One Night Hand Stand

Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

Sarah

One month later

“So,” I explain to Luna, who absentmindedly strokes Jerry while she sips her matcha latte, “Stuart lied and told Marsha I was working on a sexual harassment article and gave the financial angle to him. Marsha and Stuart have been fucking for the last six months, so she took his flimsy explanation and ran with it. He had access to my sources because Marsha gave him full access to her office.”

“That’s so awful.”

“I know. He stole my article. And poor Marsha’s wife!”

“No, I mean – who would choose to fuck Stuart, of all people? Poor Marsha.”

“I really, really don’t want to talk about their situationship, thanks. We’re trying to eat.”

“Have you heard back from Rolling Stone ?”

“Still waiting.” For the last months, I’ve done nothing but clean up the mess Prakash Shanti caused in my life. The entire crew from the television series Hoarders should be dispatched to come organize this giant fiasco.

Still wouldn’t be enough.

My stracciatella feels soothing against my tongue as I take a bite, a cool balm to counter the too-hot Americano I just sipped.

“Why not just get an affogato?” Adriana asks again, frowning at me.

“Who made you the coffee police?” Luna snaps back. “Quit judging everything, Addy.”

“I like the two different heat levels,” I explain again. “If I pour the coffee over the ice cream, it’ll just melt it, and then I just have warm, sweet coffee. This way, I get exactly what I want.”

“Give the poor girl a break,” Luna says as Adriana glares at her. “She needs to get what she wants for once.”

“She got Case!” Addy snaps back. “She’s doing fine!”

I can’t help but grin, warmth pouring through me. “I did.” I take another bite of gelato and close my eyes, savoring it. “Marsha got Stuart.”

“Ewwww,” Adriana says as Jerry sniffs at her. “You definitely won.”

“Good to hear,” Case says from behind me, the scent of his cologne filling my nose, mingling with my coffee as he kisses my neck from behind. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I make room next to me for him. In his hand, he holds an affogato. Adriana looks at it and nods with approval.

“See? Follow his lead. He knows how to do it right.”

Case winks at me. “Hear that? I know how to do it right.”

Luna and Adriana groan. The sound makes Jerry sit up and frown at Case.

“How’d the meeting with the lawyer go?” I ask him. Poor Case has spent the last month untangling the twisted web of lies Prakash created. India and the U.S. have an extradition treaty, but Prakash has managed to stay hidden so far.

His money, though – not so much.

“It was fine. Forensic accountants have been able to piece together some of locations of his hidden money. Plenty of it was converted into Bitcoin, but Prakash was so cheap and arrogant he hired bad coders who left some of his wallets vulnerable to hacking. They’ve recovered about 800 Bitcoin so far.”

“That’s it ?” Luna asks.

“At around sixty thousand dollars a bitcoin, that’s a lot,” Case explains as he dips his spoon into his mug of ice cream and espresso.

“And the IRS case?” Adriana asks as she eats the last bit of her lemon bar. “Nothing new?”

“Whistleblower cases like this can take years. Five, ten years. I’m not holding my breath,” Case replies.

“At least you still have your own studios,” I say before taking another bite of my gelato.

“I do. And all the really good employees from Chakroga123 HQ. But he left over a hundred people with no jobs. All the profit sharing he claimed was a benefit was a sham,” Case says, giving my leg a squeeze. “At least the death threats are over.”

“That was horrible,” I mutter as Luna shakes her head.

“Who knew TikTokers would be so brutal!”

“A bunch of them actually believed Prakash.” He laughs a bit, but it’s a sick sound. “I was more worried about the money launderers. Never occurred to me that a bunch of nasty social media influencers would be more violent.”

“Hey!” Luna covers Jerry’s ears. “We’re not all like that.”

“As of now,” Case says, taking a sip of his concoction, “I’m cleared by law enforcement. It’ll take months if not more than a year for the accountants to sort through Prakash’s books. The feds are searching for all his stolen money. And people with more security clearances than I can ever hope for are trying to find him worldwide. Nothing he did has been pinned on me. I’m just going to be squeaky clean for the rest of my life and never take a single questionable business expense deduction.”

“Smart,” I say as I scrape the tiny bowl for my last spoonful of sweet, cool heaven.

“You know,” Luna says in a voice that makes Adriana turn to her sharply, “I have a thought.”

“Oh, no,” her twin mutters.

“Chakroga123 is a mess, right?” she asks Case, who nods, filling his mouth with ice cream, then taking a sip of his espresso.

“And the Prakash-owned studios are shut down.”

“Some of them, yes,” he confirms. “A few are run by managers who are determined to keep the lights on while all the criminal and financial investigations go on.”

“That means Prakash gets a revenue stream?” I’m alarmed by the idea, but Luna’s question has sparked a whole new area of dysfunction I had never considered.

Case pats my thigh again. “I guess so. But any money will be confiscated. He defrauded the IRS of more than seventy million. He’s in deep.” Case looks at Luna. “Why are you asking all this?”

“Have you ever thought of buying Prakash out?”

Case starts choking.

“Me?” he asks, gasping. “Buy out HQ?”

“Yeah.” She shrugs. “Bet you can get it for cheap right now.”

Adriana tilts her head and watches Luna like she’s just turned into a koala bear. Case frowns at her, starts to say something, then pauses, mouth half closed, half open.

Jerry looks at the crumbs on Adriana’s plate like he’s plotting a bank heist.

“Wouldn’t that mean assuming all the liability for what Prakash did?” I muse aloud.

“Not if you structure everything legally the right way,” Case says slowly, giving Luna a half smile. “You might be onto something.”

“Buy his studios. Rebrand with a different name. He might have been an outrageously arrogant motherfucker, but he did build a decent following, with a lot of paying customers.”

“I’d have to talk to my lawyers. Run some numbers.”

“Make a rock-bottom offer. You never know.”

You never know.

I sit back and sip my Americano. “You already have Barbi and Dori working for you. Then you’d acquire the whole team. Imagine giving them all a better workplace.”

“Employment rolls are about thirty percent of what they were. C123 laid a ton of people off,” Case points out.

My phone dings with an email notification. I check. No, it’s not Rolling Stone .

It’s a discount code for a sale at Kohl’s.

I sigh.

Case pats my leg. He knows how hard it is to wait for an answer. One part of the mess that never really got resolved was, well… me.

My career.

Stuart got my byline. Marsha magically doesn’t take my calls anymore. I’ve picked up a twenty hour a week corporate communications gig to pay the bills, and I wrote a 7,000 word piece on the sexual harassment story with Prakash.

Everything I fought for, all my hard work, never paid off. Same for Case, too.

But we found each other.

And that’s worth even more.

“What plans do you two have for the weekend?” Adriana asks, letting out a sound of pleasure. “It’s Friday. Four o’clock. My workweek ended half an hour ago and I have the next two days to myself.”

“Haymarket,” I say, patting the reusable bags next to me.

“Oh!” Adriana looks at Luna. “Wanna go?”

“Jerry hates crowds,” Luna demurs.

“Jerry loves crowds! You just hate Haymarket.” The Boston ritual is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been there. Haymarket is like a farmer’s market, but for discounted produce. Everything’s dirt cheap, and the prices drop as the day goes on. Held on Fridays and Saturdays, it’s more expensive today, but you get the better produce on Fridays.

I’m cooking dinner for Case tonight at my place.

Everyone finishes up and we begin walking toward the street vendors a few blocks away, the afternoon commuting crowd mingling with the early nightlife crowd. Luna carries Jerry in her arms like a big rainbow loaf of bread.

"I can't let him walk on a leash. Too many fans," she explains. Jerry looks sufficiently haughty.

As we get closer to Haymarket, the sounds of vendors hawking their wares, pallet jacks clanging as more produce is moved, and people talking joins with the backdrop of I-93 traffic and cars pulling in and out of garages.

When we turn the corner we see all the pop-up tents, most with blue and white canopies, and I reach into my pocket for my ones and fives. If my mother taught me nothing else, it’s this:

Never pass up a chance for a bargain.

“Morels!” Case says, pointing to a table. He wanders off, while I scan the price signs, an assortment of handwritten magic marker amounts, like 5 for $2 yellow peppers , or $1 per bag of red onions . Haymarket is a foodie’s dream.

Especially a broke foodie, and right now, I’m squeezing my pennies.

“Jerry!” A young girl shrieks his name and suddenly, Luna – who is posing in front of a stack of organic blueberry boxes – is surrounded by followers. Adriana sighs and touches my shoulder, leaning in.

“Here,” she says, knowing the drill. She hands me a five. “I want romaine, red peppers, and cherry tomatoes. Organic if you can, but it’s okay if not.”

“Got it.”

She walks off to manage the Jerry worshippers while Case returns with a white plastic bag with a small container of mushrooms in it, offering his hand, my fingers threading in his. It feels good, right and comfortable. I’m walking the city streets shopping for food with my boyfriend.

So normal.

We move on to my favorite vendor, where a woman in hijab smiles at me. “Hello,” she says, pointing. “We have organic sweet potatoes again.” It’s nice to be remembered, and as we share a smile, I realize I’ve done it.

Boston is home.

At some point, I transitioned from Sarah the Observer to Sarah the Participant. Maybe it was that third glass of wine six weeks ago. Maybe it was accepting the failure at The Beaconite . Maybe it’s just experience. Having everything I worked so hard to accomplish ripped out from under me and nearly losing the best person in the world can change a person.

Can make you make sure the most important thing really is the most important thing.

“Hey,” Mr. Most Important says to me. “How about blackberries and cream for dessert?” Case plucks three small containers from a stack and hands the vendor two dollars, shoving them in the bag he already has.

“No wine and donuts?” I whisper in his ear, then lick his lobe. He shudders, hand going to my ass.

“You can have that any time.”

“Yum. We need cream.”

He halts. “Is that an innuendo?”

“Hah! I meant for the blackberries. Let’s go back to the table with all the yellow cauliflower. I think I saw some dairy there.” When he smiles at me, our gaze locks, a few beats going by as someone jostles my right arm, and a child sprints past Case, knocking him slightly toward me.

We move out of the way and he squeezes my hand.

Sadly, we never find dairy, but within fifteen minutes we have sweet onions, fresh dill, purple potatoes, the items Adriana asked for, and Case buys two of those yellow cauliflower heads.

“I can’t believe how cheap it is here,” he marvels. “I’ve lived in Boston for years and never bothered to come here.”

“We feast for the week on ten dollars.”

“Far cry from our date at MoMoTaste,” he says, the tug in his voice making me wonder whether to reassure him or keep my mouth shut. We’re in that liminal space in our relationship where everything’s new, yet the way we started together was so raw, so vulnerable, so real. In some ways, we’re doing this backward, conventional moments like food shopping or talking about money coming after the big emotional reveals.

Nothing about our couplehood is linear.

“I like this just as much,” I declare, and it’s the truth. We see Jerry on a table, sniffing a thick bunch of basil, people taking pictures. Adriana stands on the side and spots us, waving us over.

I hand off her bag of produce and she holds it, crossing her arms.

“I can’t go anywhere with her,” she mutters. “Every moment is for public consumption.”

“That sucks,” Case declares.

“Pays her bills,” I point out, which makes Adriana’s tight expression soften slightly.

“I’m jealous of my own brother,” she says, which makes Case laugh. I’ve heard the joke before, so it’s old.

“Brother from another litter,” I note, and soon we’re laughing, Case noticing lemons a few feet away, reaching into his pocket for a single.

“Hey! Sarah!” I turn toward the sound of the voice and see Dori through the crowd, waving madly. Case is busy exchanging tender for citrus, so when she reaches us, he’s occupied. She offers me a tight hug and we smile at each other as she spots Case. Adriana drifts over to Luna and Jerry.

“I get Case, too? How’s my boss doing?” A stricken look changes her features. “Uh, for the record, I know it’s 4:30 on a Friday and the office closes at five, but – ”

I put my hand on her arm and shake my head. “He doesn’t care. Don’t worry.” When I touch her arm, I realize she’s loaded up, wearing a backpack and carrying two overstuffed reuseable bags.

“Thanks. I’m still so used to The Prick, you know? I forget we’re not under his thumb anymore.”

“I get it.” I pat her backpack. “You cooking for an army?”

“Almost. I come here every week and shop for my family. Mom, Dad, my son, my little brother, and a bunch of his friends. I’ve only spent $48 so far. This place is the best!”

Case walks back to us, surprise lighting up his eyes. He and Dori hug. She smiles at us both.

“You two. Together.”

“We are.” Case holds my hand again.

“Thank you.”

He tries to stop her with an outstretched palm, but she continues.

“No, really. I was just worried you’d freak out because I left work early to shop, but Sarah told me you wouldn’t care.”

“I don’t.”

“And that’s why I’m saying thank you. Thank you for being so human. For treating us like real people with real lives. I didn’t realize until Prakash left how miserable I’d been. How sad and scary work was. Working for you is a breath of fresh air.”

“I’m going to blush.”

“You deserve to blush!”

Her phone rings and she looks at the screen. “Oh! Mama’s texting me a longer list. Sorry. This is going to take a while. Cheese shop next!” With a quick wave Dori is off, onto her next purchase.

Case kisses the top of my head as Luna, holding Jerry, joins us, Adriana following.

It’s all so casual. So comfortable. So loving.

So simple.

So Slot B approved.