She doesn’t reply, but nods at him to take over the kneading and he tries to mimic her actions. The dough is smooth and strangely pleasing to knead. He pushes his thumbs into it, turning it over and over.
“Where are you working these days?” she asks.
“I haven’t taken out my knives in almost a year.”
They work in silence for a few minutes. Josh doesn’t mind. There’s a soothing aspect to it, similar to his perfect knife work. Maybe a bit less violent.
She watches him add a bit more water to the flour. “I’ve known Ari for a long time—”
“So have I.”
“No, you haven’t,” she snaps before he can add any additional evidence. “You’ve known her for—what?—a few months? And for most of that time she’s been miserable.” Radhya grabs a thin rolling pin and starts rolling flour-dusted discs into flat, perfect circles. “Maybe you’ve noticed.”
“Maybe I’ve noticed?” He would be gesturing wildly if his hands weren’t covered in dough. “Who do you think she’s been confiding in? Who spends hours on the phone with her? Who put together her Ikea furniture with those tiny hex wrenches?”
“You went to Ikea?”
“Who watched her melt down in front of her fucking ex? I don’t remember seeing you there.”
Radhya stops rolling. There’s a trace of hurt in her eyes. “Right. You’re treading water together.”
“What?”
Radhya shakes her head and continues pushing the rolling pin in controlled, even strokes.
“I need you to understand something.” There’s a pointed quality to the way Radhya pauses there and meets his gaze. An unfair implication. “Ari is extremely guarded, okay? She never had a real relationship before Cass. There was a very lopsided power dynamic.”
He’d clocked that almost immediately upon meeting the woman—a living, breathing lopsided power dynamic. He turns it over in his mind, the other pieces of the Ari puzzle somehow joining together with a satisfying click.
“She doesn’t have many people she relies on.” Radhya pats a roti with flour. “It takes time to bounce back from feeling blindsided and abandoned.” Josh feels his fist clenching and unclenching. “Time and space.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he asks, knowing full well where this is going.
“When you have a crush on a friend, there’s always going to be—”
“That’s not what’s happening.” His voice is low. He feels the dough becoming too dry in his hands. “We’re both dating other people.”
It’s the truth. No one can say it’s not.
“—an imbalance. It can upend things.”
“She kissed me!” He accidentally sends a bit of dough flying. “I mean, it was mutual.” He lowers his voice, straightening his body to full height. “Totally reciprocated. There’s no ‘imbalance’ here.” Radhya has no fucking clue how perfectly balanced it was. Basically the fucking Justice statue with the blindfold and the scale. “Didn’t she tell you about it?”
There’s that glint of hurt in her eyes again.
“No.” She sighs like this is her last task on a ten-page to-do list and heats a cast-iron skillet over one of the burners. “Ari holds things in until they explode.”
“Not with me.” Josh says it with a little shrug that probably comes off as a touch too self-righteous. Cocky. He can’t help it—it’s been too long since he’s felt that twinge of earned satisfaction.
Josh passes Radhya his batch of dough.
“Don’t. Push.” She pokes her index finger in it three times and adds a splash of water. “She thinks you’re her life raft or some shit. If you’re going to be her friend, be her friend. But it’s not a shortcut into something more.”
“I’m not pushing.”
Okay, yes, that phrase sounds like a telltale sign that the speaker is, in fact, pushing. But that’s not the case! She kissed him. It happened. And Radhya can’t manipulate him into thinking otherwise.
“Ari needs time.” She shapes a knob of dough into an almost perfect circle. “I happen to know something about this.”
Timing has already fucked them over twice.
* * *
“I TRULY THINK arms are the new thighs,” Briar proclaims, running her hand over Gabe’s biceps. “I mean, traps? Scaps? Forearms? We’re gonna see more rowing gyms and, like, rooms full of pull-up machines.” She’s managed to tuck her legs beneath her on a small wooden chair and look perfectly comfortable.