Page 75 of Reasons We Break

When it finished, Rajan handed her his phone. She didn’t have her own back then.

“Now you choose,” he said.

“Me?” She seemed shocked. “I...don’t think you’ll like what I like.”

“Simran Auntie, if you can make menothatemath sometimes, you can make me like anything.”

She blushed. Then she took his phone and carefully typed. Rajan recognized the music immediately—kirtan, basically Sikh hymns. He could see how it relaxed her. She stopped slouching, a light came into her eyes, and as she waited for him to work through a word problem, shehummed. He pulled out his own earbud halfway through and confirmed his suspicion that even without the instrumentals, Simran’s voice was goddamn angelic.

“What do you think?” she said at the end.

He could tell she was nervous by the way she twirled her kara. “It’s a banger,” he told her.

The store bell jingles from the door, jarring Rajan back into reality. Whatever, Maya can deal with the customers for once. Strangely, though, he’s feeling more in control now. It reallydoespass.

A distant voice from the storefront asks if they have any key chains with bears on them. Rajan rolls his eyes. People come in here asking the stupidest shit.

Maya’s voice comes, quiet. “I—um—”

Rajan peers around the doorway. Maya’s back is turned, but her body language tells all. She’s nervous.

“Key chain?” she says. She points at the rack of key chains beside the counter.

The guy blinks. “Well, yeah, but I’m wondering if you have any key chains with bears on them?”

“Um,” Maya says again, faintly. “No—no bear. No.”

It dawns on Rajan the real reason Maya doesn’t talk much.

“Can’t you check?” the customer asks.

Rajan comes around the doorway and back to the counter. “Look.” He spins the key chain rack three-sixty degrees. “No bears. Are we done?”

The guy now looks irritated. “Can’t you check in the back?”

“No.”

With a huff, the guy pushes off the counter and leaves. As soon as the bell jangles, Rajan glances at Maya. She’s already trying to skirt around him, most likely to escape to the break room. This time, he doesn’t address her in English. “Are you okay?”

It’s funny how he never noticed the tension in her shoulders until it melts away. She whips around. There’s clear relief in her eyes. And although he spoke Punjabi to her, she speaks Hindi back. “You speak—?”

“Punjabi. I’ve beentryingto talk to you, if you didn’t notice.”

“My English is very poor.” She looks down, fiddling with her shirt.

Of course. He shouldn’t have assumed. “You could’ve just said so.”

“It’s embarrassing.” She blushes. “I haven’t been able to pass my exams because of it, in order to work here.”

“But youdowork,” he says, confused.

“I work jobs like this one. But I’m not yet qualified here for the job I did before.”

He stares at her, starting to get a feeling. “Which was...?”

“I was an accountant.” In his silence, she adds, “They don’t recognize my training here. I have to keep trying, and my English is, well, what it is.”

God, heknewit. Of course Brenckmann picked her up. Brenckmann, unlike the government, recognized her skills. And Rajan would bet he has her doing way more than whatever’s listed in her job description.