Before he could answer, she disconnected and let herself back into the safety of the hallway. As she waited for the elevator, she put herself back together in the mirror.
“Damn you, Oscar,” she said to her own reflection, fully aware of how dramatic she was being. “How could you let this happen?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CULLIE
The woman who cleaned the room that we used to view the day’s rushes found some stills from Poornima that the AD left lying around when he went to grab chai. The woman was Bhanu’s cousin. What she turned out to be was the inevitable blade that unravels every deception.
From the journal of Oscar Seth
It was hard for someone like Cullie to fill out a profile on a dating app. She had no interests. Unless you counted coding, but that was more like listing “living” or “breathing” as an interest. Finally, unable to bear how much it annoyed her to see all the various things people were supposed to feel passionate about, she picked animals.
She liked animals well enough. They were certainly easier to deal with than humans. Her family had had a dog when Cullie was growing up. Duke had passed away when Cullie was fifteen. He’d been her best friend her whole life—something Radha Maushi’s son, Bharat, would take umbrage to. Because he was the kind of person who’d use the word umbrage in casual conversation, but also because he shared Duke’s title as Cullie’s best friend.
Mom and Dad had both been too heartbroken to think about another dog after that. They all were. Well, Binji had thought Cullie needed another dog. But Binji never pushed Mom and Dad about anything. It probably had something to do with her awful parents, who’d turned her into the kind of parent and grandparent who “let her children live their own lives.”
Plus, Binji worked hard to never be pushy about what Cullie needed in terms of her mental health （a term Cullie had started to use in the context of herself only after therapy）。 Unlike Cullie’s parents, Binji listened. Which was why Cullie had been able to tell her that she didn’t want another dog. She couldn’t replace Duke.
Cullie still missed him. Mom and Dad had adopted him from a drive to find homes for dogs orphaned in Haiti that Mom had been doing a story on for the campus newspaper she worked at as a grad student. The traumatized poodle had turned into their fat and happy baby.
The good news was that never getting another dog saved them all from a custody battle over a dog. Not that Mom and Dad would have battled over anything, so eager were they to prove their own maturity. An “amicable” divorce was supposed to be easy on children. But Cullie wouldn’t describe her parents’ strangely bloodless tearing apart of their family as easy. Her therapist had pointed out that a silent disease with invisible symptoms could be just as painful as a visible one. Cullie was glad she’d found Dr. Amita Tandon.
Cullie was also glad, and shocked, that Mom was helping her with the app research. Which meant that Cullie had to pull on her big-girl panties and give it an honest shot too.
Choosing animals as her passion had resulted in hundreds of matches. An alarming number of them men who seemed to spend an unhealthy amount of time inside a gym. This was not an affliction Cullie shared. She was completely at peace with her squishy tummy and her early-onset arm flaps.
Enter: narrowing her search to people who abhorred exercise. And bingo! She had nine matches. Extra bonus, the Neuroband registered true elation when she’d claimed herself as unhealthy.
Gaurav Amin and Cullie had texted a few times before deciding to meet at the food truck pavilion in Naples. Just as she got there, an Indian guy who seemed to be searching the crowd made eye contact. He was kinda hot, in a skinny, nerdy way （Mahatma Gandhi glasses, hello!） and surprisingly similar to his picture.
Making his way to her, he pulled her into a hug. A bit much, but instead of her usual kick of discomfort when people made unsolicited physical contact, it felt friendly. Unthreatening. As though he’d known her for years.
“Cullie?” he asked, after he’d hugged her, which was a bit backward.
“Who’s Cullie?” she said, startling him before he burst into a big belly laugh. He had a dad laugh, the laugh of an older person, self-claiming and unabashed.
“Hot and funny?” He did an elbow pump.
Unfamiliar flutters sparkled in Cullie’s belly. Could one fall in love at first sight? She felt lighter than she had in a long time.
Her Neuroband was in its perfect zone. Heartbeat, blood pressure, adrenaline, dopamine, all of it nicely buzzing along in harmony.
Good thing Binji had forced her to put on lipstick, because she even felt hot.
Let’s highlight that gorgeous mouth, her grandmother had said.
You’re only saying that because I have your mouth, Cullie had whined, but she’d let Binji hand her one of those glossy lip stains that stayed put until you scrubbed it off with industrial cleaner. Binji was a vocal fan of specialized cosmetics for aging faces. Cullie agreed: her grandmother’s cosmetics were the best things ever.
Now, thanks to Binji, Gaurav’s gaze did a quick and adorably discreet dip to Cullie’s mouth. The bubbly feeling in her belly did another happy skip.
“So Cullie is an Indian name, right?” he asked.
She wasn’t thrilled it was his first question, but he looked so earnest, she decided she was going to stop judging him and follow Bharat’s advice from their phone call this morning and “let this date happen.”
“Yup. But my parents decided to spell it using American phonetics. I believe the Indian spelling is K-A-L-I. Which would turn into Kaali on our American tongues.”
She was babbling, possibly for the first time in her life, but he grinned, so she couldn’t bring herself to care. “That would make you the goddess of war instead of an unblossomed flower bud.”
“Yup, completely different vibe.”
“You look like a Cullie,” he said, a sincere smile crinkling his eyes.
She smiled back. “Honestly, everyone who knows me thinks I’m more Kaali than Cullie. You speak Hindi?” He’d known the meaning of her name without her having to tell him.
“Yes, my parents refuse to speak to me in any other language. It used to annoy me when I was younger. But it means I can speak the language my family speaks and my parents can’t keep secrets from me by speaking in Hindi. So win-win.”
“You should teach me. I speak very little Marathi, but I understand it. My parents and grandmother use Hindi for secrets. My childhood was filled with, ‘Is ladki ka kya karna hai?’” She knew her accent was terrible, but it made him laugh that adorable laugh again. “But I do know the words to all the Hindi songs because my family is obsessed with those. And I only know what those mean because my grandmother loves translating the lyrics.” Binji could spend hours explaining every nuance of the romantic ballads.
He started humming a song, and to both their delights she recognized it. “Dekha tujhe to ye samjha jaana . . . ,” he sang, his accent sounding like Dad’s and Binji’s.
“Hota hai prem mastaana,” she joined in, sounding terribly off key.
They laughed, their laughter threading together seamlessly, unlike their singing voices.
“I love that song,” she admitted.