“My Binji? You know her?” It felt like someone had shoved Cullie off a cliff. With nothing but ice to break her fall.
“Yes. Well, no. I talked to her, but she refused to meet me. And I really need to—”
“You sought me out to get to her.” The urge to push her hand to her mouth was strong, to turn her emotions into physical reactions the way she’d picked up from him. In too short a time. “The past weeks . . . running into me in the parking lot, it was all just part of a plan.” To trap her. To trap Binji.
“No! Well, yes.” He reached for her arm again, but she pulled it away. He was never touching her again. How badly she’d wanted to touch him made her sick. “I . . . I had tracked her down to this community, but they wouldn’t tell me where I could find her, and that’s when I met you. I didn’t seek you out for her. I swear. I didn’t know who you were until you told me your name.”
How could she believe anything he said? How would she believe anyone ever again? “And then you thought you could get to her through me.”
Silence.
Then, “This is incredibly important. Your grandmother is part of something huge. I just need one chance to explain it to her. I just need to meet her once.”
His words were a dagger. A cannonball. Her chest felt crushed. Thoughts spun like eddies in her brain.
“But she told you that she didn’t want to meet you. So you pretended to be my friend to get what you wanted.” All of it had been a lie.
His eyes flooded with pain again, and the stupid hope that he hadn’t been pretending tugged at her.
“You have to understand how important this is.”
Oh God, that was all he cared about. Whatever this project was. She remembered the way he had clutched the journals to his chest. “Tell me then. Tell me why it’s important.”
“I can’t. I have to tell her first.”
Right. He didn’t care that he had used her, that he’d made a fool of her. And she’d let him.
“I told you how Steve used me to take the most important thing away from me. And all the while you were doing the same thing. You know what? Shloka means nothing compared to Binji. I would destroy Shloka ten times over myself to protect her.”
“I’m not going to hurt her.”
“But hurting me was no problem.”
Shame dimmed his fiery eyes. “If that were true, I would have gone into that elevator with you. I would have let you take me to her. I didn’t. Because I couldn’t risk this.” He traced the space between them.
“You couldn’t risk this.” She was laughing now. And it hurt far more than tears ever had. How the hell had she been so stupid? Again.
“Cullie, please. These three weeks, they’ve been . . . it’s the first time I’ve been happy, really happy, since I lost my mother. Since I lost my grandfather. For the first time, I understand what . . . please, you know this doesn’t happen. You know how we feel around each other isn’t easy to find. This . . . this is what you’ve been trying to pin down with your app. But how we feel is not something an algorithm can replicate. You said yourself it’s an endless loop of trying.”
“Stop it. Stop using my life against me. Feel like what? Like a step stool to reach what you want?”
“I wasn’t using you.” He squeezed his eyes shut again, unable to keep believing his own lies. “Well, I was at first. But that’s not all this was.”
Maybe. But that was the part that ruined everything. Something cold was spreading through her, gripping her from the inside out. “It doesn’t matter. I can never trust you again.” She started walking away from him, then spun around again. “Stay away from me. And stay away from Binji.”
“I can’t do that,” he said. For a moment she thought he meant he couldn’t stay away from her. But she was wrong. “I just want to give her something. Something I’ve worked on for years, something my grandfather died without ever being able to give her. She’ll want this. Trust me. Please.”
It was the words trust me that made Cullie laugh as she let the lobby door slam behind her before hot tears started streaming down her face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ALY
“I hate that everyone wants to save me from myself.” That was one of the last things Bhanu ever said to me. I wish I’d had a chance to tell her that I’d give anything to make sure she never let anyone change her even a little.
From the journal of Oscar Seth
A blush warmed Aly’s cheeks. She still couldn’t believe she’d kissed her ex-husband. Fine, it was more than kissed. They’d made out like college kids high on hormones, ravenous for relief. He’d cooked for her and cleaned as promised and played his old keyboard that she hadn’t been able to throw away. And hummed their favorite song in his beautiful voice.
He’d asked to come over to talk. Instead they’d put their mouths to other uses.
It was the white linen shirt.
It was the fact that he could cook a pasta bolognese better than anyone.
It was too many pieces of a shared life.
It was celebrating their daughter’s being in love for the first time. Or in like enough to bring a boy home.
It was the fact that Aly just couldn’t replicate the way her body felt with Ashish.
This doesn’t mean anything, she’d told him after.
He’d suppressed a world of feelings behind his grin. The bastard knew.
But simply because their bodies had forgotten the hurt didn’t mean the way they’d wounded each other’s hearts could be healed.
Finally, all these years later, Aly had what she’d fought so hard for.
She had watched the promo video for Weekend Plans with Aly on repeat. Joyce had not been able to make contact with Meryl’s people, and somehow everyone seemed to have come around to accepting that Aly would be doing the interview. The promo was going live today. The anticipation felt sharply joyous inside her, the pleasure almost painful. She was going to watch it with the team before leaving for dinner at Bindu’s.
Bindu had been in one of her cooking trances for days. It had been years since she’d done this. Painstakingly brought together a full Goan meal. Grinding coconut for the xacuti, scaling fish for a crisp fry, fermenting rice for sanna, caramelizing layer upon layer of bebinca, slowly thickening the milk for serradura, and on and on. Hunger had been gnawing at Aly’s insides for what seemed like an age. Years and years of denial, and she was starved for fullness.
Suddenly, she had the unbearable urge for Mummy to know it was happening. She had ten minutes before the promo aired. Without thinking about it, she called her mother.
“You sound happy,” her mother said as soon as Aly said hello. At least she’d gotten something about her daughter right.
“I am,” Aly said, letting it show in earnest.
“So Ash and you are back together!”
Wow, Karen was on a roll today.
“I’m getting the segment.”
If the pause was disappointed, Aly didn’t care. “Are you sure?” her mother said finally.
“Would I call you if I wasn’t?”
“There’s no reason to be rude. I just want to make sure you’re not going to be disappointed again. You do foolish things when that work of yours frustrates you. And you have a lot on the line right now.”