19. Aarti
AARTI
Growing up, Maa always made chapati on Saturday mornings.
Diti and I would sneak into the kitchen to steal the warm rounds from the griddle while her back was turned.
The look on my face when she’d catch us red-handed, ghee dripping down our chins–that’s exactly how I must look right now as the person who is unmistakably Noa Hart’s brother bursts through his own front door.
“WELL, WELL, WELL!” Aiden announces, striking a pose in the doorway like he’s auditioning for a Broadway revival of Hair.
His rainbow-striped overalls are tucked into combat boots with teddy bears sewn onto them and glitter peppers his orange curls.
“There’s a party in my house and I wasn’t invited? ”
I don’t remember moving, but Noa and I are suddenly standing, a not-at-all conspicuous space between us. My hands are thrust deep into my pockets like I’m so freaking casual .
“Aiden,” Noa says, her voice pitched higher than usual. “This is–”
“Aarti fucking Nair!” Aiden claps his hands together with glee. “Oh my GOD, you’re taller than I expected! But like, in a totally hot way. Very commanding hotness.”
“Aarti’s sister was ill, and your place was close by,” Noa tells him.
I open my mouth to explain more, but no sound comes out. This is a nightmare. An actual, honest-to-god nightmare.
“Mmph.” A small voice comes from the bedroom. Diti appears in the doorway, swaying slightly, wrapped in Aiden’s vintage kimono. Her hair is sticking up at impossible angles, and she’s squinting like a confused baby deer.
“Oh, hello, little fawn,” Aiden coos, immediately switching into caretaker mode. “How are we feeling? Scale of one to something?”
“Seven?” Diti ventures. Her eyes land on me. “Aarti, where–? Steph–?” She looks around the room. “Is this Burning Man?”
“Sort of,” Aiden replies, “but with better wi-fi.”
I spring into action, partly because my sister needs tending to and partly because movement is better than standing here marinating in the mortification of what almost happened between Noa and me.
“We’re going home,” I announce, already looking for my phone to call a ride.
Diti seems to come into her lucidity for a moment. Her eyes widen as she looks at Noa across the room.
“Noa! Noa saved the day,” Diti says dreamily, still swaying. “Noa’s a hero.”
“Yes, she is,” I mutter, stabbing at my phone screen. Three minutes for pickup. Can I survive three minutes?
“A hero who was about to get very thoroughly thanked, from the looks of things,” Aiden stage-whispers to Diti, loud enough for everyone in the room and probably the neighboring apartments to hear.
“ Aiden ,” Noa hisses.
“What? I’m just saying, the energy in here when I walked in was very–”
“The energy was gratitude ,” I cut him off. “Professional gratitude. Between colleagues. Who work together. In a professional capacity.”
Aiden raises his eyebrows so high they disappear into his glitter-crusted bangs. “Uh- huh .”
My phone buzzes. The car is here early. Thank fuck.
“Come on, D,” I say, wrapping my arm around my sister’s shoulders. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But I like here!” Diti protests. “It’s colorful. And that man called me a fawn.”
“Maybe the nice man will let you visit again someday,” I tell her, steering her toward the door.
I turn to look at Noa, and for a split second, our eyes meet. There’s something there–concern, confusion, the ghost of whatever was happening before Aiden burst in. But I can’t. I cannot go down that road. It’s a blessing that Aiden interrupted that moment of temporary delusion.
“Thank you,” I say stiffly. “For everything. Tonight.”
“Anytime,” she says quietly.
Aiden is watching this exchange like it’s the season finale of the queer Ultimatum. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled popcorn out of his prismatic pants.
Our ride honks outside.
“Gotta go,” I say, already dragging Diti out the door. “See you at work. Tomorrow. For work.”
“For work,” Noa agrees, and I don’t miss the slight deflation in her voice.
As we’re getting into the car, I hear Aiden’s voice drifting from the house: “Girl, you are fuuuuuucked .”
I have no idea if he’s talking about me or Noa. Likely both.
Diti nods in and out against my shoulder while I spend the ride home internally berating myself. Shitty McWhateverHisNameWas can’t save me now.
What the actual fuck was I thinking? One successful shoot day, one heroic act from Noa, and suddenly I’m cracked wide open, trying to kiss her while stone-cold sober with zero regard for the utter catastrophe that would create for my entire life.
This is exactly the kind of impulsive bullshit that got me grounded for half of sophomore year. The same reckless energy that had me sneaking out to open mics when I was thirteen, cutting class to audition for improv teams, declaring my future major to be “jokes” at the high school career fair.
The difference is, back then, the worst-case scenario was disappointing my parents.
Now the worst-case scenario is not only disappointing my parents as an adult–which somehow might be worse–but also tanking my career, destroying the show, letting down my entire team, and becoming a cautionary tale about what happens when you mix business with…
whatever desperate horny hell that was tonight.
Diti shifts against my shoulder, and I catch a whiff of whatever booze-heavy cocktail she’d been drinking before things went sideways.
My sister, who spent our youth playing the golden child while I was our family’s riotous rebel.
Diti, the one who never missed curfew, never forgot to call, never made our parents wonder if they’d completely failed as human beings.
Somewhere along the way, we all stopped keeping track of Diti. She learned to hide her misbehavior so well that when she did get caught, it looked like an anomaly instead of a pattern. Meanwhile, I was the squeaky wheel, demanding attention through sheer volume and chaos.
At home, I tuck Diti into my own bed after making her drink two full glasses of water.
She’s asleep before her head hits the pillow, and I spend the rest of the night dozing in the armchair beside my bed, watching her breathe and trying to figure out how to unscramble my brain until my eyelids thrust me into sleep.
The morning sun wakes me to an empty bed by my side and the smell of breakfast sausage sizzling from the kitchen.
Diti is pushing turkey links around in a pan, scrambled eggs already cooling on the counter.
She whistles away like she didn’t spend the previous evening semiconscious in a stranger’s bathrobe.
“Morning, sunshine,” she says brightly, not meeting my eyes. “Want some eggs?”
“You feeling okay?” I ask.
“Perfect,” she lies. “Ready to seize the day.”
Right. We’re doing this. The Nair family pretend-everything-is-fine special.
I can work with that.
I arrive at the studio inspired to treat Noa exactly the same way Diti is treating me: with aggressively normal professionalism. A production van idles in the parking lot, and Claire bounds over.
“This is gonna be so cute!” she chirps. “Hometown visit! Kinda-sorta, right?!”
Nope. Nopenopenope. We will not be alluding to dating shows this morning or any morning ever, if I have my say. I give Claire the least passive-aggressive thumbs-up I can muster as I make my way to the van.
Madge sits in the front passenger seat with her tablet. “Glad to see you made it home after your joyride last night. You do know how much that car costs hourly, right?”
I shoot her an apologetic grimace and she moves on, rattling off logistics for today’s Sight-themed shoot. Behind her sits an overly enthusiastic rep named Trevor from Scan-Do, the portable scanner company that’s doing product placement for this episode.
“The XR-4000 is revolutionary,” he’s saying to no one in particular, patting a sleek device that looks like a lightsaber. “Click, glide, and you’ve got a perfect digital scan of any surface texture, color gradient, or dimensional object.”
Noa climbs into the van, smiling at everyone, until she makes eye contact with me.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hello,” I respond with the same energy I’d use to greet an IRS auditor.
She retrains her expression into something politely neutral.
Great, at least we’re in agreement: last night did not happen.
My childhood neighborhood in Alhambra hasn’t changed much.
The same bungalows with their postage-stamp lawns, the same grocery where my mom sent me for coriander and turmeric, the same red brick elementary school where I first performed a comedy routine for my third grade talent show–a move-for-move replication of Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” from Singin’ in the Rain –and brought down the house.
And yet, everything feels different with cameras following us. Noa walks beside me, but we’re maintaining maximum distance. When the sidewalk narrows near Mrs. Joshi’s overgrown jasmine bush, we each attempt to let the other go first, resulting in an awkward dance that halts the entire crew.
“After you,” Noa says.
“No, please, you–”
“I insist–”
We step forward at the same time, our shoulders colliding. Noa rebounds like she’s been shot from a cannon, stumbling backward into the jasmine bush.
“Fu– crap! ” I reach out to steady her, then think better of it and freeze with my hands hovering uselessly in the air.
“No problem!” Noa chirps, extracting herself from the foliage with leaves in her curls. “You know, jasmine has this almost crystalline structure up close, kind of like when we freeze dry vanilla pods in the lab. The moisture sublimates and leaves these tiny–”
“We should keep moving,” I interrupt before she can launch into a full dissertation.
Scan-Do Trevor bounds ahead of us, vibrating with enthusiasm. “Aarti, your street has such amazing textural variety. The weathering patterns on the concrete, the rust on these fire hydrants–pure gold!”