In-Genie-Us!

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~~ All characters in this book are over 18. ~~

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Chapter 1: Something Old

Hell, Shanaya Singh thought morosely, is watching your best friend get ready for a marriage you know will be flaming wreckage in less than three years.

What made it worse, if that were even possible, was the fact that she had been harboring a desperate crush for Allison ever since they were in middle school. The other woman was everything Shanaya was not; where she was small, dark, and homely, with mousy brown hair, unimpressive looks, and a chest that could only be called modest if you were doing a little creative flattery, Allison was tall, blond, and gorgeous, with a body which made men of all ages turn into stuttering idiots in her presence, unable to peel their eyes away from her stunning figure.

She was also, may all the gods damn fickle fate, resolutely heterosexual, with not the slightest interest in her -- or any other woman, for that matter - as a romantic partner. Shanaya's unrequited desire for her best friend would stay just that -- unrequited. Over the years, she had made two fumbling attempts at seducing Allison - once when they were both in high school, and another the summer before her sophomore year in college. Both times the other woman hadn't even recognized them for what they were. Shanaya didn't know whether she should be relieved that she had been saved the embarrassment of having Allison reject her, or angry that her friend was so oblivious to her advances that she couldn't even see a seduction attempt when she was waving it front of her face.

"Why are we doing this?" she grumbled as Allison pushed open the door of the antique shop, shoehorned between a comic-book store and a take-out Chinese restaurant. "Don't you have enough jewelry at home? Why are we running all over town?"

Allison flashed her a dazzling smile over her shoulder. "Come on, Shannie. Don't you know the old rhyme? 'Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue?'"

"Yes. So what?"

"I need something old for the wedding. I already have something blue. Though," she said, winking, "I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's a surprise for Brad, too."

Gross. She kept a smile on her face, even though her stomach heaved. To think of Brad Sorensen having his hands on Allison was like sitting on a whoopie cushion during the Ode to Joy. Some things were just plain wrong. "What about something new?"

"Well, that's the wedding dress, silly. And I'm sure my mom can find something for me to borrow. Some of her earrings, maybe. But I still need something old." She pulled her back towards the jewelry section. "It's bad luck, otherwise."

Shanaya sighed. She knew, as the maid of honor, she should be doing everything she could to help Allison out. But her heart wasn't in it. She was her best friend, had been since their first day of preschool. Her lips quirked, remembering the story that their mothers never tired of telling.

"Are you reading a story?" the strange girl asked. Her mouth fell open when she looked up at her from her position at the bookcase, hiding away from all the other noisy kids. She had the most amazing hair, all golden and soft, tumbling around her face in curling ringlets.

"Oh," she said. "You're pretty."

"I know." She tossed her head and smiled. "My name's Allison. Allison Weaver. But most people call me Allie. Who are you?"

She looked down at her shoes. "Shanaya."

"That's a nice name." She sat down on the mat beside her with a thump. "Mommy reads stories to me. Can you read?"

"Yes. A little."

"Good. Read the story to me, okay?"

And that was how shy, bookish Shanaya acquired a new best friend, almost by accident. Allison had always been there for her, even when the other kids had made fun of her skin color and her religion. Hindus were a bit thin on the ground in Mayfield, Kentucky, population ninety-eight hundred. And a family that not only wasn't Baptist, but wasn't even Christian, was looked on with deep suspicion by the denizens of Graves County.

Could be worse though, she admitted. We could be Muslim instead of Hindus. Though then people would probably be trying to get Mom and Dad deported, even if Mom is the best dentist in town.

She leaned against a pillar, her nose wrinkling as Allison poked through the displays of second-hand jewelry. Most of it was awful -- tacky, gaudy stuff that a hooker wouldn't wear on a bet. She closed her eyes as her friend tried on a pair of mismatched bracelets, then held up a tarnished necklace to her tan throat. "What do you think?"

"I think it's crap," she said flatly. She stirred the selection with a finger, then gave the whole mess a contemptuous flick. "There isn't a single thing here that would look good on you. You're wasting your time."

She sighed, rubbing her temples. As much as she hated the idea of Allison marrying the six-foot-high pile of crap she was currently engaged to, she owed it to her friend to make her special day as happy as possible. "Listen. We can do better. What are you really looking for? What do you want?"

Allison's forehead wrinkled adorably, the way it did when she was thinking hard. "A necklace, maybe? I have one or two, but I was thinking, something gold, to set off the dress..." She pulled out her phone, her fingers dancing as she summoned up a picture of her in her wedding dress at the last fitting. "See?"

Shanaya chewed her lip to disguise the pang of desire. Even on the tiny screen of a cell phone, Allison was stunning in her wedding gown. The dress was white lace, with a daringly low neckline, dropping in a deep vee between the rising swells of her friend's impressive breasts.

"I have some lovely pieces," she admitted reluctantly. "Old jewelry from my grandmother that came to me when she passed away and me and Mom and my sisters divided things up. One...it's very beautiful, made of gold. Linked discs in rows, connected by tiny chains." Her fingers described a triangle in the air. "Thirteen in the first row, twelve in the next, all the way down to one in the last row." Her mouth dried as she thought of the gold lying next to that tawny skin, and the effect it would have with the creamy white lace to set it off.

"Thirteen? That's bad luck, isn't it?"

"Maybe for you ridiculous Christians," she teased. "Thirteen is an important number to Hindus. It's the number of full moons in every year."

"Oh? What about twelve?"

"Twelve signs of the zodiac."

"Eleven?"

"The eleven trunks of mighty Ganesh, the elephant god."

Allison's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "I'm pretty sure you're making that up. Someday I'm going to ask your mom about all the things you say about Hindus, and if you've been lying to me all this time, you can find a new best friend."

"Hah. You've been saying that since we were six years old." She gave the store a disdainful glance. "Ready to get out of here? I'm starving."

They ate lunch at their favorite Mexican place. Shanaya had chicken tacos, while Allison chose fajitas, all the while moaning about how eating such a big meal with the wedding less than a month away was a terrible idea, because all the food was going to make her swell up like a nickel balloon. Shanaya ignored it, the way she always did. Allison had been pronouncing dire warnings about the death of her figure since she was fourteen, but never gained an ounce she didn't want to.

"Hi, Mom," she said, as they walked into the house.

"Hi, honey. Hello, Allison." Maryam Singh was at the kitchen island, cutting vegetables with a wickedly sharp knife. "What are you guys doing home so early? I thought you'd be shopping all day."

"We had a better idea. What's for supper?"

"Rogan josh," she replied, scraping chopped red chili peppers into a shallow bowl with the edge of her knife. "Will you be eating with us, Allison?"

"Rogan josh?" Allison bounced happily on her toes. She loved the lamb dish. "Sure! I'll just call my mom and tell her I'll be eating here, since my other mother loves me so much more than she does."

Which was a far cry from her reaction the first time she had come over for dinner and a sleepover, Shanaya recalled. Completely unprepared for the hot spices which her mother used in cooking, the little girl had broken down into tears at the unfamiliar burning sensation in her mouth. Only an emergency application of chocolate ice cream as a treatment had rescued the night from complete disaster.

Maryam laughed, tilting her head back. "You're terrible. You better treat your maan right, or when it's time for your next turn on the wheel, you'll be sent back as a stinkbug."

Allison giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. "I'll remember."

"We're going upstairs," Shanaya said. "Call us when dinner's ready, okay Mom?"

"Sure, honey." She waved the knife at them with the same casual skill she used when pulling a tooth. "No problem."

"Do you really believe that stuff about coming back as an animal or something?" Allison asked, as they climbed to the second story. "Having life after life until you reach...what do you call it again?"

"Moksa," she replied absently. "I don't know. Do you really believe that the Romans nailed a Jewish carpenter to a tree for telling everyone how we should all be nice to each other for a change, rose from the dead, and was carried off bodily into heaven, and that all we have to do to achieve eternal bliss is believe in him? That eternal reward or damnation has nothing to do with how we behave on earth?"

"Well, it's something to do on Sunday morning," Allison laughed as they emerged from the stairs into the upstairs hallway.

I can think of much more interesting things to do on Sunday morning, Shanaya thought. And every morning after, too. And never mind most of them involved having her head buried between her best friend's thighs.

"Here," she said as they entered her room. She knelt down, opening the bottom drawer of her dresser, pulling out a largish box made of a heavy, dark wood. She set it on the vanity, taking care not to mar the polished surface. She opened a small tray at the bottom. "What do you think of this?"

"Oh, Shannie." Allison picked up the necklace, the sunlight bouncing off the golden discs. "It's gorgeous." She held it up, small movements of her hands making the entire piece ripple like a waterfall at sunset. "Are you sure it's all right if I wear it?"

"Of course." She forced a smile to her face. "Maybe I can find something for all the bridesmaids to wear, so it'll be like we're a secret club."

"That would be awesome." Her friend held it up to her chest. "God, it's so heavy!"

She nodded. "Real gold, you know. I don't know how long it's been in the family, but Mom says she saw her grandmama wearing it when she was a girl.

"Here. Take off your shirt. I want to see how it looks against your skin."

"You just want to see me with my shirt off, you lesbian pervert."

"That, too," she said easily, ignoring the pang her words caused. Coming out as a lesbian had been the hardest thing she had ever done. And it would have been a thousand times worse if she hadn't had the support of her family and her best friend. Mayfield was deeply conservative, with a church on every street-corner, it seemed, and populated by people who thought a deep heart-to-heart about accepting Christ as your personal savior was something you did in the check-out line at the grocery store. And although the high school paid lip service to buzzwords like 'inclusivity' and 'diversity' she wasn't foolish enough to think that her sexual preference wasn't the cherry on top of the weirdness sundae, as far as many of the teachers and students there were concerned.

Which was why Allison had been the first person she had come out to, even before her own family. If her best friend couldn't accept her, then she really didn't have any idea what she was going to do.

But thank all the gods, Allison had. It had been their freshman year of high school. She had sat beside her, in this very room, as a matter of fact, as Shanaya had poured her heart out to her, explaining that she didn't like men, at least sexually, and that she was attracted to women instead.

"Oh," she had said, at the end of her impassioned speech. "I thought you might be."

"You did? Then why didn't you say anything?"

"Well, it wasn't any of my business, was it?" Allison said reasonably. "But it wasn't hard to notice. Every time there were a bunch of us around, talking about what guys at school were cute, or which movie star we thought was the best looking, you wouldn't say a thing. But when a really hot woman was on television, like Valentina Belmonte or Brie Larson or Emma Watson, you perked right up."

"Oh." She fidgeted with her hair, something that drove her mother to distraction. "So...we're still friends, right?"

Allison blinked at her. "Why wouldn't we be?"

"Well." Blood flooded her face as she blushed. "Some people think...you know...gay guys and lesbians are, well, you know...gross."

Allison tossed her head in her familiar gesture, the way she did whenever she thought someone else was being silly. "Well, I'm not about to go down and lick another girl's coochie," she said. "I like guys. And I can't wait until I find I guy I like enough to let him do the nasty with me, no matter what those wrinkled old men at church say." She ran her hands down her sides, where her body was already blossoming into a garden of rich curves. Shanaya looked away, knowing her hopeless desire would be as easy to read on her face as a come-to-Jesus highway billboard. "But I'm not going to tell you what you should do, or that you're going to hell or anything dumb like that. You're my best friend, Shannie. And you always will be. And no one is going to give you any crap, or they'll hear about it from me."

"Thank you," she had whispered, as tears trickled down her face.

With the absentminded grace which she had been born with, Allison stripped off her plain white t-shirt. She put it aside, then paused, her hands behind her back. "The bra, too?"

"Let's try to keep the temptations to a minimum," she joked, though her mouth watered at the prospect of seeing her friend's bare breasts. Two pathetic attempts to make Allison see her as a potential lover instead of a best friend were enough. The blond girl never seemed to make the connection that since Shanaya was a lesbian and obviously thought she was attractive, she might someday actually try to initiate a physical relationship.

I'm lesbian, she's not, and that's that, she sighed regretfully. "Hold your hair up out of the way," she ordered, and as Allison lifted up the mass of golden curls, she draped the necklace around her neck, the ends meeting in a faint click as the clasp took hold. "There," she said, drawing her to her feet so they could look in the vanity's mirror. "What do you think?"

"My God." Allison fingered the necklace. The golden triangle lay heavy against her skin, the final disc a scant inch above the uppermost curves of her breasts. It seemed to point like an arrow down her body, thick with erotic possibility. "I look like a queen in an old movie. Like Cleopatra or someone. Thank you, Shannie!" Her lovely face clouded. "Are you sure your mom won't mind? This necklace...it has to be worth hundreds of dollars. Maybe more."

"Definitely more," she said. "God, the worth of the gold alone would floor you. But I'm sure. Mom loves you like the daughter she never had. Just as long as we get it back after the honeymoon. And it's mine, anyway. I can give it to anyone I want."

Like my heart.

Her friend hugged her, and she savored the small moment of intimacy, over too soon as always. "Awesome! Now let's find something Jenny and Tara and Wendy can use! And you, too!" She carefully took off the necklace and laid it on the vanity.

"I should clean this," Shanaya said, leaning down. She looked closely at it. Dust lay heavy within the grooves of the sunburst pattern stamped on the discs, robbing them of some of their sheen. "Mom has a jewelry-cleaning kit, I think. I'll take care of it over the next couple of days and bring it to the bridal shop when we go in for the last fitting for all of our dresses."

"Cool." Allison poked through the box, and held up a copper bracelet. "Look at this! Don't you think this would go great with Tara's hair? She's always complaining that redheads get screwed when it comes to fashion," she giggled.

Allison did stay for dinner, much to her mother's delight. Her father was busy with a big project at the office, so it was just the three of them at the dinner table. Her mother asked Allison all sorts of questions about the wedding, now less than a month away, which she was more than happy to answer.

"I'm really glad I can count on Shanaya, Mrs. Singh," she said at the end of a long, detailed answer about the flower arrangements. "Her and Mom. Brad isn't interested in that sort of thing at all. He just tells me it's my job to take care of that stuff." A faint frown marred her lovely features. "You'd think that since it's his wedding, too, he might get involved."

"There, there," her mother said, with a knowing smile. "Most men are all the same. When it comes to weddings, they think their only job is to show up on time and say, 'I do.' Is Brad going to have a bachelor party? I know that's a big thing here in America, but somehow Shanaya's father seemed to manage without one."

"Where are they going, Allie?" she asked. "Vegas?"

Her friend shook her head. "Cabo. Apparently Brad and his frat buddies had some pretty good times down there when he was at school over at WKU."

Shanaya kept her mouth shut, though her mother raised her eyebrows. For the life of her, she couldn't explain why Allison had chosen to hitch her wagon to a man who had dropped out of college halfway through his sophomore year, and was now working in his father's restaurant. Brad's official title was manager, but from what Shanaya could see, he spent most of his free time cadging free drinks and hitting on the waitresses, despite the fact that he was engaged.

Or maybe, she thought bleakly, as her best friend chatted amiably with her mother, she did. Personally, she found Brad about as sexually appealing as a billy goat. But she had seen more than one woman sighing over his impressive physique. Brad was nearly six feet tall, with dark blond hair and eyes that could switch between green and blue, depending on the light and his mood. Three years older than Allison and herself, he had been a football star in high school, and had actually made the football team at WKU as a walk-on, but some undisclosed conflict with the coaching staff had made him leave the team before his freshman season was half-done.

The coaches probably wanted him to cut down on the booze and the dope, she thought spitefully, poking at her salad. Just the thought of Brad pawing at Allison's exquisite body made her feel low and mean-spirited. I wonder if he's going to stop chasing everything in a skirt, just because he's married.

Their children will be pretty, though. She sighed. And I will be 'Aunt Shannie,' the old maid who never married, so sad, you would think a girl as smart as her would be able to find a man. "Huh?"

"Don't grunt, Shanaya," her mother smiled. "That's a privilege of adults."

"I'm twenty-one," she said. "And in less than a year I'll be out of college and out of your hair."

"Glory be," her mother said, winking at Allison while her friend giggled and Shanaya bristled. "Relax, Porcupine," she added, patting her hand. "I was asking what you two were doing upstairs all afternoon."