Chapter 8

Bloom Press #general, 7:52 A.M.—the morning after Roman returns from Nepal

layli.khoury: Roman is back

iseul.park: I know I heard the door

layli.khoury: she looks…

iseul.park: what

layli.khoury: I don’t know. different. she went straight to Kaalia’s office.

iseul.park: she went STRAIGHT to—

layli.khoury: the door is closed

iseul.park: the door is never closed

layli.khoury: I know

jazmine.sheikh: do not make this into something

layli.khoury: Jazmine she dropped a pencil

jazmine.sheikh: …

jazmine.sheikh: what do you mean she dropped a pencil

layli.khoury: when Kaalia walked in. she just. dropped it. and didn’t pick it up.

jazmine.sheik: Roman has never dropped anything in four years

layli.khoury: I know

jazmine.sheikh: she carries fox spray and three knives

layli.khoury: I KNOW

jazmine.sheikh: don’t make it into something

jazmine.sheikh: I’m changing my bet

***

Surprisingly, Roman still took me out to lunch. There were several moments that morning I thought she would definitely cancel—moments where she gazed at me a little too long, where it looked like she might speak but didn’t. But the punchline never came. At noon, she called us a cab and made small talk with me the whole ride, until we arrived at an upscale South Asian restaurant.

My thoughts refused to stop racing. If Layli and Iseul were right, why on earth would she buy lunch for an employee she was about to fire? 

I couldn’t take it anymore. As soon as we got out of the car, I blurted, “I’m sorry I called you unbearable.” 

“What?”

“I didn’t mean it. I know why you work me so hard.” Why did that sound so dirty? Focus. Focus. “And I’ve admired you for so long. I was just trying to get Layli and Iseul to leave me alone. I don’t think you’re unbearable.” The words left me in a rush. 

 “What are you talking about?” 

Was it possible she hadn’t heard me after all? But the expression on her face as she’d knocked on my door . . . 

“Earlier,” I said. “When you asked me about the Angel’s Teeth manuscript. I—I yelled that you were an unbearable boss to Layli and Iseul. That was when you knocked on the door and you seemed—”

“I didn’t hear that,” Roman said. “I was overwhelmed by how beautiful you looked before I knocked on your door.” 

I hadn’t expected her to say anything like that. My mouth opened and closed. Maybe for the first time in my life, I was truly, genuinely speechless.

“Let’s get inside,” Roman added. She seemed nonchalant, completely at ease, as if she hadn’t said what she’d just said. It was like she had told me a scientifically-proven fact, a statistic from any number of the scholarly papers she surely had on command in her head. “I made a reservation for us.” 

They seated us across from each other in a spot near the back, where potted palm leaves covered us from view. It felt like an oasis, a spot in a fantastical world just for us. The entire restaurant was so beautiful. And maximalist: intricate, colourful artwork hung from the wall in tapestries, painted onto the tiles like a mosaic, lined the windows and tables and even the booth. Plants hung from the ceiling and walls in gravity-defying ways. It was more than I could have dreamed.

“You have a type,” I said wryly. 

Roman raised an eyebrow. 

“Aesthetic, I mean.” My cheeks had become startlingly warm. “Art-wise. Bloom is decorated like this too.” 

“I hate minimalism,” she said, her mouth twitching like she was amused.

“Me too!” I was stuttering. “No, me too. That’s not what I’m—I’m trying to say I like it. Not minimalism, I mean. I hate minimalism. I feel like it’s another boring methodology engineered by capitalism to sustain conservatism and normalize scarcity—don’t ask me why, it’s a long conversation—” 

“I agree,” she said. Her eyelashes were so long, dusting her cheeks with each blink. She had freckles too. Were those real? I didn’t care. Why was she so unfairly beautiful? 

I didn’t realize she was still speaking until I heard her say, “Hopefully that’s the end goal of the Brenner lawsuit. I’m going to force some of the billionaires here in New York to be held accountable. And that means taxing them, at the very least.” 

My hero. I nodded like a calm, reasonable woman in conversation with her employer and not a lovestruck, heart-popping-eyes cartoon, I hoped. “When’s the next court date?” 

“It’s coming relatively soon. It will be one of the more important ones. If it goes my way, we’ll see some real change happening. But . . .”

“But?” I prodded. 

But she waved a hand dismissively. “The details are boring. I want to know more about you. I read your CV and I was . . . well, safe to say I was blown away. Especially by the—” 

“I know.” My cheeks must have been scarlet by that point. “I guess, I did my Bachelors at Harvard and my PhD at Yale.” Why was I guessing? “I mean, I did do that.” I had no problem telling my life’s story to strangers. What was it about Roman that made me so socially incompetent? “But you probably mean before that. Well, I was born in Puerto Rico. My dad was Punjabi and my mom was Puerto Rican—”

“Was?” Roman questioned gently. 

“I don’t speak to them anymore,” I said quietly. “I mean. Obviously. Or not. But yeah. I don’t know anything about them. Haven’t heard from them in years.” 

Roman’s fingers twitched, clasped on the table. Her long, acrylic, gold-jewelled nails flickered. It looked like she wanted to reach out and hold my hand. Maybe. Or maybe that was wishful thinking, again. 

“Do you ever find yourself lonely?” This question seemed more like a breath, a plea. Something raw, desperate. A thread clinging to the edge of an abyss.

“A little,” I admitted. “But not as much as I thought. The rest of my family makes sure of that. They respect my decision. My Sri Lankan grandparents and my grandparents in Puerto Rico are so full of love—so much love—” I bit my lip and fought the urge to cry. I missed them so much. “I mean, they take such good care of me, as best they can from so far away. I have conversations in Spanish and Tamil every week if not twice a week. They keep me glued to the phone for hours sometimes.”

“When was the last time you saw them?” 

I lowered my eyes. “I haven’t been to Sri Lanka since high school. It’s an expensive flight and my parents didn’t really have the money for it, even then. But I saw my family in Puerto Rico two years ago, over Christmas break.”

“Not last year?” 

“No, I—I didn’t get enough shifts to cover that and paying rent. I had to choose.” 

Roman nodded understandingly. Her eyes were soft, her mouth pursed. “So you paid your  way through school by yourself?” 

“Oh, no,” I said. The words escaped me in a laugh. The idea itself was so absurd I couldn’t help it. “Yes, but no. My family on both sides gave me money wherever they could. Sometimes I had to pick between textbooks and dinner for the week. When that happened, they did what they could and—and always made sure to help me out.” I really was near tears. “I still have tens of thousands of dollars of student loans. But—” I sniffled. Trying to force myself not to cry. “But with the money I’m making at Bloom—sorry if this is inappropriate—um, I can pay it off but also help my family in return at the same time.”

Roman blinked a few times like she was near tears too. I decidedly picked up the menu and cleared my throat. 

“I might get tikka masala,” I said. “What about you?” 

If she was taken aback by the abrupt shift, she didn’t show it. “I’ll have what you’re having.” 

She ordered for both of us and asked for mango lassis too—I couldn’t be more hopelessly devoted to her if I tried. Afterward, both of us silent (I was still recovering from the near-breakdown I’d had in front of my boss), she stirred the straw absently in her water.

“I’m one-eighth Puerto Rican,” she offered, with a slight smile. “That’s why my last name is Alvarez. And my family . . . I love mine so much too. But I have to say I’m jealous of you.” 

She looked up, her eyes catching mine. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t breathe. Her, jealous of me? 

“My parents don’t agree with a lot of the things I do,” she said. “That doesn’t change their opinion of me. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I don’t confide in them as much as I want to.” She drew in a breath, the skin on her bare chest seeming to prickle as if she were cold. “I asked you if you were lonely earlier, because I am.” 

The waitress set down our two mango lassis and left. 

“I love what I do,” Roman continued. Her eyes had captured mine so wholly it felt like she had ripped her chest open and bared her fleshy, beating heart to me. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything, and I mean that. There’s nothing I love more than telling evil white people the specific ways they’re evil and—and talking about how we can prepare for a post-capitalist state. Things like that. But being at the top of the food chain is lonely. Most people don’t see eye-to-eye with me. And the people that do are scholars who live across the country, or around the world. And even if they did live close, I still wouldn’t have time to talk to them anyway, because I’m so fucking busy. I have meetings day in and day out and when I don’t, I’m pushing for the release of more important work and trying to make deals with authors who don’t trust the system or who don’t believe they deserve to be praised by the system, because colonial white supremacist powers have coopted not only our bodies but the imaginations of the oppressed. And I’m trying to change that, but it’s taking so fucking long. And it’s so slow.”

“I’ll be here with you,” I said, with no idea what had possessed me to let such a thing come out of my mouth. “I’ll be working with you.”

Roman’s gaze softened. “I know, Kaalia. I’m—I am happy you’re with us. With Bloom.”

With you, I wanted to say but managed not to. “I’m happy too.” 

“How did you get into literature?” 

“My sister.” I hadn’t talked about her in years. The words felt dusty in my mouth, uncomfortable, unfamiliar. “She would have been a literature scholar too.” If she was alive remained unspoken: Roman already knew that from my CV. “She wrote stories for me. We didn’t have money to buy books when I was little. Even children’s books. So she would cut up and hole punch and sew a bunch of paper together, and she’d write stories for me. With pictures too. Though the pictures weren’t very good.” I laughed a little at the memory of a one-eyed dragon she’d concocted with crayons. “But those stories . . . they were something else. They had such daring plots and funny, likeable characters. She would have been an author.” 

“I’d have published her work,” Roman said.

“You would have,” I said, unable to stop smiling. “And once you’d done that, she’d probably have begged you to give her little sister a job here, and you wouldn’t be able to resist. Malini was convincing like that. I was pretty much her slave because of it.” 

“She sounds wonderful. And kind.” 

“She was. She really was.” I was fighting tears again. Why did being near Roman make me so emotional? “Um, why did you get into literature?” 

“My parents. They made it clear to me since I was a kid that the American system wants us to be uneducated and anti-intellectual, unable to think for ourselves. My mom loves saying that the most powerful thing you can do is read. Because being educated is one thing they can never take away. Being able to think critically, especially.” 

“She’s right,” I said.

Roman grinned. A real, proper grin. “Yeah, she’s always right. I’ll tell her you said that. She’ll be pleased.” 

Tell her I said that? Has she told her mom about me? Ironically, or unironically, I then lost the ability to think for myself. At least the food had just arrived—making it perfect timing.

I sipped my mango lassi between bites and learned more about Roman than I had from all my Google searches. She had two younger brothers, one in tech and the other in construction. She used to bully them viciously and still did, with no regrets. Her relationship with her father and mother had strained at fourteen, after she’d told them she was a lesbian, but they had long gotten over it. One of Roman’s ex-girlfriends had been a geneticist, but ultimately and perhaps even obviously, racist (“Last time I dated a white girl”). Roman liked coffee but only with creamer in it, and the creamer had to be caramel, toffee, or French vanilla. 

And I told her things about myself I hadn’t said aloud since my evil ex-girlfriend had left me. Like how I loved Pillsbury cookie dough, but only the sugar cookie kind with the snowmen on it (it had to be the snowmen, the other pictures just didn’t taste right), and I loved hating on white people as a monolithic entity, and Jodie Melamed’s Racial Capitalism was my favourite text I’d ever read in my whole life, and if a new text took its spot, there would have to be fireworks and cake to celebrate. I even told her, vaguely, about Aleena in the past tense.

Her demeanor shifted subtly, or maybe that was in my head.

Our hands brushed over the dessert menu. She even let me finish her mango lassi. One dinner and I had fallen practically head-over-heels in love with her. How was I going to survive at least three weeks? 

Outside, after thanking her a hundred times for paying for dinner—which she all but rolled her eyes and batted me away for—we shared a cigarette. The thought of our lips being on the same straw and now the same cigarette (it was basically kissing) had my entire body vibrating, thrumming with excitement.

“I don’t mind,” she said suddenly, as she inhaled the last of the cigarette and waved at a cab to pick us up. 

“What?” 

“If you think I’m an unbearable boss.” 

“Oh.” 

She moved towards me, so fast I thought she would kiss me. But she was only stubbing the cigarette out on the asphalt beside me. Even after the flame had dulled, she didn’t move away. Her lips were so close I could almost feel how soft they would be against mine. And I imagined leaning forward, just an inch. Feeling her mouth, the sweet mango-smoky flavor of her. Deeper, deeper, I’d taste her. I’d beg her for more. I’d be helpless.

It looked like she was having the same thoughts. Her mouth was slashed into a smirk—a beautiful, merciless smirk.

“I think you’re unbearable to work with,” she said.

The words sounded like an insult, but the way she said it—wickedly, grinning—made me feel like she was flirting with me instead. Roman Alvarez, a woman who could call you unbearable and make it sound like a wet dream. Her lips were less than a breath away. Was she going to kiss me? Had Iseul and Layli been right?

I leaned forward, almost imperceptibly. Yes. Yes. Please. Kiss me. 

All of that time stalking her online, prowling through news articles and Google images. The woman of my dreams. My heartbeat became a flurry in my chest, drumming so fast it was a steady flow of white noise, drowning out everything.

Her eyes closed, head tilting just slightly so, as if she really might seal that space between us and allow me the feeling of her lush lips moving against mine—

But she had only swerved to glance at the cab that had pulled up beside us. My cheeks flushed red. 

“Come on,” she said, still smirking. As if nothing at all had happened. “Ready to go back to Bloom?” 

***

I love you guys! Hope you liked this one! Happy New Year <3

Love,
Meera