20. Noa
NOA
The BFI is blissfully empty on Sunday morning, just me and the hum of the blast freezers. No cameras, no crew, no devastatingly attractive comedians treating me like I have the plague.
I’ve been here since seven a.m., telling myself I’m being productive, but really I’m hiding.
Yesterday’s Sight shoot was… well, “dumpster fire” seems too on-the-nose given how Aarti and I met, but that’s what it was.
We made scanning tree bark look like a competitive sport where maintaining maximum distance from your partner determines the winner.
I pull out my latest test batches, where I’ve attempted to synthesize our two sensory shoots into something coherent. Orange zest with bourbon extract. Black sesame and rose kewra. Crystallized ginger folded into a brown butter base.
They all taste incredible. None of them are right.
So much for being a flavor psychic, you charlatan , Jerky chirps in my brain.
I start over, measuring cream into the pasteurizer, watching it swirl.
My phone buzzes. Aiden. I’ve been dodging his calls for two days.
Every time his name lights up my phone screen, followed by increasingly dramatic selfies, I let it go to voicemail.
I know what he wants to talk about, and I’m not ready to dissect the disaster that was The Phantom Kiss.
Because that’s what I’m calling it in my head. A phantom of a kiss, where the air between us knew exactly what was transpiring, where the particles rearranged themselves to better accommodate the magnetic rush pulling our lips together just before–
The cream scalds. Shit . I dump it and start over, forcing myself to focus.
But my hands are on autopilot while my brain replays the events of Friday.
The Sense shoot went perfectly, our best day yet.
When Diti needed help, jumping into action felt natural and kind of exhilarating.
I could tell Aarti didn’t often ask for help, which made being useful feel even more important.
Later, on Aiden’s floor, the adrenaline crackled between us like static electricity.
Behind those blackout curtains, we were in our own private bubble.
Until Aiden burst in and she freaked the freak out.
It’s not like I can’t read the room. From the moment I overheard her lovers’ spat from the stall at the Velvet Tongue, her stance on not being visibly queer was clear to me.
But then why did she try to kiss me? It’s more painful to have been so close to the real thing and then discarded than for me to continue finding her hot and unattainable, her desires enigmatic but also none of my beeswax.
During yesterday’s shoot, she acted like making eye contact was a federal crime and touching me would give her hives. Which, yeah, has its own physical comedy to it, but her cold shoulder isn’t exactly helping me learn enough about her to create an ice cream flavor.
Although... Cold Shoulder? Not a shabby name for a pint.
The thing is, for all her sharp edges–not in spite of them–I’m attracted to Aarti.
Devastatingly, inconveniently, career- jeopardizingly attracted to her.
I’ve always had a thing for confident women who could destroy me.
Blame it on formative sleepover viewings of Heathers and The Craft .
While those movies tried to paint powerful women as inherently dangerous, all they did was awaken something in me.
And Aarti? She’s brilliant and terrifying and takes no prisoners, and unfortunately, that combination short-circuits my brain.
But it’s not just the intimidation factor. It’s the moments when her armor cracks. Like when she told me about writing comedy on those late-night buses, or how fiercely she protected Diti. The way she lit up at her uncle’s restaurant, her whole body relaxing into something softer, realer.
The new batch reaches temperature. I add my experimental blend–orange blossom for LA sunshine, cardamom for heritage, black pepper simple syrup for that sharp teasing wit. I churn it slowly, watching the mixture transform. When it’s ready, I have a taste.
Wrong, wrong, wrong . The flavors are fighting each other–how apt.
My replacement notebook sits open on the counter, filled with barely legible observations from our shoots. I comb through, searching for something, anything, that will help me understand her.
The problem is, how can I translate Aarti into ice cream when she won’t let me see who she really is? When she pulls me close only to shove me away?
I slam the freezer door harder than necessary. Three batches down, nothing to show for it.
The next morning, I climb into the production van and take a seat beside Claire with a pit of dread in my stomach. Today’s segment is Touch and I can only imagine how we’ll navigate a shoot about literal physical sensation.
When the driver pulls the vehicle to a stop. I peer out the window at a towering rock formation.
“Wait, I thought we were doing a Korean spa?”
Claire’s perpetual enthusiasm doesn’t waver. “Change of plans! Isn’t this exciting?”
’Exciting’ is not the word I’d use.
Aarti’s already there, decked out in climbing gear and a harness that makes my mouth go dry.
She’s stretching against a boulder, her ponytail swishing this way and that across her shoulders as she switches positions.
Her leg swings atop the rock and she leans forward across her toned quad.
I definitely don’t stare at the way the harness accentuates her–
“Noa!” Madge calls out. “Ready to get vertical?”
I blink back to reality. “I don’t love heights,” I tell her, trying not to sound as panicked as I feel.
“You won’t need to go high,” Madge assures me. “We can get what we need pretty close to the ground.”
“ Pretty close…”
Aarti approaches, acknowledging my existence with a smile so fake it could be sold at a dollar store. She turns to Madge. “I’m gonna clip in.”
She walks away, but Madge calls after her. “Aarti, can you help Noa with her harness? Safety crew is still setting up the ropes.”
I catch the flash of annoyance before Aarti’s professional mask snaps back into place. She strides over with the determined energy of someone about to perform an unpleasant but necessary task, like a root canal.
“Step in,” she instructs, holding the harness open.
“I can wait for the safety crew.”
She raises her eyebrows. “And make this shoot even longer than it has to be?”
I roll my eyes and stick my feet in the harness. She hoists it up over the curve of my hips, snapping the buckles into place. She squats down, eyes to my thighs, and grips my leg as she pulls the straps tighter with quick, forceful tugs.
“Does it–” Snap. Snap. “–need to be that tight?”
She peers up at me through those dark lashes, cool as ever.
Slowly–maddeningly slowly–she loosens the left strap first, her finger brushing my inner thigh. Then the right strap. Maintaining eye contact the whole time.
“Better, princess?”
My earlier pit of dread turns into an unwelcome thrum of heat in my core.
“Turn around.” No please , no explanation. Just a command. I hate that it makes my pulse jump.
I do as I’m told. She tests the straps under my ass and I fall forward, pressed into the wall of rock in front of me.
“Looking good,” murmurs the most audacious woman I’ve ever met.
Still flush against the rock, I sputter out, “Great, yeah, thanks so much.” I’m aiming for biting and sarcastic but my voice comes out breathy and strained. Thankfully she’s already striding away.
A few minutes later, the safety crew calls us over to clear our equipment and fit us into helmets. Charlotte, the woman checking my harness, shakes her head.
“Textbook. Aarti Nair, is there anything you can’t do?” she asks. “Most folks can barely clip a carabiner.”
“I’m a woman of many talents, Char,” Aarti replies, flashing her self-satisfied grin at me for one fleeting, aggravating second.
By the time Marcus mics us up and the camera crew launches their drones, my annoyance and arousal are competing for top bunk. It’s almost enough to distract me from the fact that I’m about to scale a mountain.
“And… action!”
I manage to get approximately six inches off the ground before my brain helpfully reminds me that humans aren’t meant to be vertical on rock faces. I drop back down.
“Not a lot of opportunities to boulder in your science lab?” Aarti observes dryly.
Just like that, my annoyance has won out over… that other thing. The upside of triggering my indignation is that nothing kicks me into athlete mode faster. I re-find my foothold and climb, this time far past those initial six inches.
Aarti matches my newfound pace, scrambling up the rocks, her long limbs allowing her to catch up to me with ease. “Alright, Hart. Look who found their confidence.”
“Wouldn’t want to make this shoot any longer than it has to be, right, Nair?” I throw back her earlier words.
She snorts and gestures to the mountain above. “Be my guest.”
I scan the cliffside for my next handhold as she does the same. “So why are we dangling here today?”
“I started climbing a few years ago. I was constantly working in air-conditioned rooms, sitting on my ass, putting off me-time for a month, then another, then another.” She swings her body up a foot and I follow.
“I took a walk around the reservoir near here one day, trying to brute-force my brain into a solution for a routine I was writing and I saw these little specks on the rocks. I realized those were people, and it made me want to feel small like that.”
“What’s the appeal of feeling like a speck?”
She’s a foot above me again, but waits until I catch up before answering. “I guess I needed to feel connected to the world in the context of something bigger than myself. Something ancient and tangible and eternal. I needed to touch grass, as the kids say. Though I actually needed to touch rocks.”