Chapter 5
In Which Bhindi Masala Is Consumed
Anthony Bridgerton was in her home.
He was in her room (not like that!) within the three-bedroom apartment she shared with her sister and mother.
And how did this fortuitous turn of events occur?
Well, it started before lunch.
"Oi Bridgerton!" Kate had called, slamming her locker shut and purposefully making her way towards him. "We need to meet for the project."
"I was just about to tell you that," Anthony said rather unconvincingly as they turned the corner. He shouldered the cafeteria door open and held it for her.
She levelled an unimpressed look at him. "Really."
"No seriously," Anthony insisted as they made their way to the lunch table she and Edwina now regularly joined him at. "Do you want to come over today after school?"
"To your house?" Kate asked skeptically.
"Yeah." Anthony nodded just as Daphne broke in and said, "You can't!"
"Why not?" Anthony shot back at her.
"Our library's booked," she elaborated, "I'm holding my Amnesty International meeting there."
Right, Kate remembered, the Bridgertons, unlike the rest of them plebs, had a library. In their house.
"Can't you write letters with your fan club somewhere else?" Anthony asked.
Daphne scowled. "First of all, it's writing letters to political prisoners, and second of all, nope."
"What about downstairs?"
"Hyacinth is having friends over," Daphne said quickly. "You don't want to get in the middle of that."
"No… I really don't," Anthony mused.
"Is your bedroom occupied or something?" Kate asked Anthony dryly, and then proceeded to immediately flush at the implications of her (innocent!) question.
To her surprise however, Anthony didn't quite pick up on that. "Um, that isn't… allowed," he instead hedged.
"Mom has a rule," Daphne explained to Kate. "No being alone in your bedroom with a person of the gender to which you are attracted to."
"It's Benedict's fault," Simon said, looking as if he wished dearly that said rule didn't exist.
"He got caught with Henry in a… compromising position," Anthony muttered to Kate.
"God Anthony," Daphne huffed, clearly still ticked off by his slander of her Very Important club, "how do you make even getting a blowjob sound nerdy?"
At this, Anthony covered his ears and squawked, "I do not need to hear my sister say that!" while Kate laughed hysterically.
"You could always come over to mine," Kate suggested afterwards. "It's usually pretty quiet."
"That would be great." Anthony shot her a grateful smile.
And that is how Anthony Bridgerton came to be in her bedroom, peering curiously at her collection of political bobbleheads and flicking Angela Merkel in the head.
That was also the moment Newton chose to enter.
"Oh my God, Sharma," Anthony said in delighted tones. "Is this your dog?"
"This is Newton," Kate confirmed, beaming as Newton waddled into her arms. "Who's the goodest boy?" Kate cooed at her dog. "You are, yes you are!" Newton yipped in agreement.
Anthony clearly had a different idea.
"He's even uglier than I imagined!" he declared, enraptured.
Kate was not amused.
Okay, so maybe Newton was a little chubby, but she was not going to allow Anthony Bridgerton to fat-shame her beloved corgi.
"Don't judge him!" she defended, stroking Newton's soft fur. Newton, as if he could sense the judgement in the room, leapt out of her arms and waddled out the door. "Aaand now you made him leave," she pouted.
Anthony shrugged, unrepentant. "No bedroom policy for you?" he instead asked idly, watching Kate shut her door behind Newton.
"No, my mom does things the traditional Indian way: She puts the fear of God in us-" Kate jerked her thumb towards the Ganesha figurine on her bureau, "-and uses godawful phrases like hanky-panky to describe what we should not be doing."
Anthony looked impressed. "I feel uncomfortable already."
"That's the point," Kate agreed. "Alright, let's get started."
To both their credit, somewhere between the bickering, they actually managed to get a decent amount of work done.
There was a shouting match over exactly how sexual a being Jane was ("she's literally a repressed Victorian schoolmarm!" "Sure, but what about those flames?" "Ugh that's more of a metaphor for Bertha than Jane!"), an entire tangent on the usability of Wide Sargasso Sea ("But then we'd have to cite that too!" "Jesus, how lazy are you?"), and a surprisingly rapid agreement when assessing Rochester ("The Worst," "Yup").
They were making good progress when they heard the sound of the front door opening.
"Edwina?" Anthony asked, looking up from their outline.
Kate rolled her eyes. "She left for Milan right after school." She wrinkled her nose as she rethought that statement. "Wow, that might be the most elitist thing I've ever said."
"Grosvenor must finally be rubbing off on you," Anthony grinned, as if he could conceive of no greater delight than having turned Kate towards the dark side. And by dark she meant rich.
"That will only happen when hell freezes over-" Kate bickered back, "-or when you stop wearing boat shoes like an 80's teen movie villain."
"Hey!" Anthony said, affronted. "What's wrong with-"
"-Am I interrupting something here?" A slender, middle-aged woman who looked remarkably like Edwina was leaning against the open door, heels in one hand, a briefcase in another, and a smirk playing on her lips. Her words were delivered in a distinctly London accent that never failed to confound people wherever she went.
"Hi Amma," Kate greeted her stepmother. "And no, you are not."
Mrs. Sharma merely raised a brow and looked pointedly towards Anthony.
"Oh right, this is Anthony," Kate said hastily, watching as a glimmer of recognition sparked in her mother's eyes. Kate felt further pressed to explain, "We're working together on a project."
Anthony immediately shot to his feet and strode towards Kate's mom. "It's very nice to meet you Mrs. Sharma," he said formally, even extending a hand which Mrs. Sharma shook bemusedly.
"You as well." She then peered at him with concern. "How long have you two been working?"
Anthony looked dubiously at Kate. "A… few hours?"
This was enough to prompt Mrs. Sharma to go into full Indian aunty-mode. "Then I'll make you dinner- you'll stay?" she said to Anthony, more commanding than asking.
Anthony looked a little taken aback. "Uh yeah, of course."
"Excellent," Mrs. Sharma beamed. "You like bhindi?"
"It's okra," Kate supplied, adding challengingly, "with spices."
"I would love some, Mrs. Sharma," Anthony said quickly.
Within thirty minutes, Mrs. Sharma was frying the okra while Kate was flipping a growing stack of chapatis. Anthony was watching while sipping on a steel tumbler full of frothy filter coffee that Mrs. Sharma had supplied all of them with.
Once Mrs. Sharma was satisfied with how the bhindi was cooking, she stepped away briefly and told Kate to watch over the flames.
"I never knew you were so domestic, Sharma," Anthony drawled, leaning over the counter.
"To someone who probably doesn't know how to boil water? Sure," Kate shot back.
"Hey, I think it's cute," Anthony said, seemingly unthinking. Kate realized what he'd said a little too late, and by the time she looked up at him with a questioning look, he'd already busied himself with his coffee.
To Kate's surprise (and less so Mrs. Sharma- she'd apparently had faith in him all along), once the food was served, Anthony dug into it with gusto.
"This is amazing," Anthony told Mrs. Sharma just as he spooned some bhindi into his mouth and began coughing.
"Bet you don't get food like this at home," Kate said wryly. In her experience, when people wanted to get a little exotic, they went for the chicken tikka from Trader Joe's.
"Nowhere near as good. My mom is a terrible cook," Anthony informed her between large mouthfuls of homemade yogurt, clearly unwilling to admit that the bhindi masala was spicy. "We had to hire a chef for our own safety."
Kate smirked and as she deftly tore off a piece of chapati one-handed (as was right and proper). "Rich people problems, much?"
"More like a biohazard waiting to happen," he snarked back, not quite realizing he was slandering his own mother in the process.
Mrs. Sharma chose that moment to sail by with a stack of what looked to be legal briefs. She eyed the table, apparently unsatisfied with the progress they were making.
"Take more," she urged Anthony.
"Uh, Mrs. Sharma, I don't think I have the capacity to eat anymore," Anthony said. "You should see my one of my brothers, Colin. He'd crush everything on this table and ask for seconds. And probably fourths."
"How many siblings do you have?" Mrs. Sharma asked.
Kate said, deadpan, "He has seven of them, Amma."
But Mrs. Sharma didn't bat an eye at this astronomical sum. Instead, she said, "Your parents must have loved children very much."
When Anthony looked up at Mrs. Sharma, something softened within his gaze, as though he was reliving something particularly bittersweet. "Yeah," he rasped and then hastily cleared his throat. "Yeah, they really did."
Kate winced. His parents were probably a sensitive topic, with his dead dad and whatnot. She quickly changed the subject, and for the second time that day, Anthony smiled at her gratefully (not that Kate noticed).