Page 54 of Cakes for the Grump

“No, I’ll make sure of it,” Uncle argues. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this. Justbehappy. Please.”

A tall order, but one I try to fulfill all the time.

Because what else is there to do? Where do we go for help outside of our small family? Private suffering due to shame is something the Punjabi community excels at. We invite everyone to our celebrations, and then hide when anything is wrong because people gossip when they find out. But would they still do that if everyone was open about their struggles? If the picture of perfection wasn’t strangling us all?

My dream shifts again.

We are all in the same room. Dad, Uncle, Luke.

In the middle is Manjinder, my ex-boyfriend, yelling at me to stop being such a drag. Telling me I used to be fun when we first met. When I danced on top of that table in college or later when I made all his friends laugh because of my silly stories. Luke agrees with him. Tells him I’m overreacting. That Ijustbake cakes. How it’s all I ever need to do. They shake hands. Become buddy-buddy. Turn into one big shadow laughing over me.

I cover my ears with my hands and my eyes snap open. I’m awake, the bedsheets underneath have soaked with sweat, and I need to get up to see a doctor. If something actually happens to me, it will hurt my family andfriends. Plus, this amount of shivering is jarring and will get in the way of applying for jobs online if indeed everything is over between me and Luke.

There is so much to do.

How am I going to pay next month’s rehab payment, my rent, and afford food? There’s no point factoring in the meal kits competition as anything, because they haven’t even announced the second round yet. And I can’t rely on a pipe dream, no matter how tempting.

I get up and mentally thank Mrs. Milla again. Time is measured by how much dinner is left in that pot of food she’s given me. I eat, stumble out to get medicine, then come back and fall asleep. Just a bit more rest and everything will get better. I’ll wake up and know exactly what to do.

SIXTEEN

I openmy eyes and see the devil standing near my door. He is dressed in gray trousers that highlight thighs capable of Sparta-kicking a gate down, or competing in ultra-competitive soccer if they play that sport down there in the bowels of hell. The long-sleeved black shirt is a smidge less formal than usual simply because it has a smaller collar, though crisply lined buttons still go down the front of a terribly fit torso. He’s also got dress shoes on that encase (camouflage?) beastly claws which the Prince of the Underworld must be hiding because otherwise he merely has overly large human feet.

Squinting, I search through the treacherous perfection of his pale hair for curved horns.

“I’m not the devil,” he says, apparently able to read minds. “And I’m not reading your mind. You are speaking out loud, Rita.”

The use of my name is a finger snap inside my head. I stop all feverish wayward talking and take in the scene in front of me with sudden and painfully sharp clarity.

Luke Abbot is here?!

He is not only in my apartment but standing in the doorway of my bedroom.

How long has he been watching me? I have no clue. All I know is I had fallen asleep with a jacket wrapped around my face, head slumped to the side, and mouth drooling saliva down my shoulder.

There’s a wet spot to prove it.

Awake now, I yank my blanket up to my chin—despite sweating and being unbearably hot—and glare at the man through a hole made amongst all the material covering me. “How the hell are you here?”

“The side entrance to your building was propped open, and apparently in one of the city’s grimier neighborhoods, you’ve decided to leave the door to your flat unlocked.”

“I must have—maybe?—”

Post-doctor’s visit there was a lot of stumbling back home. It’s likely that in a sickly daze I didn’t lock the door behind me. Not that I will admit such justification to Luke since it’smyhome and I need not defend it to him.

“So what if it was unlocked?”

That answer makes his jaw clench. “So any person with bad intentions could have walked in?”

“Areyoua person with bad intentions?”

“Of course not, but, Rita, you have to be more careful?—”

“My place, my choice. I can be wildly dangerous if I want to be,” I screech. “What I still don’t know is how are you here right now?”

“Your previous employer gave me the address,” Luke says with a scoff. “All I had to do was feed them a lie about my lawyer needing to contact you for confidential reasons, and they coughed it right up. Rather unscrupulous privacy guidelines, if you ask me.”

“No—that’s not what I meant—”I say, trying and failing to lose my shrillness.“Whyare you here?”