8. Aarti
AARTI
I slept well that night. Definitely better than the previous one.
I kept thinking of our chance meeting and the impromptu sharing of our common grievances.
Befriending Sujit, confiding in him, had comforted me.
Learning that he had been hurting just as bad had somehow reassured me that I wasn’t guileless and weak.
Knowing that a man as smart as Sujit had also been fooled by love’s lure made me feel less like a loser.
It convinced me that there was perhaps hope for us both. A hope for a fresh start.
My condo in the city was the beginning of this new start for me.
Since our business in and around New York was expanding fast, I had convinced Dad to let me buy a place to use as a base of operations. I was already envisioning an office in the region. It would take some effort to convince him—taxes and all—but I had got my assistant gathering numbers.
That week, I checked on the status of the renovations at the condo.
It had been stripped, re-floored, polished, and painted.
The interior designer was working round the clock to make it good enough for me to move in soon.
Staying at a luxury hotel had its perks, but home had always held a special charm for me.
I still owed Sujit a dinner. During another meeting at his office that week, I told him about the additional floor that had just become available in his building.
Although I spotted his eyes light up at the offer, he gave me a diplomatic answer that he’d think about it.
What I didn’t tell him was that I had cut a deal with the small business on the floor just above his, giving them two floors in another building a few blocks away offering a lucrative price for the first year.
Sujit was a good person and deserved some kindness after what he’d been through with the whole Tara affair.
At least, that’s how I justified this business decision to myself.
My heart, though, was smarter than to be plied by such flimsy excuses.
It was also smart enough to know the futility of the path it wanted to go down.
For one, Sujit was a different person when we met alone than when I was at his office.
Perhaps, like me, he also wanted to keep the lid on our connection to Tara and Sameer.
The thought caused an involuntary twinge in my chest that our association will always be shrouded in shame and guilt. And for no fault of ours.
But to wallow in self-pity or seek out sympathy wasn’t my modus operandi. I was known to forge ahead through thick and thin. And that’s what I did.
That week, I called to invite him to dinner.
“How delicate is your palate?” he inquired when I asked him to recommend a restaurant.
“I’ve been known to survive all kinds of foods.”
“I know a terrific Korean place. The food is a bit spicy, but if you can get past that, you’ll never find anything better in life.”
“I’m in. Send me the name, and I’ll have my office make a reservation.”
“Let me take care of that. They usually don’t take reservations, but I have a connection.”
“Is there any restaurant in New York where you don’t have a connection?” I asked, part curious, part amused.
“What can I say? A man needs to eat.”
I laughed. “That he does, and at very exclusive places, I see.”
“This isn’t an exclusive place. It’s just incredibly good and almost always crowded. That’s the reason I’ll use my contact. Otherwise, we’d have to wait an hour for a table at the minimum.”
Sunday evening, he picked me up at the hotel.
“No Imran today?” I leaned in and whispered when I saw a new person driving us.
“He has the weekends off. I use a car service on the weekends and holidays.”
“I’m in dire need of good food today,” I said. “I had a hectic day.”
“No rest for the wicked, eh?”
“I was at the condo making sure things are ready so I can move in.”
“Move in?” The lilt in his voice matched the jump of his eyebrows.
When I told him what had kept me busy all week, he confessed, “I had a very different image of you when I saw you at the bar that evening.”
“Different how?”
“You don’t mind the hard work. For the owner of a company so big, you don’t mind getting your hands dirty.”
“Well, technically, Dad owns the company. I’m just an employee, and I need to earn my wages.”
His smile reached his eyes, his admiration deep in his dimples.
“What’s that smile for?” I asked.
He shook his head. “So, how’s the place?” he queried instead.
“Do you even need to ask?”
He let out a low chuckle.
“If you want to be my neighbor, there is another unit available,” I blurted, then instantly regretted it. What was it about this man that made me drop my guard without thinking?
He flashed me the smile that was a salve to my soul. “I wouldn’t mind if you lived here,” he said softly. “But you are a visitor. You’ll eventually return, and then I’ll be twice as lonely.”
“True.” I nodded. It wasn’t the time to mention the possibility of a new office and perhaps my move to the region. Not yet. Not before I’d talked with Dad, anyway.
That was another thing I was keeping from my father.
After Sameer, I wanted to move out of Dallas.
It was getting claustrophobic. Not that I’d be hung up on him for life, but the waters had been muddied.
Moving in the same circles in the same city ensured some amount of awkwardness, no matter how repentant and gracious Sameer and Tara were.
When the car dropped us at the very crowded restaurant, a man in a lightly stained apron promptly directed us to a quiet table in a secluded corner and disappeared just as mysteriously.
“Let me guess, you know the chef,” I said.
He tried to evade the question by looking down at the menu in his hand.
“Sujit?” I said in my sweetest voice, and it got me the desired result.
He looked into my eyes, and my heart stumbled over itself before he answered, “I’ve been coming here since I was in college. He wasn’t this big, celebrated chef at that time. We both were just…ordinary people,” he said with a shrug.
I smiled. “Those are the best kind of connections, but I doubt that you were ever just ordinary , Mr. Sujit Rao. Don’t forget, I’ve studied you and your résumé.”
“Oh?” he cried with raised brows. “Have you now?”
“Indeed,” I said, trying to choke the smile that was threatening to bloom on my face.
“And what have you learned?”
He placed the menu back on the table and crossed his arms. I caught his biceps bulge through the powder blue cashmere sweater he had chosen that evening.
My mind rushed to the night he’d put his arm around me to thwart my fall.
The gentle scent of his fresh cologne combined with the luxurious smell of the whisky on his breath had a visceral effect on my body.
I’d found myself wet and turned on like I had never felt before.
My breath turned heavy at the thought, and I quickly redirected my eyes and my mind to the menu before me.
“What would you recommend?” I asked, pretending to sincerely peruse the menu. There was only one authentic Korean restaurant in Plano and like this place, it was always crowded with impossibly long wait times.
“I love their grilled pork ribs and the gamjatang.”
“What’s that?”
“Pork bone soup.”
“Sounds good. Could we get some bibimbap?”
“You’re paying. We can get whatever you want.” He cocked a smile.
“Are you always this sassy? There’s a term in Hindi, haazir jawab.”
“Don’t know much Hindi. Barely know my mother tongue.”
“What’s your mother tongue?
“Telugu. I do speak it. But badly. Keep forgetting words. The closest I can get is Tenglish,” he said with a shrug.
I creased my brows in thought. “If your more dominant language is English, shouldn’t it be Elugu instead of Tenglish? How do portmanteaus usually work?”
“Hell if I knew!” he said, then looked at me with what I knew to be the start of one of the most precious things.
The laughter that emerged from his mouth was the most beautiful sound in the world. It was promptly swallowed up by the crowd around us, but that made it even more special. His laugh was just for me. Only I was privy to its melody, and the world had better feel envious of it.
Infectious as it was, I couldn’t last more than a few seconds before bursting into a squeal myself.
It was ridiculous. The joke wasn’t even that funny, and yet here we were, laughing like we had just outdone the best comedians of the world.
My eyes rimmed with the kind of happiness I hadn’t felt in a long time.
The kind of tears that I really wanted instead of the ones I had ended up with after Sameer.
We only stopped because a server walked to our table with a bottle of fresh, crisp white wine and stem glasses.
“I hope this is okay,” Sujit said as she showed us the bottle. “I took the liberty.”
“It’s perfect,” I approved with a nod.
While the server poured us the wine with impeccable etiquette, I looked around and spotted soju and beer on every other table. A rush of warmth filled my core as I realized Sujit must have made this special request when he called for the table.
A vague memory rustled past me with a silent whisper. It’s the little things .
As the sweet bubbles of the wine danced on my tongue, I watched him push his sexy glasses up the bridge of his nose and gaze at me. “So what’s that term you were talking about? Haaz something?”
Extricating myself from the power of those brilliant eyes, I answered, “Haazir jawab. It means quick-witted, someone who has an instant comeback for everything.”
“So you are fluent in Hindi, then?”
“I understand it completely.” I smiled. “My dad’s family speaks Punjabi.
Mom speaks Hindi, and that term has been seared into my brain because, growing up, it used to be my mother’s favorite criticism of me.
That I was haazir jawab. Always ready with an answer.
And I used to say, guess where I got it from. ”
“Mom?”
I nodded. “She’s as smart as they come but didn’t get a chance to fly with the full extent of her wingspan.”
Shit! Had I just shared my family’s private matters with him? I had always regretted that Ma didn’t get to be who she could’ve been, but I had never voiced it so fiercely, so fearlessly before. Not even to Ma.
When I got my eyes to focus on Sujit again, I caught him studying me with intent. He picked up the wine and said, “Judging from your success, your wit certainly seems to have served you well.”
I relaxed in my chair. I was getting more comfortable in his presence, and it unnerved me. I had always been guarded since I started working, and suddenly, I was smiling, laughing uninhibitedly, and sharing my family’s secrets with a person I’d known for a couple of weeks.
When the food arrived, I graciously declared that it had stood up to all the hype that Sujit had built up.
“I didn’t think we would end up finishing so much of it,” he said as he refilled our glasses.
“Why, just because I’m a slender woman, you thought I was a salad-munching girl? That’s such a tired cliché.”
He looked at me from over the rim of his glasses—my stomach did a silly flip—as he returned the bottle to the table. “Aarti, not everything I say comes with the premise that I’m talking to a woman. I was merely making an observation.”
I nodded, suddenly embarrassed of my defensiveness. “Sorry,” I said. “It comes with the territory. I’ve been operating in a man’s world for too long.”
“I know,” he said, and it conveyed everything he’d not said.
I blinked rapidly. “Are you thinking of filing a patent for Elugu?” I asked for lack of another distraction.
“I don’t know, but it gives me an idea for a language-based software that can help students in countries without proper schooling systems. You are brilliant! Thank you.”
Apologizing for the interruption, he pulled out his phone and typed something fast and quick.
“You’re not joking!” I cried, partly amused.
“I never joke about software.”
I stared at him with a serious face.
He smiled. “That was a joke.”
I shook my head and basked in his presence.