Page 83 of The Encore’s Crown

Lonely

Kiri

Iwas twenty-four the first time I saw Radhika Malhotra, and in that moment, I forgot how to breathe. It wasn't in some dramatic metaphorical way. My lungs actually stopped working.

The party was in one of those houses in the Hollywood Hills built entirely from glass, because rich people had recently decided walls were for poor people. Light spilled across all that polished stone. Music rolled softly through rooms full of actors, producers, models, label executives, and men who wore sneakers I'd stared at through store windows as a kid, dreaming.

The Riven Altar had been grinding for almost six years by then.

Six years of clubs with floors that stuck to our boots. Six years of sleeping wherever we could, taking whatever opening slots we were offered, and smiling at men who promised to change our lives before forgetting our names by morning. The last album had done well—not changed the world well, but well enough that suddenly invitations like this appeared. We were no longer the dirty band trying to sneak in through the kitchen. We were the dirty band people wanted photographed near the pool. Edgy, sexy, cool.

Progress.

Rafe had already disappeared into conversation with some producer whose last record sounded like machinery fucking during an opera concert. Rithy had cornered a man who made custom guitars for musicians with more money than sense. Ronan was talking to a television producer who wanted us on some late-night music show and kept assuring him the veils would be “a visual asset.” I was supposed to be networking. I had every intention of networking.

Then I saw her.

She stood in the center of a group near the terrace doors, surrounded by some of the most beautiful people on earth. Indian actors and actresses, Stefan would later tell me, in the most immaculate clothes and perfect posture I'd ever seen. The kind of group that made everyone else at the party look unfinished.

She was the only one that kept my attention.

Radhika wore gold. The fabric shifted over her body like warm light, fitted close through her waist, one shoulder bare. Her dark hair fell down her back in a heavy wave, and her face—fuck.

I’d heard Rafe talk that kind of shit for years. Men and women who looked like gods. Love as some ancient curse. Helen burning cities. Persephone dragging spring behind her or Apollo carrying the sun in his mouth. Every person he wanted became a myth before he even got their number. I’d always rolled my eyes and called it bullshit. Fancy words to get them naked, that’s all it was.

Then Radhika turned her head. Suddenly, I understood how religions started. One person saw something impossible staring back at them and dropped to their knees. That was her. That was the whole fucking origin story. She looked like a painting someone had taught to breathe. Like a goddess had stepped down from a temple wall, put on gold, and wandered into a Hollywood party to see whether any mortal man could survive looking directly at her. I could have been convinced to worship her right there, no scripture required.

Her eyes found mine.

I should've smiled. I was good at smiling at women. I had an entire arsenal: lazy smile, dirty smile, sweet smile if I wanted someone to think I wasn’t the worst decision they'd make all week. Women had crossed rooms because of those smiles, slipped hotel keys into my hand and numbers into my pocket on the promise of those smiles. They'd whispered exactly what they wanted against my ear while their friends pretended not to notice. So smiles? I knew how to smile to get what I wanted.

Instead, I stared, like a complete idiot. Radhika’s eyes widened slightly. Then she looked away with the smallest shake of her head, as though she had caught herself doing something equally foolish. Color bloomed in her cheeks. And, somehow, I felt heat climb into mine. I turned away so fast I almost walked into a sculpture.

“What the fuck?” I muttered.

Blushing was not part of my usual process. I’d had women every way a man could think to have them and a few ways they had to teach me. Women with bodies that were soft as silk, translucent enough for blue veins to show beneath it and pale pink nipples, women bronzed by the California sun and legs for fucking days, women with rich umber skin and deadly dimples who smelled like expensive lotion and tasted like heaven. I'd kissed, tied, teased, followed orders and given them. There wasn’t much left that could make me nervous or shy.

But one look from Radhika Malhotra and I was fourteen again, incapable of operating my own damn face.

So, I did the mature thing and avoided her for the rest of the night. I let Rafe introduce me to the producer with the violent industrial sound. I nodded intelligently while the man told me bass was the “subconscious architecture of music,” which sounded like something Rafe would tattoo across his back. Rithy dragged me over to meet a luthier who had built instruments for three of my heroes. I managed to ask coherent questions while still checking the reflection in every glass wall to see whether Radhika had moved. Ronan introduced me to the television producer, who said they would love to have us perform even if we refused to remove our veils.

“Especially if you refuse,” she added.

“Nothing sells like mystery,” I said.

My attention drifted over her shoulder. Radhika was laughing at something one of her friends had said. The sound didn’t reach me across the room, but I could see it move through her whole body, her hand touching the arm of the woman beside her. Smile wide enough to destroy whatever remained of my dignity.

A model slipped me her number near the bar, then a singer with silver hair pressed her lips close to my ear and told me where she was staying. Next up, a girl from a band I vaguely recognized hooked one finger through my belt loop and asked whether I liked redheads.

“I’m an equal-opportunity disappointment,” I told her.

She laughed like that was an invitation. On any other night, it would have been.

By midnight, I could have taken at least ten women home. Instead, every few minutes, my eyes went back to Radhika, and every time they did, I found hers already on me. She always looked away first. I always pretended I hadn’t been caught. This continued until I finally looked toward the terrace and discovered she was gone. So was the entire group she'd been with. Panic hit me so fast I almost laughed.

Panic? Over a woman I hadn’t even spoken to? Get a fucking grip.

I swallowed the rest of my drink and reminded myself of reality. Women like Radhika Malhotra didn't leave parties with men like me. She wasn’t some actress hunting for a reckless night in Los Angeles. She wasn’t someone impressed because I played bass on an album that had briefly cracked an international chart.