He gave a bitter laugh. “You know very little about me.”
Stunned, Meena wrapped her arms around herself. He was right, she had résumé bullets and a biography filled in by the aunties and Neha’s notes, an occasional anecdote about his friendship with Neha. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Everything has really been about me when it comes to us.”
He’d gotten her out of her apartment, introduced her to his friends, given her advice, been her sounding board. She’d taken what he’d offered but hadn’t reciprocated. She couldn’t think of a single time she’d centered the conversation around Sam.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.
“Doesn’t make it not true.”
He nodded. “It’s fine. You were the one with the existential crisis.”
She laughed. It burst out of her, and it felt good, like a release. “When you put it like that.”
Sam took her hand again. “I’m not diminishing what you’re going through.”
She squeezed his hands. “I know. I like your framing. Tell me why you’re not nice.”
“It’s a long story.” Sam moved to the couch and sat down.
She sat next to him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I have to finish up work.”
He’d dropped everything for her; she wanted to be there for him. “Work can wait. You don’t hate puppies, you let the aunties roll through your life, you help anyone that asks, so what’s the deep dark secret? Are you building killer robots in the basement? Do you litter? Hate recycling?”
“Are you done?”
She leaned back. “Yes.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“I know how to build robots, you know,” Sam bragged. “MIT.”
“Ah, you like to mention where you went to college,” Meena said. “You’re awful.”
“My parents would agree with you.” Sam’s voice softened. “About the awful part.”
She couldn’t imagine anyone thinking, much less saying, that about Sam, much less his parents. “You told me you weren’t close to your family.”
“We talk once a year,” Sam said. “My parents call me every January. The first Saturday after the New Year. They ask me one question. I say no. That’s the end of the call. I won’t hear from them again until next year.”
Meena didn’t push. She knew silence was more powerful than a stream of questions—Sam had shown her that.
“They want me to give this apartment to my younger brother,” Sam said. “If I was a nice person, I would. He got married young, right out of college. They have three kids. My parents adore him. It’s not an assumption. The reason the aunties take care of me, that Neha befriended me, was to make up for the lack of interest my parents had in me.”
Meena’s heart hurt as she listened to his matter-of-fact tone.
“The entailment of the apartments in this building says that it goes to the eldest child. At the age of twenty-five. That’s when I moved back from LA. My parents, brother, and his family were living here. They didn’t want to leave. I forced the issue.” Sam met her eyes. “What kind of man does that?”
“You kicked them out?”
“I told my parents they could stay, live with me,” Sam said. “But my brother and his family should find their own place, start their own home. They fought me. Wanted to take me to court. Lucky for me, Sabina does not mess around when it comes to preserving the ways of the Engineer’s House. She told my parents that the homeowners’ agreement was clear, and every time the apartments change hands, the heir must sign their willingness to uphold the rules of the entailment. She showed my mother her signature.”