Below is an excerpt from the story “Cherry Blossom Fever” from short story collection Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese.

If two people could be immediately reduced to their most primal selves, to their animal brains and strongest instincts, then that is what happened between Talia and Marjan on a bench in High Park, on a Tuesday morning in May. How did they go from pleasant conversation to watching s**tty daytime TV and drinking cheap champagne in Marjan’s third-floor apartment at the bottom of the Junction? It was the easiest thing in the world. Then later, when the streetcar tracks quivered in hazy August heat and even the shade in High Park felt scorched, it was just as easy to strip down to their underwear and suck on ice cubes while sweat ran down their backs and pooled in the hollows of their throats. And it was easiest of all to dissolve the confines of friendship and finally satisfy the desire that pulsed between them, a thing as palpable and fully formed as the cherry blossoms of May.

“I think you were born a phoenix,” Marjan said to Talia, running her fingers through Talia’s hair, which by the fall, was the color of ripe strawberries again. Its asymmetrical lines were sharp, intersecting with cheekbone, lip, and jaw.

Talia gave this serious thought before replying, “I think you were born a mermaid.”

And so, they mythologized each other with their mouths and their hands and their heat and as the leaves fluttered down to filter the apartment light in shades of red and gold, it was a dream from which Marjan never wanted to wake.

Marjan didn’t think it all that strange that Talia never mentioned her family, who lived so far east they were practically in Scarborough, a world away from the Junction where they had come alive together. She didn’t question why, in the course of a year, she had only met a handful of Talia’s friends; people who stared at her with tight, silent smiles, their tongues seemingly swollen from how hard they were biting down. Marjan shrugged these things off, assuming a conservatism that came with Talia’s skin, assuming Talia’s people would eventually come to love her, just as her own mother and brother and all of her friends had immediately, unreservedly embraced Talia. That was Marjan’s understanding of love – that it expanded when you needed it to.

Marjan spent the winter planning her proposal, which she meant to make in the Park, when the cherry trees were in bloom again. Under that perfect canopy of pale pink and white, with sunlight streaming down through the blossom-laden branches, she would give Talia her great-aunt’s opal ring. She would get down on one knee and Talia would start to cry and everyone around them aggressively seeking the perfect selfie would stop to smile and clap, sidetracked from their quest by a declaration of love born from a fever dream.

Marjan called Talia from the park on the anniversary of the day they first met. She could have texted, but she wanted to hear Talia’s voice, her laughter at Marjan’s suggestion: Let’s make out under the cherry trees.

Marjan touched Talia’s name on her phone and let it ring.

“Hello?”

Marjan froze and pulled the phone away from her ear to stare at it. Had she somehow called the wrong number? No, it was Talia’s number and Talia’s face, but not Talia’s voice at the other end of the line.

“Hello?” the voice repeated. “Who is this?”

“This is Marjan, Talia’s girlfriend. Who is this?” she asked.

There was a long pause and then the voice said, “This is Sunil. Talia’s husband.”

Chrysalis is available from Amazon and Bookshop.

chrysalis anuja varghese