And in that moment, Andrew Prince knew he’d love Jiya Dalal for the rest of his life.
CHAPTER ONE
Eighteen Years Later
Jiya pinched her own knee beneath the table.
Focus on your date.
Navin was nice. Clean cut, polite, subtle cologne usage. When they’d sat down to eat, he’d encouraged Jiya to order for them, since she knew the menu by heart. That was also nice.
Nice nice nice.
If only they hadn’t sat near the front window of her family’s restaurant, Spice. This was the very table she languished at between waitressing shifts, watching the Cessnas drift past over the nearby Atlantic, imagining herself piloting them.
Also visible from the window?
The Castle Gate bar, owned and run by the Prince brothers.
Andrew wouldn’t be there yet. His bartending shift didn’t begin for another four hours. But the establishment itself was reminder enough of her best friend.
Did he know she was on a date?
When she had finally acquiesced to her mother’s wishes to begin dating, with a serious eye toward marriage, Jiya had half expected Long Beach to tilt on its axis. Or cracks to form in the wooden planks of the boardwalk. It didn’t seem right that nothing had changed. Today continued on just like any other, despite her attendance at a date arranged by her parents. The sun shined down on sunburned tourists, children walked past with balloons and painted faces, customers entered and exited Spice onto the boardwalk, either hungry or stuffed.
A small-scale earthquake would have been nice.
There was that word again. Nice.
Jiya smiled along with Navin’s story about his recent trip to Germany while forking aloo tikka onto her appetizer plate. She cut into the golden brown potato patty and dabbed it in fresh mint chutney sauce she’d helped her mother make that morning, popping the bite into her mouth. Once again, her attention tugged toward the window and the beach beyond. A plane chugged along through the fluffy white clouds with a car insurance advertisement in tow, the low hum of the engine raising the hair on her arms like static.
She heard her mother sigh from all the way back in the kitchen and pinched her knee again beneath the table. “Oh wow. Oktoberfest?” She took a long sip of water. “That must have been wild. So much beer.”
“Oh yeah. Lots.” Navin leaned forward quickly. “Not that I…I mean, I had some. But I never overdid it.”
Jiya took another bite of her aloo tikka. “That’s a shame.”
He coughed a laugh, visibly unsure whether or not she was joking. “Every day at two o’clock, they give out free wedding cake. Hundreds of slices. To commemorate some wedding that took place in the nineteenth century.”
She paused with her fork in her mouth. “Tell me more about this cake.”
When the meal was over and her mother had not so surreptitiously passed the table on five separate occasions, Jiya knew damn near everything about Oktoberfest. She also knew she and Navin weren’t a match. The connection just wasn’t there. But she was glad they’d met. His stories about Germany might have been a little—fine, a lot—long-winded, but they only made Jiya more excited about her upcoming flying lessons.
Every so often, she felt trapped inside the walls of Spice. Sometimes even inside the confines of her own bedroom. Listening to talk of faraway places and spontaneous folk dancing renewed her want of…more. What did more even look like, though?
For a long time, she’d believed that more was something that happened naturally. When she saw it, she would know. And in a sense, she had known. The first time she’d watched a Cessna chug across the sky as a ten-year-old, she’d wanted to sit in the cockpit and see the world down below from a different point of view. The first time she’d seen Andrew, she’d been positive she could never, ever spend enough time with him.
Age, getting older, changes never factored in.
But that was naïve. Age was a factor for everyone, men and women alike. Priorities shifted as the years passed, and while she’d never felt too much pressure to find someone to spend the rest of her life with…she wanted that now. She wanted a foundation with someone built on respect. She wanted a home—preferably one where she didn’t have to share a bathroom with her parents or slap her mother’s undergarments out of the way to depart the shower.
The image of a potential new version of home refused to materialize, though.
Not without the man next door’s face showing up and making her stomach hurt.
Jiya attempted to shake off the thoughts of Andrew by draining her glass of water and turning her attention back to the horizon. Her brow furrowed when his image didn’t fade. At all. Probably because he was standing across the boardwalk from the restaurant, posted up against the railing. Watching her.
Jiya choked on her water.