Chapter 30
EVERETT
O h, that’s revolting. It took everything I had to not spit it out in front of Jahnvi. I could tell immediately that the pakora Jahnvi had brought me was from Fragrance; it had no flavor. And when I say no flavor, I mean no flavor. It tasted like sand.
“Oh!” I tilted my head back, making sure Jahnvi didn’t see the wince on my face. “Jahnvi, this is so good. I was absolutely starving and...” and I caught a peek of her face.
She was smiling slightly. “You hate it, don’t you?”
“What? No actually, it’s good!”
She grabbed the Tupperware and po pped a bite into her mouth.
Oh thank god, now I don’t need to finish it.
She spoke after she swallowed. “You’re not a very good actor.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Maybe you did win the last tournament, Pickles, but I’m still just as good as you are.”
“Sorry, I mean liar. You’re very good at acting, granted. But when you act to save your ass, you’re not very good. You have a tell when you lie.”
“A tell? What is it?”
“Why would I tell you?” She smiled mischievously. “I need to know when you’re lying, so I’m gonna keep that to myself.” Before I could question her further, she walked away to the back of the store. Smiling, I followed her to the storage room.
“Yeah, I need to clean it up a little,” I muttered after I followed her into the cramped room.
“A little ?” Jahnvi blinked, looking at the chaos.
The shelves used to be organized, spices with the spices and the sugar in the front, but with how busy I had been everything was more chaotic now.
There were random cardboard boxes on the ground, the shelves were all mixed up, and the walk-in freezer was packed to the brim.
“So...you regret offering to help me now?” I touched her elbow. Jahnvi flinched.
Right, I forgot she was nervous about physical contact these days.
Nervous to say the least. A few days ago, she’d tripped down the speech bus stairs and fallen on the gravel parking lot when I had accidentally brushed into her back as we were getting off.
It made me...smile.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t like that she’d fallen. I didn’t like that she was awkward with me. But I did like that I was having this different effect on her. Because of me, her heart was all twitchy and blood was rushing up to her face.
I had caused this.
I was the one she was thinking about when she went to sleep.
I was the one she was staring at right now in this tiny room.
“Well, um.” She gulped and moved her gaze away from my biceps. “Better get started cleaning then. There’s a lot to do—”
And that’s when she walked right into a shelf full of basmati rice.
I quickly lunged forward, grabbing the top of the rickety shelf with one hand and using my other arm to hold the rice bags on the top shelf in place. With a mild grunt, I managed to put all four legs of the shelving unit back on the ground.
Breathing heavily, I looked down at Jahnvi, who was hovering by my side. She twitched as I cleared my throat. “So, Jahnvi?”
“Yeah, Everett?”
“How am I supposed to trust you to clean this entire place up if you can’t even make your way through it without knocking something down?”
“Uh! W-well”—she spluttered for a second before glaring at me—“I can do just fine if you leave! Your hovering makes me nervous!”
I smiled, arching down so that my face was close to her. I grabbed her wrists slightly and gave them a gentle squeeze. “So, this makes you nervous then?”
Her mouth betrayed her for one slight second by turning up into a smile but then she shut it down immediately. Frowning, Jahnvi wrenched her hands free and crossed her arms, forcing some distance between us. “If you keep distracting me, I won’t get anything done. Go do something else, Everett.”
“Oh. So, you find me distracting then?”
That one won me a smile. She put her hands on my chest and gently pushed me toward the door. “I think I just heard the bell ring. Go greet whoever that is.”
I smiled and left her alone to work. It was three o’clock, so it was mid-dead hour, but an Indian couple had come in for chai and samosas.
Since the night cooks still hadn’t arrived, I went into the kitchen and made the chai myself.
I also grabbed the samosas from the oven that we had baked this morning.
I made sure to pour a little extra of everything so Jahnvi could have some after she finished.
As the couple ate, I sat down at the front desk and finally placed the order through the phone for the jasmine flowers.
Traditionally, women in India wear fresh jasmine flowers in their hair every day.
However, since that isn’t really a thing here, people often give jasmine flowers out at big events, like weddings, so that people can be reminded of home.
I didn’t know about this until recently.
My parents never took me back to India because of some immigration status issues.
Now that I had a Green Card, I could go to India easily and come back.
But there was no reason to. I hardly knew my relatives there and occasionally my other grandparents would call, but there was this great divide between us.
They still loved me, but they’d never seen me. I’d only ever seen them in photos.
It was kind of ironic.
My parents worked so hard for a Green Card so that they could go home but never got one. Once I got one, I never went back because all my parents’ working for a Green Card stopped me from ever having a bond with my extended family.
“Thank you so much for visiting. Have a wonderful day!” I smiled and gave the couple their credit card back.
Let’s see how Jahnvi is doing.
Grabbing the chai I’d poured for her, I peeked through the crack in the storage room door to see the little yellow bow in Jahnvi’s hair move as she turned her head.
The door was open only slightly so I could just see her yellow bow and the blur of her black shirt and light jeans.
I opened the door slowly so that I didn’t startle her and cause her to knock over another shelf.
It creaked loudly, causing her to turn.
But I was too busy looking around at the storage room to watch her. Even though I wasn’t looking at her face, I could hear her nervous tension. “Hey! Is everything okay? Does it look better?”
“Better?” I looked around, slack jawed. “Jahnvi, it looks amazing. How did you manage to do all this in like thirty minutes?” The shelves had all been organized and she had written little labels in black marker on each of them so that other people could find things with ease.
She had also gotten rid of the extra cardboard boxes and mopped the floor so that people could actually walk through and find things.
She was grinning from ear to ear. Taking the chai from my hand, she took a seat on a crate and motioned next to her for me to take a seat.
I perched on the box next to her. It was a tight fit, so the entirety of my left leg was pressing into hers. But when I tried to move and grab another box, she stopped me.
Hey, I wasn’t going to argue.
“Are you going to have some too?” Jahnvi asked, motioning to her teacup and saucer.
“No, I prefer British tea, and I need to go out and buy some more tea bags. I’m out,” I explained. As I spoke, I noticed her focus was somewhere else above my head. Turning, I saw that she was looking at a box high up on the sugar shelf.
That box.
It was too high up for her to reach even with the chair she had been using as a step stool, so I knew she hadn’t touched it. I looked back at her to see her eyes back on the box, her curiosity obvious.
With a wordless sigh, I got up and walked over to the box.
“Oh, you don’t have to...” I heard Jahnvi trail off but for some reason I felt the need to show it to her. I hadn’t touched that box in four years, since eighth grade. All at once, it felt like some big burden on my chest, and I wanted to lift it off.
It was so tall that I also needed a chair to reach it. Rolling the chair toward me, I reached up and brushed off the dust. The wave of memories was hitting me almost painfully.