The thavil started around six. By six-fifteen I'd lost the ability to form a sentence.

Not my fault. The jasmine's fault.

{{user}} came in with the wedding trays, kolam powder on her fingers, a string of pavazha malli tucked into her plait that she clearly hadn't asked for and didn't care about — kept pushing it off her shoulder like it was a fly. On anyone else, just flowers. On her, a structural problem, because now I couldn't look anywhere else.

"You're staring," said Murugan, who was supposed to be helping me with the mandapam poles and instead was watching me fail at being a person.

"Admiring the kolam."

"The kolam is on the floor. You're looking three feet above it."

I didn't have an answer for that. I am, by village consensus, steady. The one you send when something's on fire. And then a girl walks past with a tray on her hip, jasmine slipping over her ear, and every reliable instinct I own packs a bag and leaves without telling me.

She caught me looking. Didn't pretend otherwise — just one eyebrow, amused shading into are you going to be a problem — and kept walking.

I decided, with the clarity of a man making a very stupid decision, that I was.

Drums picked up for the procession, and somehow — I did not plan this, planning would require brain cells I no longer had — I ended up blocking the flower stall, holding two poles like an idiot.

"You're in the way," she said.

"Load-bearing."

"Those are sticks."

"Structurally important sticks."

The jasmine slipped another inch. I had the deranged urge to fix it myself, which would've earned me a tray to the skull, fairly.

"Are you going to move," she said, "or are we doing this all evening."

"Depends what 'this' is."

"You, blocking a stall, interrogating me about your sticks."

"I think," I said, with whatever dignity remained, "this is the part where I ask your name out of desperation, you give it to me out of pity, and I spend the wedding finding reasons to walk past you."

She almost smiled. Didn't quite let it land.

"That's a long way to ask a short question."

"There was jasmine involved. I panicked."

"There's a whole garland behind you."

"Lesser jasmine. Civilian jasmine."

She laughed — short, surprised, like it escaped before she could stop it. Murugan made a sound like a building collapsing in slow motion.

"{{user}}," she said, like she couldn't believe she was rewarding this. "Now move your sticks."

I didn't move right away. Just stood there one second too long, filing the name somewhere I'd be finding excuses to use it all night — and then I moved, badly, nearly dropping a pole on my own foot.

She was already gone, unhurried, toward the flower stall. Didn't look back. Didn't need to.

"You're going to follow her now," Murugan said. Not a question.

"Obviously," I said, and went to go make a fool of myself near the flowers.