I logged into my emails to see if he had sent a note.
There it was. “I know we aren’t dating. But where have you been all day? Don’t you miss your best buddy? By the way, I don’t mind a little chase.” There was a grin at the end of his message.
Silence fell at my end. Jay was relentless despite all the insults. That meant he wasn’t willing to let go of of me easily. Whatever I had started, I had to find a way to finish it.
- 24 -
The next morning, which was a Tuesday, I got into work with a green juice in hand at 7:30 a.m. On the same wrist, I wore one of Mumma’s watches. Her watch next to my skin reminded me of the promise I had made to her—never to let any man break me again. “We will bury all the demons from Dev,” one of the last few things Mumma had said to me.
I looked at the streets full of runners prepping for the upcoming New York Marathon. I hope I can participate in it one day, I thought to myself.
The office was quiet. Walking past Rohan’s office brought back memories of the night before. I tried to push aside the memory of his lips on mine—so gentle so full—I didn’t want another heartbreak.
Suddenly someone whispered “boo” in my right ear. I dropped my handbag on the floor. I turned around; it was Rohan smiling and apologizing in the same breath. He looked healthy. The kiss the night before.... I thought about it and my face turned red.
“Good morning, Matron.” Rohan helped me put the stuff back in my handbag.
“Morning, Brady.” I pretended to be blasé.
“How was your Monday evening?”
“I was with you, if you remember?”
“I will always remember.” Rohan tucked a tuft of hair behind my right ear.
I lifted my right shoulder and rubbed my right earlobe with it. Rohan moved his hand.
“I am glad to see you’re feeling better.”
“I was royally pampered yesterday. Woke up feeling a 500 percent.”
“Good!”
“Thank you for everything, Ahana.” Rohan and I stood up from the floor at the same time.
“Don’t be silly. That’s what friends do.” I smiled weakly at him and tried not to stare from his perfect hair to his powder blue shirt and khakis to his piercing blue eyes matching his shirt.
Rohan bent his knees so he could look me in my eyes. “Let me take you out and show you a few cool, hidden spots in NYC.”
“You have already done enough for me.”
I walked toward my office. Rohan followed behind. He leaned against the edge of my desk. I could smell his aftershave.
“I need to prepare for a meeting starting in ten minutes.” I felt nervous.
“Liar. No one comes into this office before 9 a.m.”
My mouth turned dry because of the two syllables in the word liar.
“I um…” I was mad at myself for not finding the right words.
Rohan kept staring at me. His smell lingered in the room. His glare pierced through my body.
He walked out. I wet my lips. No one—not even Dev when we were dating—had had this effect on me.
Suddenly, Rohan appeared again at the threshold of my office, “Fine, I’ll make this fast. I am not going to pretend.”
“Pretend what?”
He stepped inside my office. “I am not asking you to hang out. It’s a date. One date. I really like you, Ahana. Just go out with me once.”
My pulse throbbed. I liked the certainty of Rohan’s words.
“Fine. I’ll give you one evening to show me.”
Rohan leaned into my face. His breath melted me. “See you at Dionysus at 9 p.m. on Friday night. You won’t be sorry.”
The minute Rohan went inside his office, I swiveled in my chair and called up Naina. “I agreed to go out on a date only because I didn’t want to keep saying no. He’s been a good friend.” I didn’t tell her that Rohan had kissed me the night before.
“What are you so scared of?”
“What if it’s a bad date? It’ll affect the conference and my friendship with Rohan.”
“Rohan can keep his personal and professional life separate. He’s not a fucking imbecile like fuck face Dubois.” Naina grunted. “Men like Rohan, don’t be cold with him. Give him some sugar.”
“Naina….”
“What time are you meeting Rohan?”
“At 9 p.m.”
“Awesome. Wear something sexy. And don’t play hard to get.”
“Stop it!”
“No, you stop kidding yourself, Ahana. You guys have a fiery chemistry. I can feel the heat all the way across a room.”
My breathing was loud and heavy just from thinking about Rohan. I hung up on Naina.
* * *
When I went home that evening, I pulled out my yoga mat in Naina’s living room and did a headstand for ten minutes. I needed clarity and peace. I realized that conference preparations were nearing the end. My list of tasks was mostly crossed off.
I took a shower and burnt some sage after the at-home yoga practice. I logged into my personal messages and the online chat group after eating a salad for dinner. Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon played on loop. I messaged Tanya and asked whether she was doing OK. She hadn’t heard from Amanda.
Jay noticed I was online. He sent me a private message. “I’d love to meet you. I am not avoiding you, though I can understand why you might feel that way.”
“I didn’t say that, Jay. I know you have your reasons.” I was getting good at reverse-manipulating Jay.
“I’m planning to come and meet with you in person, Ahana.”
“Oh.” I took a deep breath and paused for a second. This is new. “When are you planning to come down to New Orleans?” Naina and my entire family were in NOLA. Jay couldn’t touch a single strand of my hair on their turf.
“Today is Tuesday. I was thinking Thursday. I will come up to New York.”
I took a sip of water. “Really? NYC?” I felt my throat close.
“Yes, milady.”
Does he know that Naina isn’t in town? Does he know I’m alone? How will I manage my first meeting with him? I pushed my thoughts aside and replied.
“OK. Whatever works best for you, Jay.”
“You couldn’t be more unenthusiastic about my visit. Money is tight. I might have to crash at a friend’s.”
What did Jay expect—that I would ask him to stay with me? Asshole!
I wrote back after a few minutes. “Not true.” I ran my tongue over my lips. I couldn’t let Jay know that I was onto something. “I’m surprised is all. A beautiful surprise nevertheless.” I feigned happiness by ending my message with three purple heart emojis.
“I’m taking all this effort to come see you. You have no idea what I’ve been through. My own father betrayed me. It’s difficult for me to trust anyone. You are the one person who makes me feel sane, Ahana.”
“A surprise is not a bad word, Jay. All I asked was about your plan.” I couldn’t let him suspect that I didn’t trust him any longer.
“You have changed, Ahana. Our friendship isn’t the same anymore.”
Jay was an intuitive man. I knew what I had to do to win back his faith. I cringed as I typed, “I miss our chats, Jay. But it seems that chatting with me upsets you more than it makes you happy. That’s why I am cautious about how much I say to you.”
I felt victorious when he wrote back. “C’mon, hon. It’s not your fault. You have been the best friend I’ve had in years. Human interaction is not my strength lately, so I am damaging my own abilities.”
“We’ll work through whatever is bothering you, Jay.”
“Yeah. We’ll order bottles of wine and throw rocks at fat people.”
Jay’s weight obsession was harsh.
“You can tell me about your dark secrets, Ahana.”
“My secrets?” My face turned into a twisted knot.
“You never tell me about what’s really on your mind, Ahana. If I can’t help you, my best friend, what’s the point of my existence? I feel
like you talk to everyone else but me about your life.”
What aspect of my life is he referring to? Focus, Ahana. This is all part of the plan. You can’t lose him. I stretched out my legs and yawned. “You know me so well.” I was grossed out by my fake empathy toward Jay. “Naina’s wedding is coming up. And I feel broken. I hate attending weddings because there are complete and happy families there. I’ll never have that with Mumma gone.” I sent him three sad faces emojis, with one crying.
He wrote back immediately, “I can relate to that. I went to my friend’s kid’s birthday party last weekend, and the minute they started to pose for family pictures, I felt broken.”
And he is back in. Score: Ahana-2, Jay 0. I made a victory sign with both my hands.
“Thank you for caring, Jay.”
“I care. A lot. I wish you would trust me. I have been an open book—told you everything about my life. I feel like a failure in this one-sided friendship where you give me advice but I can’t help you. I feel like I am burdening you. And for a guy who is depressed, being a burden on others is only doing damage.”
“That’s not true. You have helped me plenty with Mumma’s demise. You showed me how to remain strong. Thank you, Jay.” I put a finger inside my mouth to gesture vomiting.
“Don’t thank me. I’m glad to be of help to you. You have done so much for me.”
A few more email exchanges later, it was settled that early evening on Friday would work well for both of us. Jay said that he would meet me at Naina’s apartment.
How does he know where Naina lives? While I deliberated my response, Jay wrote, “What, you don’t trust your dear buddy?”
Just when I thought I had everything under control, Jay caught me off guard. I thought of believable reasons. “It’s not that. This isn’t my place, so I’d much rather not impose on my cousin.”
“But isn’t your cousin already in New Orleans?”
Jay knew Naina’s schedule. I felt spiders crawl all over my body.
“Yeah, but doing the right thing in someone’s absence is more important than doing it in their presence, no?”
“I understand.” Jay typed fast. “How about I email you a few options?”
“Sounds good. Or I could send you a few too, if that’s more convenient?”
“Nah, you are in my city, Ahana. Let me show you around.” This time, he ended his sentence with a smiley.
I decided to sleep over the conversation and speak with Naina in the morning. I chose not to share anything with Rohan. He and I were in an interesting, unexplored space in our friendship. I didn’t want conversations about Jay to spoil anything.
I was massaging my forehead and processing my conversation with Jay when the phone rang.
“Hello, madame!” Naina spoke in a French accent.
How often the universe conspired to send Naina my way right when I was either at my lowest, or seeking advice.
“You aren’t laughing. What’s going on?”
I updated Naina on the phone conversation with Jay. She heard me out. It was only after I told her that Jay wanted to meet with me in a place of his choice, she yelled, “You are out of your fucking mind, Ahana!”
“Naina…”
“Sever ties. Block him. Disappear the way Amanda did. Why meet with this bastard?”
“Naina…”
“He is a fucking psycho.”
“I need to do this.” I spoke from a place of conviction.
“You’re being foolish! That asshole knows I’m not in town. He’s been keeping tabs on your life. You tell me he’s violated two other women we know of. God alone knows what he has in store for you.”
“I am done with men scaring me and putting me in a place I don’t deserve or want.”
“You think he’ll walk up to you and confess?”
“Naina, I’m meeting with him in the middle of the afternoon for chai, not alcohol. I’ll be safe.”
“I am coming back to New York and accompanying you on this date with fuck face Dubois.”
I breathed hard. “No! You stay in NOLA.” I poured myself a glass of water.
“Fine, then call Rohan.”
“Keep him out of this.” Some of the water spilled.
“You can’t expect me not to do anything, Ahana…” Naina continued to share her opinion on the subject.
I wiped the mess and left the dishrag on the kitchen counter. As I walked up to the living room windows, I looked at the sky and saw a few stars. I tried to touch the stars through the windowpane. Mumma. I knew she was watching over me. In that moment, I knew I had my mom’s blessings to sort out my life.
“I have a date with Rohan that evening; I don’t want to say anything to him about Jay.” I spoke firmly.
“Jay is bad news!”
I sighed. “Yes, I might have agreed to meet with a criminal and put myself in danger. But I am tired of hiding. I stayed quiet and accommodated Dev, but what did it get me? I want to walk into the mouth of the lion this time and show myself that he has no power over me.”
Naina spoke with patience. “I get it.”
“Here is my backup plan: I want you to call me every twenty to forty minutes. This way you know I am safe. There is no phone tracking on my iPhone, but I’ll give you my iCloud password if you ever need to find out where I am but can’t reach me.”
“Are you sure there’s no other reason?”
“Yes! I am compelled to see this through to the end and find out what Jay wants from me.”
The week went by quickly and slowly. I clocked in late hours to finish the last-minute bit for the conference. And also, so I didn’t have the time to obsess about my meeting with Jay or date with Rohan on Friday.
- 25 -
My meeting on Friday afternoon ran over and the subways were running slower than usual. I had no time to go home and change before my meeting with Jay. So, clad in my work clothes—a fire-colored skirt, beige silk blouse, brown jacket, and Prada totes, one of the last handbags Mumma had bought for me—I got off from the 1 train at 110th street and Cathedral Parkway.
The streets were wider and the buildings around had a lot of character in this part of the city. But I didn’t see families pushing strollers, walking dogs, or business professionals settling in for coffee meetings at any of the cafes. I was irritated that Jay had picked a spot in an out-of-the-way neighborhood for a 4 p.m. meeting.
The time was 4:20 p.m., and it was still bright out. The trees were a vibrant shade of yellow, orange, and red. Rohan had told me that the fall colors were rarely this intense until October’s end. “You brought a splash of Indian vibrancy with you, Matron.”
Just thinking about Rohan calmed me down. I took a deep breath and walked toward my rendezvous point.
When I entered Café Angelique, a pretty French café not too far from Columbia University, the bells jangled. I surveyed the room and saw a man with a cap that read JETS. Even though he was facing the main entrance, his head was bent and his gaze was fixed on his phone with his back not straight.
From whatever I had seen in the few selfies Jay had shared, he always had his Jets cap on. Naina maintained, “I think he’s bald and conscious of it.”
Was the guy Jay? I slowly walked up to him, “Excuse me.”
Jay looked up from his phone. He’d always bragged about his good looks, but he seemed so much older and tired in person. He didn’t take off his cap. His eyes were sagging and it seemed like he had a receding hairline.
He got up to hug me, but I inched away. I quickly offered to shake his hand and said a few lines from The Catcher in the Rye. “I am always saying, ‘Glad to’ve met you,’ to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.’”
“Are you unhappy to meet me?” He looked above my eyebrows. His voice sounded harsh—like steel wool scraping the bottom of a steel saucepan.
We had barely spoken a sentence or two with each other and arguments were already budding. Because, once
again, Jay didn’t recognize Salinger’s famous words when he had repeatedly told me, “I have every line from The Catcher in the Rye memorized.”
“Salinger!” I smiled so hard my cheeks started to hurt.
“Ohh.” He narrowed his eyes. “You know how distracted I am these days. Didn’t realize.”
His mendacity came naturally to him. Jay was a formidable adversary; he could think on his feet. Maybe, somewhere I had been hoping that Jay would be a little bit stupid—why else would he hit on three women in the therapy group and never once think that he would eventually get caught?
“C’mon, hon. Give me a hug.” Jay held me in a tight embrace for a few minutes. At one point, he lifted me off the ground. I hated his touch. He smelled of nothing.
I disentangled myself from his arms. “I’m sorry for being late. The trains were a mess.”
“‘If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.’” Jay laughed loudly.
“Ah, Salinger.” I put my bag down and unbuttoned my gray autumn jacket. The dialogue he had memorized and come prepared to use, perhaps. I hung my jacket behind the chair I was sitting on.
Jay complimented how I looked, several times, which made me uncomfortable. I brought up work—he didn’t say much about what he did. He shifted in his seat as he talked about his latest hobby: coin collecting. This was the tenth or eleventh hobby Jay had shared with me since we became friends online. His intense enthusiasm about a new hobby would begin as abruptly as it would end, all inside of a few months.
I felt awkward sitting in a cafe, using its space and not ordering anything. But Jay seemed unfettered. When I got up to order a chai for myself, I turned to him. “Would you like something?”
He laughed again. I didn’t understand why he laughed when nothing funny was being said.
“Sure. A slice of their cheesecake and espresso.”
With Rohan, I had to fight to pay. Sometimes, I would let him win because I didn’t have the energy to protest. But Jay didn’t even pretend to touch his wallet. I didn’t mind buying, but his sense of entitlement intrigued me.
He inspected my handbag as I pulled out my wallet. “Prada! Madame, you are loaded.”
Louisiana Catch Page 24
