The Taste of Ginger(37)

I thought about how introducing Alex back into my life would make it more difficult to learn the things I wanted from my mother. Hearing his name would likely be enough to put the cold war between us back into effect. I asked myself whether he was worth it. I tried to convince myself that he wasn’t, but my heart wouldn’t listen. And there was no guarantee that even if I didn’t go back to Alex, my mother and I could repair the relationship that had begun fraying since those early years in America and had never been mended. I was too Indian to fully cast aside my family, but also too American to not follow my heart. I’d do what I could to make both work, even if that meant being more like Dipti around my mother and biting my tongue to keep the peace.

When the only sounds were the dogs barking and crickets chirping outside, I reached for my phone and unlocked the screen to the favorites page, where Alex’s number remained in the number one spot. A smile crept across my face as I realized this time, I was calling him for what he had thought I was calling about from the airport a couple weeks earlier. Below his contact information was Neel’s, and then my parents’. My lips tightened upon seeing my mother’s number, but I had made my decision, and there was no looking back now.

The phone rang three times, and I did the math to figure out that it was midmorning in New York. Then it dawned on me that he might not answer because it was me. He’d been notorious for screening calls, but never mine. But we weren’t together anymore, I reminded myself. To him, I was no different from those people he used to send to voice mail to deal with later.

Then on the fifth ring, I heard his groggy voice, husky and hoarse with sleep, mumble hello. I pictured him lying in bed, the covers pulled over his head and his dark-brown hair tousled from the night. The image took me back to those mornings in our apartment. Except that now he wasn’t lying in our bed in Los Angeles. He was in some strange place in New York that I had never seen, in a bed covered by a blanket I didn’t know the texture of and couldn’t picture.

“It’s me,” I said, unsure of what else to say but already lighter having heard his voice.

“I know.”

“Sorry. It sounds like I woke you.” I fiddled with the rajai covering my legs, suddenly nervous about telling him the news that he’d wanted to hear for so long.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are Neel and Dipti okay?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “They are both fine healthwise, but they lost the baby, so it’s been a really difficult time for all of us.” Not wanting to bring the mood down by rehashing all those gory details and still not able to blurt out why I’d called, I said, “How’s the film coming along?”

“Did you really call me about the film, Pree? I thought we said we wouldn’t talk anymore . . .”

Pree. He had used my name instead of calling me Monkey. My heart ached for what we’d had. For what we’d been. I’d give anything to feel him hold me right now. The warmth and comfort of being enveloped in his strong arms could make everything else disappear and make me feel safe and secure. I needed to get back to “Monkey.” We needed that.

“No. I called to apologize, and to tell you that you were right,” I said. “I finally did what I should have done a long time ago. I quit my job. What happened with Neel and Dipti showed me how messed up my priorities had been, and well . . . I know you’d been saying that all along.” I took a deep breath. “Sheep, I was wrong not to go to New York with you. I see that now, and I want to make it right. Make us right.”

I smiled as I waited for his reaction. Saying the words out loud felt better than I’d imagined. The past couple weeks had taught me what was important. And that I wanted a relationship like Neel and Dipti’s, or at least the way they had been, and the way I hoped they would be again.

He took a deep breath. “You quit your job?” His voice was even.

“Yes. I already called Jared, so I guess there’s no turning—”

I heard a soft voice near him ask if everything was okay.

He whispered away from the phone that he would be right back.

Reality set in. My pulse quickened, and the room felt hot. So hot. He was with someone. Another girl had my place in the bed next to him. She now had memories of him when he was asleep, and she could complete the picture because she shared his new home with him. She knew the color of the sheets and the blanket and could trace her way to the bathroom in the dark. My mind began reeling, the room spinning. I hadn’t prepared for this. Not even a little.

“Who was that?” I demanded, knowing I had no right to do so.

A few moments passed. I sensed he was shimmying into his boxers and moving from the bedroom to another part of his apartment. The image made me nauseous.

Finally, he said, “Preeti, we both said we had to let go and move on. I wanted to tell you when you called from the airport, but you were so upset that I didn’t want to add to that.”

It dawned on me that while I had been pining over him for the last few months, restraining myself from calling him, he hadn’t been doing the same. He’d moved forward while I had been standing still.

“I thought we’d end up together. I called to tell you I was ready to move to New York. To give you everything you wanted,” I said meekly and instantly hated myself for being “that girl.”

“I thought that for a while too. You know that. But I couldn’t keep holding on to the hope that maybe someday you’d change your mind.”