“Maybe it’s time for me to move out,” Bindu had said in the final throes of their nonsensical fight.
Alisha had made one of her laugh-groan-scoff sounds.
If not for that stupid sound, Bindu wouldn’t have said yes to Debbie, and Bindu wouldn’t be standing here in a red summer dress she’d bought online, with nowhere to wear it to.
Elegant brass letters on a gray stone wall proclaimed that they were at the clubhouse. SHADY PALMS—LUXURY LIVING FOR YOUR VIBRANT YEARS.
If you were going to put a bunch of old—sorry, she was supposed to say “older” now, even though that made no sense—people in one place, why would you call that place something as fake sunny as Shady Palms? Palms should never be anyone’s choice when seeking shade, especially if other options were available.
But they were here, so Bindu held her head high and walked through the arched entrance as regally as she could. Not easy with Debbie hiding behind her. If the outside of the clubhouse was impressive—all manicured landscaping and giant fountains—the inside was a veritable ode to showy elegance: a mullioned glass ceiling, mosaic marble floors, and an absurd profusion of indoor （still not shady） palms.
Bindu sent up a prayer of gratitude for her dress with its cute cold shoulders and gently flaring sleeves. As forms of self-soothing therapy went, Bindu had always believed that clothes, jewelry, and the perfect shade of lipstick were underrated. To say nothing of all the things a good hair day could fix in your soul. Thank heavens she’d touched up her hair color just yesterday.
These people did not look like they touched up their own grays with drugstore color. They looked like they’d been airdropped here, in chartered planes, straight from Beverly Hills. Bindu dragged Debbie to the circle of women gathered under the impressive crystal chandelier. Every one of them had blown-out hair, super-moisturized faces, and gold chains so delicate they were barely visible against the freckled crepe paper skin of their necks.
Eyes in all shades of blue and green and gold flickered Bindu’s way, then flickered away without so much as a hint of acknowledgment. She might as well have been invisible.
Then their eyes landed on Debbie’s blonde head, ducking behind Bindu. Smiles warmed every face. They introduced themselves to Debbie with enough enthusiasm that the contrast in their reactions landed on Bindu like a slap.
Maybe she was imagining it.
“Hello,” she said, trying to sound breezy, but her own accent sounded loud in her ears.
No one responded. The circle dragged Debbie in and closed up as Bindu stood outside it, taking in the wall of backs. The chill of the air-conditioning hit her exposed shoulders even as her skin turned clammy and hot. It was like menopause returning in a tidal wave. Had she used too much kohl to line her eyes? Was her lipstick too red? The sense of feeling all wrong tangled up her limbs. A girl from a lifetime ago, a girl Bindu had buried with a forgotten past, trembled back to life inside her. And her resurgence felt exactly like rage swallowed too long.
Escaping the turned backs, Bindu pushed past the oversize lead glass doors, slamming them hard enough that she heard some gasps behind her. Outside, the blast of heat and sound enveloped her but gave her no relief. A pool dropped into another pool by way of a waterfall and led up to a bar where swimsuited and sunglassed people laughed and chatted as though they had not a care in the world.
The phrase vibrant years had amused Bindu when she’d read it on the brochure, but looking at these deeply confident faces, it felt like the joke was on her. The sunshine was blinding, much like the rush of feelings she’d just experienced at the sudden reappearance of the girl she’d been. Unwanted. Unaccepted. Always on the outside.
She knew exactly why she was suddenly reacting with such ferocity to everything. It was the stupid money.
“Don’t let them get to you,” a kind voice said behind her.
She turned slowly, hand shading her eyes from the sun, not trusting the way the soft, deep tones settled the churn inside her. Her gaze landed on a pink golf shirt. She tipped her head back to look up his absurdly tall body and found hazel eyes, much like her own, studying her. Lines radiated from their edges like cobwebs pressed into skin. Lines that would never be considered this beautiful on her face.
Bindu hadn’t thought of a man as beautiful in a very long time. But there was no other word for the gentleness with which he watched her. Not the sympathetic kind that grew more and more abundant in the way people treated you as you aged, but one that seemed rooted in humanity, in humor. As though he knew he could get her to see what he found so amusing about the situation that had just churned up the worst parts of her. A gentleness of equals.
“They’re easily threatened.” His voice was low, confident that people would focus to hear him no matter how softly he spoke.
“Threatened?” She let all the smoky huskiness of her own voice play out in the word, twist it with nonchalance.
It made his smile grow. He tilted his chin with the exact same impact as raising a finger and tracing her from head to toe.
It was the strangest compliment. But deadly, because it hit her where she never let men’s compliments hit her. She’d spent a lifetime fielding men’s gazes, their admiration, their lust. In recent years most younger men had stopped having that reaction to her, but men around her age still rarely gazed upon her as anything more than an object they’d like to possess.
The way he looked at her carried the weight of all those things. It saw how she must be looked at rather than mirrored it. Which made it different. But the part that caught her like the slow hook of a deep-sea fisherman was the clear displeasure in his gaze at how those women had made her feel.
“Are you new?” He seemed like a man who’d never once felt like an outsider.
In a flash she imagined his life in Hollywood-inspired vignettes: a high school athlete who got straight As. A father who called him “buddy” and shared life lessons as he tossed him a ball. A mother who baked pie and handed out supportive advice over it. A Mercedes-Benz and golf and a wife who kept a house that belonged in Architectural Digest and invited friends over for wine and dessert under a gazebo overlooking their lush garden.
Her gaze dropped to his hand, searching for a ring. But it was tucked into his pocket.
“I’m here with a friend,” she answered.
“That’s too bad. You should move here.” For the first time his voice slipped from its confident pedestal. Just the slightest bit.
She threw a glance over his shoulder at the women still fawning over Debbie. “How can I resist?”
Another smile warmed his eyes. She’d been wrong about the color. They weren’t hazel, like hers. They were green, like pond moss that made you slip off rocks.
“I think someone like you is exactly what they need.” His tone was the warm water that cushioned your fall when you slipped.
Bindu didn’t like it when people assumed they knew her. But since she’d just pictured his entire life without knowing him, she waited for him to explain.
“You’re trouble.”
The words body-slammed her, as if she’d run full tilt into a wall, one she’d built around long-ago memories. Glass beads crashed everywhere. It had been forty-seven years since she’d heard those words, since she’d almost let them ruin her life.