Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(81)

There was also a tactile art program near Monterey.

Before Trisha could think about it, she had typed an email to Jane Liu, one of the artists at the program, asking for more information. Even before Nisha woke up, Jane responded and invited Trisha to come down for a visit to the facility.

Now all Trisha had to do was find a gap in her schedule so she could drive there.

FOR FOUR DAYS Trisha worked fourteen-hour days, only returning home to bring her sister food and collapse into restless sleep. Four days that she didn’t see DJ. It felt like months, or maybe like moments. She no longer had any sense of time or place when she thought about him—which was all the damn time. He had emailed Nisha a few times regarding decisions about food for the fund-raiser and had copied Trisha on the emails: “Would it be all right to top the crab kachoris with date chutney foam, so the hors d’oeuvre could be circulated without a mess? Should the chicken be served over a bed of pulav or plated individually in bowls?”

She read his emails over and over again. His slightly formal tone, his attention to detail, his utter competence at his job, all that he was seemed to jump up from his words, and she felt like a teenager walking around school trying to catch a glimpse of her crush.

This morning she had turned on the coffee machine without filling it with water. The stink of burnt grounds had been horrid. Thankfully, Nisha wasn’t throwing up anymore.

Last night Trisha had put lasagna in the oven and turned on the timer for an hour, without turning the oven on. In the end she’d had to run down to Curried Dreams and pick up dinner.

Then there was the craving. Consuming. Incessant. Brutal. The flavors from the tasting were a wild, live thing inside her. She wasn’t able to taste one damn thing she put in her mouth. When she had stopped at the restaurant, Ashi had given her some chicken kababs in a mint chutney. They had tasted like coming home. Even before Ashna told her who had made them, she had known. After that she had found herself at the restaurant again this morning. Ashi had given her all the kababs she had left over and Trisha had pulled over to the side of the road and eaten them in her car, chewing at them slowly, reverently, desperately stretching out the pleasure of his flavors.

It had only intensified her craving for everything about him that the taste of his food invoked. The strength that poured from him in waves, the steadiness, the gentle humor, the merciless challenge of things she had always accepted without question.

On the extreme upside, Nisha’s pregnancy was progressing without incident. Neel was scheduled to come home in four days, and Yash and their parents a day before that. DJ had kept his promise and everyone seemed entirely oblivious that Nisha had not left Trisha’s condo for ten days.

“Yum.” Nisha dunked a tall spoon into the bowl of mint chocolate chip Trisha had brought her and sucked it up as though it were the best thing she’d ever tasted. “So, genius sister of mine, have you come up with how you’re going to keep me hidden here for one more week?”

Trisha dipped her own spoon into the ice cream and took a nibble. It tasted like toothpaste. “Maybe we’ll tell everyone that you have a communicable disease, like tuberculosis, and you’re quarantined by the CDC. And I’ve been inoculated, so I’m the only one who can take care of you.”

Nisha gulped down the ice cream. “Actually, that’s the best idea you’ve come up with thus far.”

“You haven’t come up with any. So quit judging.” Trisha put down her spoon.

Her sister raised her usually impeccably shaped eyebrow—it had grown out a little and didn’t look quite as imperious without its perfectly threaded arch. “Speaking of tuberculosis. Are you sick?”

Trisha made a face. “I don’t have TB, thank you very much.”

“You have something,” her sister mumbled around a mouthful of ice cream. “I think you just nibbled. I’ve never seen you nibble anything in your life.”

“I did not nibble.” She had nibbled.

What she really wanted to nibble on was a perfectly flaky papad with chicken and saffron, with someone telling her about how a lazy spice took time to surface.

“Something’s definitely wrong. Is it your imaginary boyfriend? The one you used to steal food from Ashi for?”

She should’ve known that the sister gossip machine would be active and well. “Harry and I broke up. I think.”

He had texted her thanking her for the food and she had finally told him that he could get it any time he wanted from Curried Dreams.

“You think you broke up?”

“I wasn’t really sure if we were together or not, okay?” Trisha poked the spoon back in the ice cream and then put it back down on the tray with a clang.

“This isn’t about Harry at all, is it?”

Trisha didn’t answer.

“First . . .” Nisha licked her spoon before pointing it at Trisha’s face. “If you don’t know whether you have feelings for someone or not that means you don’t have feelings for them.”

Well, she knew that now.

She wished she didn’t. Because these feelings, God, these feelings. Why had she never seen how fortunate she’d been to never have them?

Nisha laughed. “Stop sulking. It was bound to happen. It happens to everybody. Instead of sulking, you should do something about it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”