Flirting With Disaster

Chapter 1 Present Day

1

Present Day

I step out of Houston’s Hobby Airport and walk straight into hell.

Literally. Figuratively. Emotionally. I’m in hell in all ways.

Part of me is tempted to turn right back around. Southwest has a steady handful of flights between here and D.C. I’ll just march to the counter, buy a new flight, and be on my way. No one will know about this out-of-character burst of irrationality. No one will know I was ever here, in my hometown, the one place I promised I would never return to. I’ll leave the past where it belongs and just…move forward.

Except, I can’t. That’s why I’m here.

I pull out my phone and check the Uber app. The ride I called the second the wheels made contact with the runway is still a good twelve minutes away. Of course. The universe knows how much I don’t want to be here, how quickly I want to get this all over with. So, it’s doing the exact opposite. Slowing things down. With my luck, we’ll end up hitting traffic on the way there, dragging things out even more.

I check my work email, firing off a few quick responses as I walk to the designated pickup spot.

Call the Speaker’s office and ask for Sonia. If she can convince him to adjust the language on paragraph 3A back, he may just find that he has a majority for that highway bill he’s been dying to pass .

Yes to the meeting with the Section 8 housing nonprofit, and a hard no to the natural gas group. (Putting aside the fact that our climate advocacy clients might actually kill us, we’re just not that kind of firm.)

Just got confirmation that they’re pulling walking human nightmare Judge Bates off the short list for that opening on the 5th Circuit (thank god). Good work, everyone.

I’m moving to slip my phone back into my purse when something sharp collides with the middle of my back. I stumble, my phone falling out of my hand. I wince at the thwack it makes as it hits the concrete.

“Sorry,” a man’s voice calls. “Sorry about that.” I turn to face the perpetrator, but I only catch a glimpse of a dark-haired man, his hand holding tight to a young girl’s. They’re navigating through the crowd, walking quickly toward the entrance of the airport, and it’s only then that I notice the number of people that are moving alongside them.

Houston’s crowded. It’s a big city. It’s not unusual for the airport to be busy, but still, something in the air feels off. It kind of reminds me of my usual morning commute. People move at a quick clip, a slightly frenzied, caffeine-induced adrenaline spurring their steps. But it’s not the kind of crowd I expected to find here, on a Saturday morning. The energy is strange. Almost…frenetic.

I squat to pick up my phone, dusting it off and grimacing when I flip it over and see the large crack now running across the screen. Great . The universe strikes again. Or maybe I really am in hell. The blistering heat from the sun and the slight scent of sulfur invading my nose certainly make it seem that way.

I swipe toward the rideshare app, trying to see how much longer I’ll have to wait for my car. The image is all blurry, the screen distorted because of the fall. The phone buzzes in my palm, some kind of notification banner flashing across the top. I squint, but the text is unreadable. I think it’s an emoji or icon. Something gray and round. Maybe a cloud? I pull it closer to my face, trying to make it out, but before I can the phone vibrates again, a little green symbol popping up. An incoming call. I answer, even though I can’t quite read who it’s from.

“Hello?”

“Meena, why the hell is your location set to Houston?”

“Shake, what—” I break off, completely shocked. I haven’t heard from my ex since he dumped me about three weeks ago. I’d concocted this whole plan right after our breakup, intending to call him once I finished all of this and got back to D.C. I hadn’t expected him to find out about it already.

“What are you doing tracking my location?” I ask.

“You never took me off Find My Friends,” he says. “I called your office, and they said you were out of town, and—”

A white Toyota Camry pulls up, and though I can’t confirm it in the app, I’m almost certain it’s for me.

“Hey, hang on,” I say. “I think my car’s here.”

“Wait, Meena, I’m saying I don’t know if you should—”

The driver steps out of the car, and I pull the phone away from my ear, though Shake’s voice continues faintly.

“Meena?” the driver asks, and I nod, meeting him near the trunk and handing him my carry-on bag.

I climb into the backseat and place my purse near my feet before I return to the call. Shake’s still talking, and though I’ve missed the last few seconds, I can guess what he’s said.

“Look, maybe I should have told you about this before I came down here,” I interrupt, clicking my seat belt over my chest. “But with everything you said last time…I thought I’d just fly here and finish things and then we could figure out if there’s anything, well, if there’s anything left for us to figure out.”

Shake’s silent for a moment. “So…you’re actually doing it? I mean, you’ve made up your mind?”

I pause. Abhishek “Shake” Das and I have been friends for years, ever since we were introduced and I gave him a hard time over his chosen nickname. We both worked on the Hill and ran in the same circles, and fell into an easy, banter-filled friendship, but there was never anything romantic back then. When we first met, Shake had a girlfriend he was beyond devoted to, but even if he had been single, I hadn’t really been in the right headspace to date at that time.

But after Shake’s relationship went up in flames—in the most public, embarrassing way imaginable—I was there for him. I’d sympathized, having known exactly how that kind of heartbreak feels, and the more I’d gotten to know him, the more I’d realized how similar the two of us are. We share the same goals, the same dreams, the same drive. We just get each other on a fundamental level. And over the years that friendship naturally transitioned into something else.

I’d dated other men, but Shake was the only one who understood both my ambition and my slow, cautious nature. He understood that when your heart’s been broken, it doesn’t heal back quite the same. He had always been satisfied by the feelings we had for each other, by the way our relationship was. Calm and quiet. Soft and comfortable. He understood that we didn’t have to feel capital L L ove for each other. He agreed that l oving each other was enough.

When he broke up with me, my first thought was how hard it would be to find someone else who would understand me that same way, who would be satisfied with only that much. On top of that, my family loves him. In fact, my parents think he’s perfect. They couldn’t stop talking about him after they met him, saying he was exactly the kind of man they’d always pictured for their daughters. They’d be devastated if they found out we broke up.

“Yeah,” I tell Shake. “I’m sure. Look, I’m flying back tonight, so maybe we can talk about all of it then.”

I had booked the latest flight available for tonight out of Houston. Maybe it was optimistic of me, thinking this would take less than a day to sort out, but I’m a good negotiator. It’s a key part of my job. And there’s no reason we can’t both be professional about this. At the end of the day, this is a deal like any other. There’s something I want. And though I don’t know what it is, there must be something he wants too. And once I figure that out, I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.

I almost smile at the thought. He’s never seen this side of me before. Never seen me go all Godfather on somebody. He doesn’t know what I’m capable of. But after today, he will.

“You’re…you’re flying back tonight?”

I frown. “Yeah,” I say. “That was the plan at least, and so far nothing has changed.”

“Really?” Shake’s voice sounds more normal now. There’s a hint of relief in it that wasn’t there before. “That’s great. So, everything’s okay, then? That’s why I was calling, because it sounded like things were going to be bad. Like, really bad. I wasn’t sure…But if you’re still going to fly back tonight, maybe it’s not…maybe it’s not what I was thinking.”

My frown deepens. Has my lawyer been talking to Shake? Sharing information with him? I mean, they are friends. Shake is the one who referred me to him. But if there is news, neither of them has shared it with me. My lawyer only told me that there’d been no response. He hadn’t given any indication that things would be particularly bad once I got here. Unless…Is Shake jealous?

It seems absurd. After all, he’s the one who broke up with me. I’d always been honest with him about my situation. He’d been fine with it, until we started talking about plans for the future. I’d told him I was going to make things official, that I was sending the papers, and that had appeased him for a while. He started organizing some meetings with political advisory groups for us. Our first was scheduled to take place in just a few days, to talk about the viability of the two of us running for office. We’d planned on framing it as a joint run, hoping to capitalize on the novelty of a couple running together for two open seats.

And then he’d found out that the papers weren’t signed.

“How long have you been sitting on this? It’s been months, hasn’t it?” he’d said, his eyes wild. “Have you…I mean, we’re supposed to meet with the team in three weeks. We’re supposed to talk with them about running— God, Meena we’ve talked about getting engaged .”

I’d tried to tell him I’d been working on it, but in truth, I hadn’t followed up as much as I should have. I’d cared about it. I’d wanted it over just as much as he did. I’d just kind of let it fall by the wayside.

“I’ll do it,” I’d told him. “Before the meeting, I’ll get it done.”

He’d just shaken his head, his hand trembling as he ran it over his mouth. “I can’t do this. You need to…you need to fix this. You need to do whatever it takes to sort your shit out, because otherwise…” He’d let out a rough breath. “I can’t be with you like this, waiting for you to make up your mind. I can’t jeopardize everything I’ve been working toward. I mean, this run, this meeting, we’ve talked about doing all of it together, and if we can’t do that, I need to figure out something else. I can’t just—” He’d stopped, looking at me as if I was a stranger. “We’re done. Until you get this figured out, we’re done.”

And I’d just watched, my mouth parted in shock, as he’d walked out the door.

This trip was supposed to be my way of showing I’d taken everything he’d said seriously. But it’s also for me. This is a chapter I have to close before I can start a new one. And I’m ready for that now. I’m ready to move on.

“So, we’ll talk later tonight?” I ask him again.

He clears his throat. “Yeah. Okay. And just…be safe. If things look like they might get worse, just get out of there. Maybe look at booking an earlier flight?”

“Sure,” I reply, even though I’m not quite sure what he’s talking about. Does he actually think I’m going to be in danger here? With him ? I almost scoff at the idea, but then the car turns down a familiar street, and the sound dies in my throat.

The trees are taller. I don’t know why that’s the first thing I notice, but it is. When we first moved into this neighborhood, everything was new. The sidewalk was freshly paved. Little saplings lined the block, each one at a perfect distance from its neighbors. And they all had a nylon band circling the trunk, connecting each one to a stake in the ground. The stakes must have been there to give the trees support or something. To help them grow.

Whatever it was, it clearly worked, because none of the trees have them anymore. They all stand alone. Strong. With nothing tying them down.

“Shake, I have to go.” He responds with a goodbye, but I barely hear him. My mind’s too busy playing a weird game of past versus present.

Mrs. Patterson used to live in that house. That small, one-story home with the wraparound porch. I used to see her gardening, her gloved hands pulling up weeds, her large hat blocking out the sun. She waved at me every time I walked down this way, which was rare. I was in a strange sort of self-imposed exile in those days. I locked myself in my room with my bar prep materials, studying at all hours of the day, fueled by dread and panic that I might fail the bar exam. Again.

Goosebumps prickle up my arms, and I rub them away. She probably doesn’t live there anymore. The bushes in the yard are overgrown. Scraggly. She wouldn’t have ever let them get that way.

The car turns left, drawing us farther into the maze of this suburban subdivision. Drawing us closer to the cul-de-sac where I once lived.

I was surprised when I found out he still lives there. Not just in the same neighborhood, but in the same house we’d rented. From the property records I found he bought it a few years ago, but I can’t understand why. Back then he’d always called it a “starter home.” I’d hated that. The way he made it sound temporary from the very beginning. As if it was just a stepping-stone to something bigger and better. I’d liked our home as it was. At one point, I thought it was perfect.

Warm red brick. A fireplace with a mantel. A backyard with a tall old tree, Spanish moss dripping from its branches.

A tiny kitchen with barely any counter space. A living room with a secondhand couch, and two bedrooms on the second floor. In the guest bedroom, where I spent a great deal of time, there was a large window facing out onto the street. I angled my desk to face it so I could glimpse the outside even if I couldn’t be a part of it.

The house was small, but back then it was my whole world. Back then, it was ours.

I blink as that house comes into view now. It takes me a second to recognize it. It’s the same shape and size, with the same driveway to the right leading to the garage.

But it’s just…wrong. It’s so wrong.

The car pulls to a stop, and I leap out, barely remembering that I need to grab my bag from the trunk before I storm to the front door.

I rap my knuckles against the hard surface, but no one comes to greet me. Instead, I’m met with the loud creak and screech of the garage door opening around the corner. I rush in that direction, every cell within me thrumming with energy, with the need to confront him.

But that fire slowly dies as I draw closer. He’s facing away from me. His form is slightly shadowed in the dim light of the garage, but I can tell he’s bending over. He lets out a grunt as he grabs hold of something. A large pallet or crate of some kind.

I’m about to announce myself, but then the back of his shirt rises, exposing a strip of warm, tan skin. My mouth goes dry. Did he always have a lower back like that? With…with…ridges? Can human beings even form muscles like that there? How can that be possible?

“You painted the house?” I ask. The words rush out, as if my mind’s desperate for anything that will change the direction it was heading in just a second ago. “You painted all that red brick white? Why would you do that?”

He turns around immediately, whirling so fast that the pallet of bottled water wobbles in his arms. It tips to the side, almost falling, before he adjusts and catches it.

“Meena?” His voice is hoarse. His eyes are wide with shock. But I don’t bask in his surprise the way I thought I would. I don’t get to savor it, relish the moment. Because whatever shock he’s experiencing, my body seems to be echoing it. My heart is thumping, beating wildly. The sound of blood whooshes fast in my ears.

I didn’t properly prepare for this. Sure, I did my research and fine-tuned my negotiation strategy. But I didn’t prepare for the full force of him. I didn’t let myself imagine what it would be like to see him face-to-face.

It’s been years. And logically, I knew that, but I didn’t think about the toll those years would have had on him. In my mind he was preserved in amber. A relic. Static. Unchanging. But he’s aged.

He’s broader now. Still just as tall, but his shoulders seem to have expanded, his chest widened somehow. And his arms are slightly thicker too. They strain under the weight of the water he’s carrying, making his veins stand out in sharp relief. He looks good. The same eyes, the same nose, but his hair’s different. He’d always done that longer on the top, shorter on the sides thing when he was younger, but now it’s long all around. Dark, tousled waves that end at the tops of his ears.

I want to run my hands through it. I want to see if it’s just as soft as I remember. I want to feel it against my skin.

He blinks, his eyes slightly glazed, and I realize he’s been watching me back this whole time, his gaze traveling over me from head to toe.

I flush, thinking about how much I’ve changed over the years too.

I lift a hand to my hair before I realize it, and try to play it off by tucking a piece behind my ear. Does he notice the occasional strand of silver sparkling here and there? The sharp cheekbones that were once hidden beneath the fuller, rounder cheeks of my youth? Time has changed me, though it shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t care what he thinks. But it’s been six years. I’m not the girl he remembers. And for some reason, I care.

“Meena?” he asks again. His brows crease, new lines I’ve never seen before forming on his forehead. “What…what are you doing here?”

When I thought of this moment, I imagined doing something dramatic. Like pulling out the papers and waving them in the air. Telling him he needed to sign on the bottom line or he’d be sorry.

But all of that sounds silly now.

His gaze flickers, flitting down toward my left hand. I’m tempted to curl my fingers into a fist, but I leave them loose, relaxed at my side. As if I don’t know what he’s doing. What he’s checking for.

Shake and I are nothing if not practical. We may not have been ready for that step, but we’d already talked about rings. We’d set up email alerts for sales at a few jewelry stores, but then we’d broken up, so there’s no engagement ring for Nikhil to stare at. Nothing for him to ask questions about. Nothing for me to explain.

“Nikhil,” I say, and his eyes shoot back to mine. “It’s been weeks and you haven’t responded to anything. None of my emails. None of my calls.”

He scoffs. “Right. Your emails. Your calls.” His words are harsh. Mocking.

“My lawyer’s emails,” I amend. He rolls his eyes, and I immediately regret my attempt at a conciliatory tone. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” he shoots back. “I never do.”

Oh. So, it’s going to be like this. I square my shoulders. “You need to sign them, Nikhil. We need to just get this over with.”

He shifts his weight to one side, leaning his body against the garage wall.

“What’s the rush?” he asks.

I resist the urge to cringe. I’m usually smoother than this. Subtler. I know how to play it cool. To pretend like I don’t need anything. All my negotiating tactics, all my skills seem to have vanished. I’ve let him glimpse the one card I was supposed to hold on to.

It’s like being back around Nikhil has reduced me to the age ofthe person I was back then. Emotional and volatile and so…young.

I change the topic. “Why did you paint over the brick?”

He watches me, studying my face for longer than feels comfortable, then shakes his head. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” I reply, but we both know I’m lying.

“Look, this will only take a few minutes,” I say. “You sign it and I promise you’ll never have to see me again. I’ll head right out of here, go straight back to the airport, and—”

A flash of surprise crosses his face, but it quickly disappears as his mouth sets into a stern, thin line. “You won’t,” he says. He pushes off the wall, and heads toward the door. “Grab a crate, will you?” he calls over his shoulder.

I stare at his retreating form for a second, then scramble after him. “What do you mean I won’t?”

He balances the bottled water on his hip, freeing his hand to turn the door handle. When he steps inside, he glances back at me and groans. “You seriously didn’t grab anything? We’re going to need to bring all of it in.”

If this is a delay tactic, it’s the strangest one I’ve experienced yet.

“What are you talking about?” I ask as I follow, jumping when the heavy door swings shut behind me. He still hasn’t changed that, then. He always said he would, but it’s the same old door that we used to have. Always slamming shut when I least expect it.

He finally puts the water down, dropping the pallet onto a stack of similar crates assembled on the floor. “Don’t you read the news?”

My jaw almost drops. Is he kidding me? The man who rarely picked up a newspaper, who barely paid attention when I watched the news or put on NPR is asking me if I ever read the news.

“You know I do.”

He lifts a shoulder. “Well, things change. People change. It’s not like you and I know each other anymore.”

Ouch . That hurts. It shouldn’t because he’s only stating the truth, but it stings. Like a manicurist rubbing acetone over a paper cut. “Well, I haven’t changed,” I say, before I quickly correct myself. “Changed in that way, I mean. Of course I read the news.”

A muscle twitches in his jaw. “So, you came here. To my house. Fully knowing what was about to happen.”

“Knowing what was about to happen?”

His brows snap together. “There’s a hurricane in the Gulf, Meena.”

“It’s hurricane season,” I reply. “There’s always a storm in the Gulf.” But even as I say the words, I know they’re coming from a place of denial. No. No, no, no, no, no.

I pull out my phone, and the cracked, distorted screen is filled from top to bottom with blurry images. Messages I can’t read. Notifications I can’t make sense of. But I don’t have to be able to read them to know what they all say.

I rack my brain, trying to recall whether I read or saw anything about this. Nothing popped up when I booked my flight here. No warning indicating that a storm was on its way. I vaguely recall a headline about a hurricane forming off the coast, but after some time, the headlines about these things start to run together. For good reason. Most of these storms don’t materialize into anything. They tend to dissipate before reaching the shore.

Still, if something was close to Houston, surely I would have noticed it. Surely someone would have told me.

“Was your flight canceled?”

My eyes dart up. I expect him to look smug or cocky. But his expression is almost gentle. More relaxed. Open.

I lift a hand to my forehead, trying to rub the tension out of it. “I don’t know. My phone’s not working. I can’t tell.”

“When was it supposed to leave?”

“At ten.”

He nods, but from that stiff, stilted movement I can tell he thinks there’s no way that plane is leaving tonight.

“But everything was fine,” I say. “Earlier. Everything was okay. I…No one mentioned anything about a storm when I left—”

“It was veering east,” he says. “No one was predicting it would come this way until midmorning.” He ducks down, removing a water bottle from the plastic wrapping and handing it to me.

I twist the cap off and gulp it gratefully.

“I had stocked up,” Nikhil continues. “At the beginning of the season. Just in case. So, I’ve got plenty of water and food. And we have hours until it makes landfall. It’s supposed to get here tonight, so we’ll have more than enough time to board up the windows and move some things up to the second floor…”

Oh, no. I’m not staying here. I’m not staying here with him . There’s no way. We won’t survive it. I’d rather take my chances with the hurricane.

I turn back to my phone. I can find a hotel. There must be something available. Somewhere. I press the icon that looks like my travel app, but I know I’ve tapped the wrong thing when Olivia Rodrigo’s last album starts playing instead.

“Shit.” I press the same icon, but instead of stopping, the music seems to only grow louder.

“Here, let me,” Nikhil says, reaching for it. I yank my arm away, but not before his fingers lightly brush against mine.

It’s fleeting. Over in less than a second. But electricity tingles at my fingertips, sending tiny shocks toward my elbow. I shake my hand, trying to get rid of the sensation, which somehow, miraculously, silences my phone. I look down in surprise, then groan when I see that the screen is now pitch-black. This thing is officially broken.

“Maybe I can switch to an earlier flight,” I say. “If I could use your phone. Or your computer. I could…”

“People are evacuating, Meena. Those flights are going to be booked.”

The small hope that had been building within me dies a quick death. He’s right. I hate that he’s right. Now I understand the mad rush at the airport.

“It’ll be okay,” he says gently. “We’ll get through this. The house is in good condition, and like I said, we have everything we’ll need. Flashlights and radios and I even installed a backup generator last year. It doesn’t always work, but it should kick in if we lose power.”

I nod along as if I’m listening. As if it’s the storm I’m worried about and not the fact that I’m about to be stuck sharing a house with the man I’m trying to sever ties with once and for all.

Turns out I was right before. I am in hell. But it’s worse than I thought. Because now I’m trapped here. With the one person I hoped I’d never have to see again.

My husband .