Fear of Andy’s disapproval knotted my gut, and I made up my mind to come right out and ask Micah for a statement on his recent girlfriend. I turned to face him and found him leaning against the door, watching me with interest.
Before I could start my interrogation, he launched the first strike. “I overheard some of your conversation with Stuart. I thought you were from Georgia.”
I sat up straighter. “I sure am. Born and raised.”
His features changed with the alternating light and shade striping his face as we passed through Brooklyn. “But that’s not the whole story.”
“No. My dad’s Indian. There’s a fairly vibrant Indian community outside of Atlanta.”
He narrowed his eyes. I could see he wanted to pry. I took a deep breath. People could never quite understand how two people from totally different life trajectories could end up romantically entangled. So I gave him the basic outline. “My dad came over to get an MFA in photography.” I smiled, thinking of this bit of shared history. “Same school and department I went into. But I never went for the Master’s.”
“I never went to college.” He said it conversationally with no trace of bitterness. “My sister did. She used to be a biochemist if you can believe that.” It was sweet to see him speaking with pride about Eden. “So is that where your parents met?”
“Actually, yes. Mom started an MFA in interior design, but she never finished it.”
“Because of you?”
I put my finger on my nose. “Yup. But she does okay without the degree. She has her own business. We always got by.”
He shifted but never took his eyes off me. Thankfully, he dropped that line of questioning and opted for something safer. “Did you ever get a chance to go to India?”
“Once. I must have been nine or ten. Dad was from the southwest, a region called Kerala. He took me over to meet my grandparents.”
“That sounds like a great trip for a kid.”
“Oh. My dad took me everywhere with him. France, Kenya, Tierra del Fuego. But until that summer, he’d never taken me to his home.”
I thought back to that summer. Dad had been uncharacteristically quiet and irritable the whole trip over. I’d traveled with him enough to know he was a life-is-about-the-journey-not-the-destination kind of guy. He normally loved every aspect of our trips from planning to packing to boarding the plane to messing with the in-flight music stations. So I knew something was off.
Micah leaned forward, as if listening intently. “That’s crazy. I’ve always traveled, but my entire family lives within a fifty-mile radius. I can’t imagine meeting my grandparents like that. Must have been kind of scary.”
I tilted my head and poked at emotions packed into memories that were two decades old. “I was a little nervous but mostly excited to finally meet my cousins and grandparents. My dad had taught me enough basic Malayalam so I could grasp some snatches of meaning from context. And most everyone spoke some English.”
“But you were the foreigner.”
