3. Aarti
AARTI
I only had a quick second to decide how to approach the situation.
Professionally, my brain insisted.
“Mr. Rao.” I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
I wondered if he had recognized me. We had met in person only once, and for a few minutes. But the look in his eyes and his stunned body language seemed to answer that for me. Mercifully, he’d chosen the same approach as me. Ignore the acquaintance. Avoid the humiliation.
“Ms. Bhatia, thank you for meeting me at such short notice.”
“Please,” I said, inviting him to take a seat. With his tall legs, he perched on the barstool effortlessly. “We can sit in the lounge if you prefer. But I was hoping for a quick meeting.”
“This is fine,” he said with a smile that put slight dimples in his cheeks.
“What will you have?”
“Whatever you are having,” he said.
Ingratiating himself to me, I thought, because I had a glass of red wine before me and he definitely didn’t look like a wine person. But I played along.
“One more, please,” I told the bartender.
I didn’t usually drink red wine unless I was in a meeting where I had to pretend to drink.
This was one such occasion. We sat in silence until the bartender placed a glass before him, its crystal dispersing a gorgeous tint of red on the counter.
I watched as his strong hand advanced toward the glass and lifted it.
“I hope your flight was good,” he said after a sip.
“It was uneventful. Thank you.”
“I don’t suppose this is your first visit to New York?”
“No, my close friend moved here a few years ago, and I’ve visited her a couple of times.”
“It’s great that you’ll have a friend in the city while you’re here,” he said.
“Actually, she doesn’t live in the city anymore.” I don’t know if it was the kindness in his voice or a desperate need to fill the silence, but I shared with him more than I normally would. “They have a penthouse here, but they live upstate most of the time.”
He gave a small nod, and soon enough, the dreaded silence engulfed us.
I threw a quick glance at him. His eyes met mine, and a strange mix of feelings coursed through me.
Dread, that he had figured out who I was.
Shame, that he knew what I had been through publicly.
Fear, that he might use it to leverage his negotiation.
Anger, that the stain on my personal life threatened to invade my professional identity.
And…a smidgen of sympathy, that perhaps he’d had his heart stomped on mercilessly too.
What would it be? Embarrass me, humiliate me, intimidate me?
Under normal circumstances, it wasn’t easy to get under my skin, but he was Tara’s ex, and that was enough to ruin both my poise and my grit.
I waited, peering into his face, waiting for him to capitalize on any of these several openings available to him.
To my surprise, he didn’t. He cleared his throat and opted instead for the universal subject of small talk. “So, how are you holding up to the weather here?”
A palpable wave of relief washed over me. My body relaxed. My grip on the stem of the glass loosened. I hadn’t realized I had been strangling it between my fingers.
“It’s so cold here already!” I said, with a slight, grateful laughter.
“Yes. How’s the weather in Dallas?”
“It’s nice. It’s getting colder, so some of us are freaking out. Bring out the puffy jackets!”
He chuckled, but it was a gentle sound. Suave, sophisticated, classy.
“I hope you brought all your puffy jackets with you because if you think it’s cold now, just wait until it snows.”
As I looked at him, my eyes met his warm gaze, and a strange feeling ran down my spine. I looked away to my wine glass promptly. “Definitely not looking forward to that. I would’ve postponed the visit if it wasn’t important.”
“Important like?” he inquired.
Peering into his eyes, I wondered if he knew why I was in New York, miles away from Dallas, at this particular time.
He shot me a restrained smile, but I couldn’t return one.
“Important, like figuring out the condition of the properties we just bought.”
His eyes softened, as if he knew this was a ruse, and I’d rather not acknowledge it. “Sounds daunting, especially in this weather,” he said.
“Yes, thankfully, I don’t have to physically survey everything, just oversee the overseers.”
He chuckled an uncomfortable sound. This time, when our eyes met, his back stiffened as he returned his glass to the counter. He was doing his best to maintain this charade of formality between us, but the discomfort was starting to wear me down.
“I’m wondering how long it will be before we acknowledge the elephant in the room,” I said, finally making peace with our ill-fated meeting.
He slumped slightly. With his posture, I would’ve imagined it was impossible his body knew what real slumping meant. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come up,” he confessed and followed it up with a gentle sigh. “It would’ve been so much simpler if we’d never met.”
We had met in Dallas at the opening night of Tara’s exhibition. “If this whole fiasco hadn’t occurred, do you think you would’ve remembered me?” I asked.
He laughed as he removed his glasses and placed them on the counter. “Yes,” he said. “Unfortunately, I'm terribly good with faces. Not so much with names, though.”
“Aarti,” I offered.
He laughed again and ran his fingers along the stem of his glass. “Yes, unfortunately, yours is a name I do remember.”
“That’s an awful lot of unfortunates for you,” I observed.
“I apologize! I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. Sitting upright, he put his glasses back on. “I meant in the context of this conversation. It would’ve been easier if we hadn’t met.”
“Don’t worry, no offense taken,” I offered truthfully, placing both hands around my glass that stood turning warm on the counter.
“None was intended,” he said in a very sincere voice. “So, how about you?” he asked after a long pause. “Would you have remembered me?”
I didn’t lie often, but sometimes, I employed white lies, as was the nature of my business. But I felt that I couldn’t lie to this sincere-sounding man sitting beside me. “Probably not,” I said, “but then again….I do remember you, don’t I?”
“Professional hazard?” he asked.
“Something like that.” This was a lie. A white one, but a lie, nonetheless.
“So…how do we proceed from here?” he inquired.
“Well, we can shove all emotions under the rug and continue with this business very professionally.” I brought my wine goblet to my lips.
“Or?”
I smiled as I returned my glass to its spot on the counter and pursed my lips. I was highly impressed he knew there was an or coming.
“ Or we match our stories and drink away those memories.”
“I’m game,” he said, his body perking up. “Unless you have another meeting.”
“No, that’s an excuse I use to get out of bothersome ones. It’s safe to say you haven’t annoyed me enough yet to employ that excuse.”
This time, he laughed heartily, giving me a full display of two very deep, very attractive dimples.
I invited him to the lounge and asked him to order a bottle of whisky.
There was only one way to melt the awkwardness of our meeting, and that solution lay at the bottom of a bottle of whisky.
He ordered a well-aged highland scotch. I’d always been a wine drinker, never a whisky or bourbon connoisseur like the rest of my family.
But that evening, I knew my salvation lay not in a slender bottle of wine but in the thick, formidable glass of scotch.
“To us, the jilted lovers,” he said, clinking his glass to mine.
“To fresh starts,” I responded defiantly.
“To fresh starts!” He sipped with a satisfied look on his face.
I let him ruminate in the pleasure of the first sip before I asked, “Did you hear about the wedding?”
He looked up as if the news had shocked him. Then, relaxed his back against the couch and said, “Yes, Tara sent me an invitation.”
My stunned brows launched upward. “She invited you to their wedding? That’s cold.”
He promptly shook his head and said, “It isn’t.
It’s not malicious like it appears. The last time we talked, when she came clean to me, I told her we would continue being friends.
We ended our relationship on a positive note.
The invitation is just her sweet way of keeping our friendship alive.
It’s her way of showing she still cares for me and that she values me in her life. ”
“So, you had a chance at closure, then. You are lucky,” I said with mild bitterness, suddenly envious of their relationship. When he didn’t respond, I added, “You certainly seem to have a high regard for her.”
“I do. It wasn’t a slight decision that I had intended to spend my life with her. She is a good person. It’s a pity she didn’t love me enough.”
I knew what he meant. Love, desire, passion, or whatever else we call it, was strange. There was always scope for us to love more than one person, but the falling in love part was so messy it felt like there could never be another.
“If you’re truly the person who’s sitting here right now, she didn’t deserve you.”
He peered at me over the rim of his glasses, and my heart took a sudden, completely unexpected dip. I suspected he saw it too, because he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and looked away.
“Unless you’re not, and she did herself a big favor.” I was nothing if not brutally honest.
He surprised me by taking no offense at my words. “Only she can answer that for you.”
I studied him for a quick moment and shook my head. “She didn’t deserve you,” I declared, this time with conviction.
“Alright, let’s share notes. I’ll be a gentleman and begin first.”
“How’s that gentlemanly?” I frowned. “Shouldn’t it be ladies first or some such nonsense?”
He shook his head. “Not when it involves embarrassing oneself. Then chivalry is making yourself out to be the biggest chump, so the lady feels less like one.”
I returned a slight grin. “Your argument is convincing. Go on.”