Page 142 of Cakes for the Grump

I debate telling Mr. Panday this. He seems like a great listener and won’t pressure me like my family and friends will if I ever admitted these feelings to them. But then—he’s a line to Luke. Mr. Panday might not know his boss, but I’m certain there is a way they must communicate.

“I’m doing good,” I say, at the odd chance it will get back to Luke.

My happiness can’t be his burden, when he already has so much on his plate. Not that he’s tried to contact me since I left. Not even a simple call.

What do you expect?

My last words to him were final. The devastation exact.

I can’t live this life. I don’t want it. I don’t want you, not in the way that you want me.

I can’t recall the rest of the ride home.

More time passes. I keep myself busy applying for other jobs. The ratio is for every fifty I apply for, I seem to land two-ish interviews. Mr. Panday takes me to each one, and I use him a few more times because he’s easy to talk to, convenient, and?—

It’s a pathetic, indirect, very distant line to Luke. In the back of his car, I’m a very small inch closer to him. Most times, I aim to be happy, but once Mr. Panday caught me crying. It was after a rather miserable tour of the office spaces I would be working in if I got the job. Cubicles are mashed together with no regard to personal space. The whole floor was speaking on headphones at a decibel level dedicated to giving you headaches. Supervisors yelled and threatened layoffs if quotas weren’t met. Employees looked overdrawn, like gray-toned shadows eking out time before the day ends.

Mr. Panday drove back home the long way that day, giving me time tolet it out. They were particularly horrible tears, as if I needed to make up time for all the years I’ve faked my optimism.

“Sorry,” I sob at Mr. Panday. “I’m like this now. I’ve become an oversharer and I can’t keep my emotions in check.”

“Madam, it’s okay. I’m here for you.”

That makes me cry harder, because I wish it was someone else beside me, putting his arms around my shoulders, bringing me up against his chest.

When Mr. Panday finally pulls up to my building, I say, “Don’t tell him,” just in case he does report back to Luke.

At home, Noor waits for me. She wraps me up in an embrace when she sees I’ve been crying. And then, she waits for me to cook dinner.

It’s an activity she and Kiren have been doing. They video record me making food, forcing me to pretend as if I’m hosting my own show. It’s been awkward the first few times, but after I understood there are no stakes or competitions I’m applying for, that I’m doing this mostly to appease my friends and make them feel as if they are helping, I relax. Get sassy. Show personality, sometimes adopting another accent, sometimes ranting about how curry is not a spice, but a mix of spices.

By now, they must have hours and hours of footage.

Not that they tell me it’s enough, or I tell them to stop. Actually applying to jobs, handing out resumes, and coming back from failed interviews is oppressive and draining. The videos become this antidote, a window of absurdity I allow myself to have. There are long stretches of time where I actually forget the camera exists. I go deep into explaining the importance of soaking lentils or rice before cooking them, that equal parts ginger and garlic are often enough for a tarka dish, and how overcooking ingredients is one of the commonly made mistakes of Indian cooking because you lose so much texture that way.

After recording a video of me making my own version of a Horchata, Noor joins me in the living room to drink the fruits of my labor. It’s at this time, she aims a very surprise attack by declaring, “Love can conquer everything.”

Surprisingly, for the most part, my friends have avoided mention of Luke. I think they thought he’d show up here at some point, and they’ve been waiting for it. It’s not happened, and now Noor is done waiting. It’s been over a month.

“Love can’t conquereverything,” I say.

“So, you love him?”

I tuck my legs together on the couch and cradle a bowl of biscuits. “That’s not—I mean—I’m here, and I don’t want to be there. Away from Mumbai.”

“It doesn’t have to be one or the other. He’s wildly rich, for fuck’s sake. If they can’t have it all, who can?”

“What he needs,” I try to explain, “what Mr. Duncan correctly identified for me is a certain kind of partner.”

I want to shut my eyes, and bathe in too-hot water. I want my body to be so preoccupied, I’m distracted by anything else. I want to be able to sleep at night again.

“He can fly back and forth,” Noor insists.

“Does that seem like a proper relationship?” My voice is dull, listless. “It feels like delayed pain to me where neither of us is the perfect fit for each other.”

“But do you love him?”

I push the biscuits away, no longer hungry. That’s happening a lot. “His happiness is genuinely important to me. I care. A lot. That’s why I didn’t want him to ever choose.”