Page 11 of The Ex Factor

“I’m as dispassionate as they come,” he said, and I was convinced he believed it too. But I was smarter than to buy it.

“No, you’re not,” I argued softly. “You’re kind, and you’re in pain.”

He held his pause for a long second. “Perhaps. But that won’t affect my business dealings with you.”

I nodded. “Thank you for today, thank you for this,” I said. I didn’t know what exactly I was thanking him for, but hispresence had felt reassuring all evening, so familiar for the stranger that he was. Kindred spirits, for sure.

“For the giggles?” he asked, and a glance into his eyes made my heart rumble.

“And more,” I said, clutching the door tighter to keep myself steady on my feet. “Thank you for being kind. You’re a genuine man, Mr. Rao. I hope this episode with Tara doesn’t change who you are. Your kind of people are a rarity.”

Those words, I’d definitely attribute to my buzzed state. I was a guarded person. I rarely let people see my real thoughts, let alone spell out my feelings so clearly. Why was it that this man was evoking feelings in me that I thought were dead?

Like the hurt that I had buried deep inside me. I didn’t want to exhume that grief. I wanted to thrive in my anger. But it was too late. At that moment, the pain became unbearable. I felt my face turning warm, and before I realized it, tears were stinging in my eyes.

“Why does it still hurt?” I asked with childlike naiveté and allowed the tears to run freely down my face.

“Hey, hey…let’s get you inside,” he said and offered me his arm again.

As he led me in, I heard the door lock shut behind us with a soft click, and I broke into audible sobs.

For all these months, I had held on to my resentment for Sameer. Not only had he broken my heart, he’d humiliated me in front of all my friends and the society I knew in Dallas. But now that I had spelled it out on Sujit’s insistence, I realized the humiliation was my own doing. I had put my own foot on the axe, as a version of the Hindi proverb goes. It was so much easier to deal with grief when I could place the blame on someone else’s shoulder. But there was a stark difference between grief and anger. At that moment, I wasn’t sure which one was behind my tears.

“Sometimes, hurting is good,” I heard Sujit’s soft voice and turned my body toward him. “We need to let it all out so we can heal effectively.”

I put my face in my hands and kept sobbing silently. His gentle hand landed on my shoulder and stayed there. The reassurance of his light touch broke me further. And now, one more emotion had thrown its hat into this shit show.Embarrassment.My mother was the only person who had ever seen my tears. Sameer and Tara had been witness to a few, but no one else had been privy to them.

“Fuck!” I said finally, wiping my eyes and face. “I hate this.”

I stepped over to the fridge, retrieved two bottles of water and threw one to Sujit. He caught it with the dexterity of a ball player, another thing I hadn’t expected of him.

Walking toward him, I slid down against a wall to the plush carpeted floor. Sujit followed suit. I heard the crack of his bottle cap as I gulped from mine.

“Will you be alright?” I heard his soft voice.

“Yes,” I blurted. “I might be in pain, but I’m not fragile.” I had no idea why I was lashing out at him, but he remained composed and collected.

“It’s healthy to cry. It’s not a weakness,” he said as if I had granted him access to the innermost recesses of my psyche.

But instead of pulling my guard up, I retorted, “Didyou? Did you cry after Tara?”

“I did,” he said in an unflinching confession. “For a bit.”

His composure somehow added to my ire. “And you’re healed now,” I fumed again.

“Not really. I still think about her. Sometimes, I miss her. And it hurts.”

“So letting yourself hurt didn’t help then, did it?” I challenged with renewed defiance.

He chuckled. “It’s a process. We both will get there, I’m sure of it.”

I let out a snort. “You met me two hours ago, but you assume you know me?”

“No,” he said with a soft laugh. “You are a very difficult person to read. But per your own assessment, I am a romantic. I have hope in hope.”

I looked into his buzzed eyes and said, “That’s the biggest load of nonsense I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, it is. I have no idea what all those words mean right now,” he said and burst into a peal of laughter.

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