Page 153 of Reasons We Break

“Nonsense. We’re family, aren’t we?”

She smiles. In many ways, losing her golden-girl status has been a blessing. She no longer has to force politeness with people she doesn’t like, because they don’t talk to her anymore. But the people she always genuinely loved have found it in themselves to forgive her. To understand her. And...to try to understand someone she cares very much about.

Toor Uncle points to a corner obscured by machinery. “He’s in the back.”

“Thank you again for letting him work here.”

“Anyone with your recommendation is welcome in my shop.” He pats her shoulder. “Besides, he does good work.”

Simran finds Rajan in the corner at a workbench, a drawing rolled out in front of him. He whips off his safety glasses when he sees her.

“Dude, your timing is amazing.”

She peers at his drawing. It’s the plans for a cabinet, the dimensions scrawled on each line. The perspective is immaculate. “Why’s that?”

“Because I need a break. I can’t believe I got all the way to carpentry school, and they put me in math class all over again.”

Simran traces a finger over the arched top of the cabinet. His instructors can’t possibly be requiring a design this ambitious. “Make this all right angles instead, and you’ll have less geometry to figure out.”

“That would look boring as hell.”

“Ah. I see.”

Rajan gives her a side-eye. “Point taken, Sahiba. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

She blinks innocently. “Want to take a break? I need help putting my mom’s bike in my truck.”

“Grunt work?” He rolls the drawing up haphazardly. “That, I can do.”

The sound of machinery fades as they walk behind the building, to the grassy lot where Simran’s parked. Rajan lays the bike into the truck bed. In the sunlight, the paint job looks even nicer.Toonice. Toor Uncle doesn’t seem the type to add these embellishments. Didn’t he say he was busy?

It hits her. “Youpainted her bike, didn’t you?”

Rajan shrugs from atop the truck bed. “Think she’ll like it?”

Simran knows exactly what her mom will say.What a waste of paint. I didn’t need the bottle cage. The seat was already perfectly functional!“Absolutely. Why yellow?”

He flicks the front wheel. It spins, stirring the loose sand in her truck bed from the sandbags. “It was my mom’s favourite. The colour of sunshine, she always said. Even when she was sick, she’d sit on our porch and watch the sun rise and set.”

His voice is soft by the end.

“I wish I’d met her,” Simran says.

A fleeting trace of a smile. “Trust me, she knew who you were. She chewed me out for being a douchebag to you once.”

“And look at you now. She’d be proud.”

He lies down next to the bike, resting his head on a sandbag. “There were times,” he says, “that was all I wanted. For her to be proud of me.”

“And now?”

“I just want to be proud of myself.”

She has no words for how proudsheis of him for that, so she crawls into the cab on top of him and kisses him.

“Cheesy as shit, isn’t it?” he says when they pull apart. “But it’s true. I’m practicing being a better person. Maybe one day I’ll even be able to step into the gurdwara without bursting into flames.”

She laughs. “Rajan, you know Sikhism isn’t about that kind of stuff.”