by Sonali Dev
“Hi . . . Excuse me. Do you go to Green Brook High?” the soccer coach called, jogging up to them.
The boy gave the barest nod and Coach Clarence stuck out his hand. “Do you play for a club?”
The boy shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and shook his head. “I’ll see you around,” he threw at Ashna, and started to walk away.
The coach ran after him. “Hold up a minute. I’m Coach Clarence. And you are?”
He looked over the coach’s shoulder and saw Ashna still watching him. How could anyone look away from him?
“Frederico.” He did not add a last name, and he looked straight at her when he said it.
Ashna’s insides did a skipping thing she had never experienced before. His name melted on his tongue and seemed to flow through her blood. A ripple of something too sensitive for comfort ran across her skin. She blushed, and his brows did that curious folding-together thing again.
“I want you to try out for the team tomorrow,” Coach Clarence said.
The tryouts had closed months ago. Coach had never taken on a player midseason. The man barely spared a glance for anyone, and Ashna had never heard him use that tone. Not even with his star players.
“Four P.M. tomorrow. My office, Mr. Frederico.” He held out his hand again and kept it there until the boy took it.
Coach Clarence shook his hand with both of his, the way fans shook the hands of celebrities, and went back to the pitch beaming.
“You’re not going to go to his office tomorrow, are you?” she said.
“Did you want me to go?” Another question.
Why would I care? That was the logical thing to say. I always want you to do what makes you happy. That was what she really wanted to say, but it made no sense to have that thought about a stranger.
In the end she said, “Why don’t you want to play?”
This speaking-in-questions affliction had to be contagious.
Ashna counted her breaths as he looked at her for what felt like the longest moment ever. How had she thought his eyes held nothing? She couldn’t even remember the person who’d had that thought. In the space of ten minutes she had forgotten who she was before he had found her. Before he said his name that way, all those consonants tilting up at the ends, as though the language she had spoken forever had suddenly become poetic, potent, beautiful.
For the first time in Ashna’s life she was aware of the air around her. There was a glow to it, all the particles shimmery glitter. She looked down at her feet to make sure they were still on the ground and wiggled her toes inside her shoes. It felt so much like floating that finding her feet not dangling in the air was bit of a shock.
It wasn’t until he answered her question that she knew her life would never again be the same.
“Maybe I don’t want to play for the same reason that you were hiding beneath those bleachers?”
Chapter Eight
Ashna had once hidden in the trunk of a car when the chauffeur drove her home from school through a crowd of rabid journalists, just before she left Sripore forever. And now she was on Good Morning America. How on earth had this happened?
Well, she wasn’t exactly on it, she was in her room folding and refolding her laundry as Good Morning America played on the TV, with the hosts discussing her. The jolly bunch couldn’t stop cracking up about her expression when Rico walked into her kitchen. As if that weren’t mortifying enough, they zoomed in on her face and froze the frame. Her pupils were dilated, her mouth agape.
To Ashna, that face said: What the hell is this jerk doing here?
To everyone else, that face seemed to say: I’ve never laid eyes on a being this hot!
No, seriously that’s what the very chirpy blond person was saying. Those exact words. Ashna threw a bra at the TV.
They zoomed in on Rico on his knees in front of her, looking up at her with those damn eyes as though his heart were in his mouth, his hand gripping the knife like someone showing off some ancient dagger-wielding martial art moves.
Rubbing her knee, she avoided looking down at her toes. The digits were all firmly attached to her foot. Thanks to him. Also thanks to him, that foot was in her mouth for all of America to see.
“I’d drop a knife on my foot too if I saw that walk into my kitchen, if you know what I mean!” the dark-haired one said, winks flying.
Well, Ashna would be glad to lend her the knife.
The Misono people had sent her a new set of their best. The nerve! Apparently their sales had seen a sharp uptick. What was wrong with the world they lived in? They had asked her to model for an ad for them. She’d rather chop off her toes than feed into the madness.
It had been a week since that stupid clip had gone viral. Why was it still everywhere? Wasn’t this the age of overnight sensations and flashes in the pan?
She looked at her underwear drawer. Everything was rolled up and arranged in a warm-to-cool rainbow of colored silk, just like her closet. She adjusted one of the rolls so it lined up perfectly with the one next to it. When she had left for Paris after Baba’s death, Mina Kaki had insisted on her seeing a therapist there. He had diagnosed her with PTSD resulting in acute clinical depression and anxiety, triggered by losing a parent so violently. He had encouraged her to use her need for order to help ground herself. Usually organizing things did help her calm herself when the fear of panic loomed. Right now? No such luck.
Although what she was feeling right now wasn’t exactly panic. It was rage. How dare he? How dare he show up at her restaurant?
Now, after all these years. Now, when she no longer thought about him. Ever.
For all the things he’d been, he’d always been proud. Yet he had never given her a hard time about keeping him secret from her family. They had both been comfortable with secrets. She’d believed that they had both wanted to—needed to—keep what was between them private, because the intensity of it had felt so overwhelming, so intimate.
How wrong she had been about him. In the end, the intensity of their connection had meant nothing. Having his pride hurt was all it had taken for him to betray her. One thing she knew for certain was that she would never depend on anyone that much again, or let anyone abandoning her cripple her that way.
She pulled her trembling hand away from her knee. She couldn’t let that time in her life emerge again. She turned off the TV and called China.
“Hello, superstar!”
“I can’t do it.” Ashna hugged her phone to her ear with both hands as though it were a puppy in pain.
When China didn’t respond, Ashna started to pace the length of her room. Outside her window the town was waking up; newborn sunlight caught the copper finial on the roof of Curried Dreams. Would she ever be able to look at her own restaurant again without seeing Rico slam down on his hurt knee?
“You have to find someone else. Please.”
“Ashna! What are you talking about?” China said finally.
“You have to understand. It’s . . . it’s . . .” How on earth had this happened? Gold and green eyes flooded her thoughts.
“You can’t back out. Not now,” China said, her tone unshakable.
It didn’t matter how unshakable China was, Ashna couldn’t do this.
“My . . . my mother needs me.” Dear God, she was going to be reborn as a frog in her next birth for this—the Hindu version of hell. “It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s Shobi! You know how things are with her.” As a matter of fact, China had no idea how things were with Shobi. Like everyone else in Ashna’s life, China simply avoided the subject of Ashna’s mostly missing mother as though it were an unfortunately located wart.
China responded with silence.
Ashna soldiered on. “Well, she just won this crazy prestigious award, it’s the Indian version of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She wants me to be there when she receives it. I have to go to India. She needs me there. Shobi never needs anyone!” God, she wasn’t just going to be a frog, but her frog self was going to get s
truck down by lightning and burned to a crisp.
Why hadn’t she just told China the truth? Rico’s grown-up bearded jaw and man bun did a slow spin around her head, and a groan rose deep inside her. Then she thought about having to call Shobi and backtrack and the groan threatened to turn into a wail. This entire thing about being stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea was every bit as impossible as it sounded on paper. Only, the devil was green-and-golden-eyed and the sea was an ocean of maternal disappointment.
Shobi had been persistent since their lovely last call. Just today she’d called five times with her usual Shoban Gaikwad Raje disregard for little things, like what others wanted. The fact that Ashna was not answering her calls was just making her push harder. Or maybe Shobi had seen the footage of Ashna maiming one of the world’s most popular athletes. If she hadn’t watched the video yet, that would make her the only human with an internet connection who hadn’t.
The video had been viewed over five million times. That was five million people who’d seen her, a professional chef, drop a surgical-grade knife at the sight of a man every major magazine had declared the sexiest man alive.
And she had landed him in the hospital.
Or he had landed himself there while trying to keep her toes from being severed.
He was a hero.
She was a wreck.
Again.
“Plus, I don’t have a celebrity anymore. I broke mine, remember?”
China laughed. “You did not break him. He’s fine. The doctors drained his knee and he’s as good as new.”
Ashna ignored the relief that loosened the tightness in her chest at hearing he was fine and tried again. “China, I’m not—”
“Oh!” China cut her off as though she’d just had the greatest epiphany. “Now everything makes perfect sense!”
No, nothing made sense. Or at least none of this should make sense to China.
China lived in the apartment above the yoga studio next door to Curried Dreams. The yoga studio had been in China’s family for over a hundred years. Before anyone in America had any idea what yoga or yoga pants were, as her sister India, who now ran the studio, loved to say.
After Ashna had moved to California, China, India, and their brother Siddhartha were the only children she had been friends with aside from her cousins. But of course, like her family, they hadn’t known about her and Rico.
She had never breathed a word about him to anyone.
Her two secrets in high school. Soccer and Rico.
“What makes perfect sense?” Ashna asked, working hard to sound nonchalant.
“Well, I was wondering how you agreed to do the show. Now I get why.” China sounded positively impressed with herself for solving that most challenging of puzzles. “Your mom wanted you to go to India for her award thing, and you used this as an excuse to get out of that.”
Having friends was incredibly annoying. Good thing Ashna had so few. There was no point denying it. Plus, when it came to Shobi, the less she said the better. Every time Ashna opened her mouth about her, people drew all sorts of conclusions.
China chuckled. “Here I was thinking you were doing it to help a friend—namely me.” More chuckling, because of course China wasn’t actually upset. Who could be upset with a friend who always did as you asked? “And I was so thrilled when you got the luck of the draw.” China made an appreciative sound. “Although none of us at the channel can figure out how the powers that be were able to get someone like him on the show. Unless of course it has to do with what happened in your kitchen.”
There it went again, Ashna’s heartbeat, speeding up all the way to bursting. “I have no idea what you’re going on about,” she mumbled with more of that blasted nonchalance.
China wasn’t listening, she was having one of her conversations with herself. China vs. China, her siblings called it. “Or maybe it’s the surgery. Of course! His injury has caused him to retire earlier than he expected, and he’s looking to do something different with his life.”
And a Food Network show was what he had settled on? Ashna wasn’t a betting woman, but she’d bet her restaurant on the fact that Rico wasn’t looking to be a cooking channel star.
China stayed on the runaway train of her thoughts. “I can’t even imagine what they’re paying him. Do you think he needs the money? He sure doesn’t look like someone who does. I mean, just having someone line up that beard probably costs my month’s salary. See, that’s it, these celebrities can blow through money on all sorts of things. Celebrity does that, it makes your tastes all kinds of perverse and over the top.” The sound she made was anything but disgusted. “Did you see him, though? I mean, I’d love to see him do perverse things.”
Ashna cleared her throat. “Isn’t that wrong, given that he isn’t a woman?”
“Well, he’s beautiful. I’m a lesbian, not blind.”
Okay, time to turn China’s train around and bring her back on track. “If he can’t do the show will they still pay him?” Could it really be that Rico needed the money?
“He’s doing the show. And he’ll be fine so long as he doesn’t go slamming and sliding on his knee trying to heroically keep women from slicing off their toes at the sight of him.”
Ashna groaned. Inside she was wailing. She fell back on her bed.
Her ex–best friend let out a full-throated guffaw. “I get that he’s hot and all, but girl, keep your panties on!”
“Shut up. The knife slipped. It was an accident.”
“That’s not what the camera saw.”
Ashna jumped up again and started pacing again. “Listen, China. Please please please please, do not make me do this. Please. I cannot get on a set with him after that. Please. Please!” If it sounded like spineless, pathetic begging, that’s exactly what it was.
“Ashna, love,” China said with not a whit of humor left in her voice, “these are literally the best viewership ratings the channel has ever had. I mean ever. Like ten times over, ever. The CEO had me in her office yesterday. They’re doubling what they’re paying you. She just gave me a huge bonus. They will do anything to make sure you don’t try to get out of your contract. After that video going viral”—she made an excited squeaking sound—“the chance of you getting voted off anytime soon has become almost zero. You can actually win this! I’m sure the rest of the chefs aren’t thrilled, but they’d be stupid to not understand that everyone is going to be tuning in to watch. So, win-win for everyone!”
Ashna didn’t care. As China rhapsodized the impending success of her show at the expense of The Video—and Ashna’s self-respect—Ashna made her way down to the kitchen and pulled out her tea jars. She spooned a little tulsi, the slightest pinch of ginger powder, and Darjeeling loose leaf into a strainer cup, drawing strength from the alchemy of those flavors mingling. She’d find another way to save Curried Dreams. Just a few weeks ago the show hadn’t been an option. She would pretend those weeks hadn’t happened. God, how she needed those weeks to not have happened.
“You don’t understand,” Ashna said. If everyone was going to accuse her of trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, she might as well go with it. “The award is a really big deal to Shobi. She doesn’t want it to look like she has no family to share it with. It’s important to her to show everyone how she has it all.” A blatant lie. Shobi was, in fact, a vocal advocate of women not pressuring themselves to “have it all.”
It was yet another pet lecture: Men don’t have to choose between family and achievement, so why should women? Every time we talk about women having it all, we focus the conversation on whether or not women should choose one over the other, which reinforces the problem it’s trying to solve.
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” China said, suddenly dead serious. “When the head honchos called me into a meeting this morning, giving me a bonus and you a raise wasn’t the only thing they wanted to talk about. I was the one who brought you in last minute; they know we kn
ow each other. I promised them you weren’t going anywhere. I know I’ve been saying this, but I’m not kidding around. If you leave the show, I will lose my job.”
ASHNA IS HOLDING Trisha’s hand. Her terrified grip is too tight.
Trisha tugs Ashna closer to the cliff that drops straight and sharp into the ocean. The idea of throwing herself off it makes Ashna’s stomach bounce up to her chest.
Nisha sits cross-legged on the blanket, playing Three Two Five with Mina Kaki and Mamma. Nisha is uninterested in getting her new swimsuit wet; it’s a pretty purple with yellow swirls. Trisha and Ashna wear sporty navy Speedos.
Every one of Mina Kaki’s features is strained with worry. “Girls, you don’t have to do it,” she calls. “Come back here and we’ll play Bluff instead.” Mina Kaki uses her high-pitched protective voice.
Next to her, Mamma widens her eyes in reproach. “Stop transferring your phobias to the children, Mina.”
“You let Vansh and Yash do it,” Trisha says in her defiant voice as she tugs harder at Ashna’s hand. “Let’s go before she stops us from doing this too,” she whispers to Ashna.
“I don’t want to.”
Shobi stands and Ashna’s heart sinks at the determined look on her face. “Go, girls. Do it. There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Trisha squeals. “I love you, Shobi Kaki!”
Shobi grins. “I love you back, Shasha bear. You’re my brave tigress!”
Mina stands. “Come over here, Ashi. You don’t have to jump if you’re scared.”
“Why would she not want to?” Mamma says, a frown twisting her mouth. “You want to, right, Ashna?”
Ashna freezes. She can’t answer her mother, but she tugs her shaking hand out of Trisha’s.
Trisha runs screaming to the edge by herself ready to throw herself off . . .
ASHNA SPRANG AWAKE on the couch, her heart skittering in her chest. Her phone was vibrating in her hand. She touched her jeans. No swimsuit, thank God. The pitch darkness of the living room made the flashing of her cell phone dance like a strobe light against her black T-shirt.
