Chapter 2

*Please read the prologue!

Text exchange — Louise Beaumont & Akila Osei, sent from the Beinecke library bathroom, 3:47 PM, immediately after being asked to leave

Louise: something just happened

Akila: Good something or bad something

Louise: Kaalia got the job

Akila: BLOOM PRESS?

Louise: Bloom Press

Akila: ROMAN ALVAREZ’S BLOOM PRESS

Louise: the one and only

Akila: Oh my god

Akila: Oh my GOD

Akila: Louise she’s been sending applications for two years

Louise: I know

Akila: She told everyone she didn’t get it

Louise: I know. she lied. she was still hoping.

Akila: Of course she was still hoping she’s KAALIA

Louise: I know

Akila: Is she okay

Louise: she’s the opposite of okay. she’s so happy she’s frightening.

Akila: Good. That’s correct. That’s the right response.

Louise: we got kicked out of the library

Akila: Obviously you did

***

“YOU LOST!” 

The robotic, Siri-esque voice had said this to me six times already. I ground my teeth together as it said it a seventh time. Sad music played from the speakers. It was mocking me. I couldn’t prove it, but I knew it. 

The teenage worker (name tag: Kaizen) raised his eyebrows at me. “Hey, lady, are you seriously gonna try again? Because there’s a line behind you.” 

“Yes,” I said firmly, slipping him more five dollar bills. “I am going to try again.” 

The sounds of the carnival floated past me for a moment. The shrieking of people riding the too-fast strawberry-shaped carousels. The orders for extra-large, buttery popcorn at the food stall behind me. High-school-aged friends in huge groups all laughing obnoxiously loudly. Buzzers growling as people scored too few points in basketball games and water splashing as plastic guns hit their rubber-duck targets.

Kaizen passed me ten toy balls. All of the carnival sounds faded, until I could hear only my heartbeat.

The game I was playing was called THE GREAT THROW. I had never been good at throwing, but I had been lured here by the enormous, child-sized panda bear dangling from the roof. It was the only one of its kind. I needed it more than I needed to go to sleep to start my first day at work early tomorrow. I loved pandas. They were cute and fat and always hungry. I had a collection of toy pandas at home, but none of them were as big as the one right here, hanging tantalizingly above me. She would be mine if I had to empty my entire wallet for her.

The goal of the game was to hit at least five of the targets hard enough to make them fall down. In the seven times I had played this game and the seventy throws I’d gotten, I’d succeeded in hitting the targets maybe twelve times. Math was never my strong suit, but I knew those odds were not in my favour. 

Maybe what I needed was more rage. I started nodding like a sports athlete before a big game, breathing in and out, hopping lightly from foot to foot.

Remember how you started talking to this one woman and thought she was the one? Well, remember when her best friend confessed her love for her because she was jealous of you two, and the woman you were falling in love with asked you if she could try dating both of you at the same time? Remember when you said, “No, this isn’t the Bachelor,” so she said she’d pick only you and told you she was in love with you? Well, remember when weeks later you saw a text on her phone from said friend who had confessed her love and realized the woman who said she loved you actually was dating both of you at the same time, except everyone knew it but you? Remember? 

My first four throws knocked down the targets with satisfying smashes. The robotic Siri-voiced lady stayed silent. She had nothing to taunt me about yet.

I just needed one more hit. Just one more. 

I decided to aim for the target right in the middle. I forced myself to breathe again and nodded my head like a big shot. Behind the booth, Kaizen rolled his eyes and mouthed “Sorry,” probably to the people in line behind me. 

I was not an athlete. I was an English literature student. I had just finished grad school at Yale and tomorrow was my first day at work for Bloom Press, the prestigious and internationally-renowned literary publisher. I was going to be an assistant editor for Roman Alvarez, the CEO of Bloom Press and the woman who had the ability to make or break a writer’s career with a single word. 

The only form of real physical exercise I had done in years was morning yoga in my backyard. Throwing balls at targets was far out of my league. But I needed that big stuffed panda. In my head I had already named her Kiko. 

I thought about my evil ex-girlfriend again. Remember how after you confronted her, she said she had never loved you anyway and you were always going to be her second choice?

I threw the ball. 

The target trembled, leaning back precariously . . . and then bounced back upright. 

“YOU LOST!” the Siri voice said. She sounded even more malicious than she had last time. There was for sure an evil spirit praying on my downfall in that voice box.

I was already fishing out more money from my purse to play again, but Kaizen stopped me and loudly declared: “Only eight games allowed per person!” 

“What? You just made that up right now!” I was a twenty-seven year old PhD-holding brown woman arguing with a skinny teenage white boy who had likely not finished junior year. What had my life come to?

“Sorry, lady. Those are the rules.” 

“Can I buy the panda, at least?” I asked desperately. “I’ll give you anything for it. I just really want that panda. Please?” 

“You have to win the game, fair and square.” 

“The game is rigged!” 

He shrugged. “You’re holding up the line. Sorry.” 

My heart broke into a million tiny pieces. Kiko the giant stuffed panda had been relying on me to take her home and I had disappointed her. I glanced at my phone and saw twenty texts from my friends asking if I was still at the ball-throwing game booth. It still wasn’t too late—only 9 p.m. Maybe I could make one of them play for me? 

“Kiko, I’ll come back for you,” I whispered longingly under my breath.

I turned to go but tripped into the woman behind me. Her hands braced my shoulders and I looked into her eyes. My heart, broken though it was, stopped altogether. Because here was the most beautiful human being I had ever laid eyes on.

Her dark, expressive eyes widened slightly for a moment as she looked back at me. She had full lips and dimples and those faint Heath Ledger smile lines. Her face and the slant of her eyes was angular but soft. She turned to the side for a second, glancing at Kaizen, and I almost gasped. An absolutely perfect profile. Her jaw was so sharp it looked like it could be a trigonometrical equation. Her hair was braided and she’d tied it half up, half-down. Dark brown skin glistened under the flashing carnival lights. 

“Sorry,” I stammered out. “So sorry.” 

“You’re good,” she said. “Do you mind if I . . .” 

“No, not all. Go ahead. Please.” I clutched my purse for emotional support and forced myself not to look back at her as I ventured into the crowd.

I found my three friends easily enough. They were in the parking lot of the carnival, where the sounds and the lights had faded to quiet music and soft flickers.

Convincing them I needed the oversized panda from the game booth and they should play for me, or I would die, was significantly harder than I’d anticipated.

“Isn’t tomorrow your first day of work?” Khajee said. “You should be in bed already.” 

“Let the woman live.” Akila grinned. Her brown lip liner and gloss combo was somehow still perfect, despite the cotton candy in one hand she’d nearly finished. “It’s her first job out of grad school. It’s not that serious. How much are they even paying you anyway?” 

Khajee and Louise burst out laughing. 

I’d told Khajee my hourly rate and Louise probably had a good idea based on her own internship at Bloom Press. 

“97 dollars,” I said, almost apologetically. 

“What?” 

“That’s my hourly rate. 97 dollars.” 

Akila gaped at me. She’d been working as a software engineer at a respected tech company for ten years, ever since she’d finished her Bachelors degree. She definitely made more than that. But she couldn’t deny how extravagant that sum was—especially for an entry-level job.

“You’re lying,” she said. “Minimum wage is abysmal. The economy is collapsing. Half of people aged 18 to 24 are unemployed. What do you mean you’re getting paid 97 dollars an hour? From a literary press? Are they embezzling money? Is it a front for the mafia? What?” 

“Have you never heard of Bloom Press?” Louise interjected. 

“What do you know about Bloom Press?” 

“I interned there two years go!”

“Okay, go on, blood descendant of saltine crackers.” 

As the only white woman in our friend group—and a very pale white woman at that—Louise got a lot of shit from us. She wasn’t phased. She grinned and continued, “They hire a select few only, the best of the best. It’s a women-based firm, and those women are largely women of colour. The CEO made it that way. When I interned there, I heard her rant about white supremacy once a week, I swear. Her whole thing is making sure that women of colour are given the positions they deserve, and also that they’re paid fairly in the evil capitalist system. Literally her words.” 

“Paid fairly?” Akila was still shaking her head. “The stingy white men at my company would throw a tantrum if they knew a new hire—let alone a brown woman—was getting paid that much, and that that was being called fair.” 

Khajee laughed. “Back when I worked at the bakery, I had to negotiate a 2% raise after 3 years. And that was still like 5 cents above minimum wage.”

I shrugged. I was acting nonchalant, but after I’d double and triple and quadruple checked that my hourly rate was actually that much, I’d gone home and cried. I’d been in student debt for years. I’d worked no less than two jobs the entire fifteen years I’d been in school. The whole point of getting this much education had been to make my grandparents in both Sri Lanka and Puerto Rico proud. Now I could not only make them proud, but spoil them too. 

Akila offered me some cotton candy. I graciously accepted. 

“No offence,” she said. “I love you to death, absolute death, but you literally just graduated from school. I know you’re a genius, but the system is evil. How on earth did you get hired?” 

Louise and I exchanged a glance. We had been in grad school together. She knew what I had done, but that was about it. Even our other classmates hadn’t known. 

I’d never—and I mean never—been a secretive person. In fact, I had a problem sharing too much personal information with people I had just met. And although Akila and Khajee were as close to me as Louise, it had happened in a way that Louise knew because she’d been there. If she hadn’t, I never would’ve told her. As it was, I never wanted to tell anyone else. 

“Excuse me?”

A soft hand had touched my bare shoulder—despite its belonging to a stranger, it somehow felt soothing. Gentle. I swivelled around.

And came face to face with that same beautiful woman from earlier. Her lips were so close to mine I was sure she could taste my cotton candy breath. Her large eyes captured mine, dewy and dark, like the droplets of water on a lily pad at night. She smiled a little. 

The smile broke me out of my trance. I stepped back, bumping into Akila and Louise. 

Why was this woman here? Had I forgotten something at the game booth? 

She held something up. For the first time, I noticed the enormous panda clutched under her arm. That in itself was a miracle—I had been so distracted by her face that the big, furry, black-and-white bear had escaped me entirely. 

“What—um, is there something I—can I—” Nice. Really nice. “Can I help you with something?” Even in my attempt to be more collected, my words trailed off like I had just learned to speak the English language and wasn’t sure what I was saying.

“This is for you,” the woman said. Even her voice was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. So certain. So sweet. 

She held out the panda. 

Kiko? 

“It’s for you. Kiko,” she added, as if she could read my mind. 

“How did you know I named her Kiko?” Shock had completely overcome me. My lips were numb. It was the only thing I could think to say. 

“You whispered it.” Her full lips twisted into a slight smirk. “So long, Kiko, or something like that.”

“You’re—you won it—why are you giving it to me?” 

“Well, I was there for all eight of the games you played. I had to suffer watching you that whole time. You wanted it so badly. And I’m pretty good at throwing things. I don’t want a giant panda as much as I believe you do, so I figured I might as well . . .” 

Before she could say anything else, I lost all control of my body. I watched myself, as if from the astral plane, jump forward and hug her so tightly she gasped. “Thank you,” I whispered into her neck. Her skin smelled warm and sweet, like a nutty, cinnamon, shea, cocoa butter blend. I was near tears over this silly fat stuffed panda. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I love her. I love you.” 

When I pulled back, she wasn’t horrified or disgusted. She looked amused. 

“I love you too,” she said teasingly. “Well, take it. Treat Kiko well.” 

“Thank you so much.” I hugged Kiko the panda to my chest. I spoke as if she were declaring me into knighthood and making me solemnly vow it. “I will.” 

Before I knew it, she was gone. I turned back to my friends, dazed.

Khajee and Akila spoke at the same time. 

“That was the hottest woman I’ve ever seen in my life,” Khajee said.

Akila was looking at me as if I had crawled out of the psych ward. “She was clearly making a move on you! Why the fuck didn’t you ask her for her number? How could you fumble that?”

Khajee nodded and unconsciously stepped in the direction the woman had gone, like one of those cartoons being propelled by the scent of an apple pie. “If you don’t ask her out, I will.”

I glanced at Louise—the only one who hadn’t put her two-cents in. Her jaw hung slack. I could see a popcorn in her mouth she hadn’t chewed yet. 

“What’s wrong with you?” I said. “Why are you staring like that?”

Louise shook her head mutely, mouth still open. 

“That was Roman Alvarez,” she said. “You just told Roman Alvarez you love her. You just said I love you to the CEO of Bloom Press. The craziest and most intelligent woman we’ll ever get the privilege of knowing in our lifetime and your boss as of tomorrow. The woman who is paying your salary. You said you love her.” 

I stopped smiling.

Akila began laughing. She slung her arm around my shoulder. I would have hugged her back under better circumstances, but I was paralyzed and would probably need to be carried home on a stretcher. And maybe sedated too.

“Well, look on the bright side,” she said. “Roman Alvarez said she loves you too.”

***

Hi everyone! Hope we liked this chapter and our introduction to Roman <3

Kaalia’s first day at work is going to be a lot more exciting now. 

Love,
Meera