Every Time It Rains

by Nikita Singh

  ‘I’m sorry I asked,’ JD said, ‘such an idiot.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Laila forced a laugh and looked at him. Her voice was unusually high when she spoke again, ‘You didn’t know. Also, that answers your question in a way, I guess. I hesitated during our kiss because there hasn’t been anyone since Abhishek.’

  JD nodded, still clearly apologetic for having initiated this conversation in any way. He said in conclusion, ‘You don’t play.’

  ‘I don’t play.’

  After that, they fell quiet. At first, JD continued to seem apologetic, followed by nervous, and fidgety, as he kept stealing glances at her. But eventually, they fell into a comfortable silence, sitting side by side, looking at the street and sometimes at each other. It was only when Laila told JD that he should go hang out with his friends for whatever was left of the night that he got up, although still looking unsure about leaving.

  ‘I find it hard to trust a man who ditches his friends, especially one that’s come from out of town just for one weekend,’ Laila said, looking up and smiling at him.

  ‘I should really go, shouldn’t I?’ JD said in a defeated tone.

  ‘You should.’

  He sighed loudly, dramatically, almost back to his usual form. ‘Still saving the kiss for the real date,’ he said, pulling Laila casually into a hug.

  ‘Good thinking,’ Laila said, wrapping her arms around his back and placing her cheek next to his on tip-toe. What started as a friendly hug felt a little more intimate, a little more real, as the seconds passed. It felt almost too real, which shook Laila for moment, her heart tightening in her chest. She laughed dryly. ‘Do you feel sorry for the young bride who became a poor widow too soon?’

  JD broke the hug but did not release her. Holding both her elbows, he pulled back to look at her, his brows knitted in anger, ‘Don’t say that. Don’t ever … Do you think that’s funny? ’Cause it’s not.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Laila continued laughing, trying to break the tension.

  ‘Laila, I’m serious.’

  They looked at each other, and despite Laila’s efforts to let it go and go back to the way things were before she’d told him, it couldn’t be reversed. She’d never seen him angry or this serious before. She finally muttered, ‘I don’t like talking about it.’

  ‘I get that. That’s understandable and totally justified. But you told me, and I’m glad you did because it means you trust me, at least a little bit, to have shared something so personal with me. I feel honoured. But don’t say shit like you’re a poor widow or whatever. You’re a poor nothing. You’re one of the most capable, admirable, talented and hard-working people I know,’ JD said. ‘Never undermine or underestimate that.’

  ‘It was a joke.’

  ‘Well, then it’s not funny. Your jokes need work.’

  ‘Noted. I will work on my jokes and get back to you with better ones,’ Laila said sincerely. Too sincerely really, which made her laugh and she could tell that JD tried to fight it, but he joined in too.

  They said goodbye and JD hugged her again before turning to leave. As he walked away, Laila stepped back into her office to get her stuff and go home. She had stayed out longer than planned and since she was driving back alone, she decided it was best if she did the rest of her work for the meeting from home. Just as she had finished collecting her stuff and was about to leave, JD appeared at her door again. He pulled it open and stuck his head in, although Laila could see all of him through the glass door.

  ‘You scared me!’ she exclaimed, walking towards him. ‘Did you forget something?’

  ‘Yes, to tell you something. Just so you know—I don’t play either.’

  Laila stopped in her tracks.

  ‘I don’t play either,’ JD repeated. ‘And ready or not, here it comes—I’m falling in love with you. And it’s not because of your poor-widowness or whatever. I’ve been falling in love with you since the first time I saw you, and gave you my orange. The beautiful woman whom I annoyed by invading her space, claiming her seat, chatting to when she was clearly trying to work. The woman who moved mountains for my fancy CEO’s fancy party. The woman whose eyes tell a completely different story from the rest of her, no matter how many fronts she puts up. The woman I will one day finally take on a date and hopefully get to kiss. That’s the woman I’m falling in love with.’

  Laila stared at him, speechless. She opened her mouth to speak, maybe make fun of his drama, but couldn’t form words. Her vision got blurry. She gulped.

  ‘Just thought you should know.’ JD shrugged casually, turned around and left, leaving Laila following him with her eyes till he disappeared out of sight. She readjusted the bag on her shoulder and walked out as normally as she could, even with her heart beating rapidly in her chest and the blood pumping in her ears. She locked the shop and made her way to the parking lot, not minding the freshly wet earth at all, and knowing that there was no way she was going to get any more work done that night.

  15

  FAMILY

  In Maahi’s absence, Laila had the house to herself for the weekend. The team at Cookies + Cupcakes was working smoothly and Laila trusted them to handle the shops for a few days while she stayed at home and used that time to do as much work as she could before the meeting.

  This, however, wasn’t going as well as she had hoped. She found herself getting easily distracted, one thought leading to another till she lost track of what she had been doing in the first place. Maahi wasn’t there to provide some sort of structure to Laila’s weekend either, so she stayed in bed for hours after waking up, reading up on her laptop. When she got hungry, she got up and threw some eggs together in a pan and scrambled them for lunch. After all day of having been fixed to the laptop screen, she found herself flat on her back on the living room carpet, Backstreet Boys playing unnecessarily loudly in the background. Uncountable times during the day, she caught herself smiling, her thoughts wandering to JD and his stupid grin. And his stupid hair. And his stupid everything. It made her feel stupid too, for behaving like a teenager in love. So she forced herself to act like an adult, stop the ’90s boy band music and read articles about scaling up production, sitting in her towel because she’d been too lazy to put on clothes after showering and ‘What’s the point of clothes’ anyway.

  After an entire weekend of this chaos, on Monday morning, Laila decided it was time to go to work, be around fellow humans, and remind herself what existing in a community felt like. She first dropped by One, only to find it packed with customers. They didn’t have enough space for a sit-down area, which left more room for customers to stand. Since most orders at One were takeout, people didn’t stick around for too long, but even so, when Laila arrived, the place was full to the brim.

  ‘Need help?’ Laila said to Ram, who was handling both the register and the orders.

  ‘Yes, please. Maahi’s at Two,’ Ram said.

  Laila put on an apron and took over the orders. Together, they serviced the line in ten minutes, and even though the bakery remained packed all morning, there wasn’t a long line at any point. Working behind the counter relieved a lot of the stress Laila had been carrying around with her about the meeting with Roast House. No matter what happened, they’d always have their bakeries, which was what mattered more than anything else. She covered for Ram while he took his lunch break, and when he returned, she decided to go check on Two quickly before heading home and resuming her work for the meeting.

  JD. She stopped in her tracks, spotting him leaning against the counter inside Two, chatting happily with Maahi and Aparna. Laila gave herself a cursory glance in the window to see how she was looking and adjusted her hair before walking in. ‘Why are you always here?’

  They all turned to look at Laila.

  ‘Hello to you too!’ JD said, all tall and smiley.

  ‘You’re here!’ Maahi said. ‘JD came to see you.’

  ‘But I wasn’t here. Why didn’t you just text me?’

  ‘I was in the
neighbourhood for a meeting and thought I’d drop by and say hi,’ JD said. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’ Laila pretended that she wasn’t happy to see him, and diverted their attention to a customer who’d just walked up to the counter. ‘Aparna, could you help her? Let’s give them some space, guys.’ Laila pulled Maahi and JD away towards the door.

  ‘Are you kicking me out?’ JD asked.

  Laila laughed. ‘You can stay if you want, but I must tell you how unprofessional this is, dropping by unannounced.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ Maahi chirped in.

  ‘Good thing nobody asked you,’ Laila snapped.

  ‘How mean!’

  ‘Don’t you have work to do?’

  ‘Fine. And by the way—hello, friend. It’s nice to see you. I missed you. I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,’ Maahi said, growling at Laila before turning to JD and adding more sincerely, ‘It was nice to see you, JD. I’m going to let Laila bully me into working.’

  ‘Always a pleasure, Maahi,’ JD said.

  After she went to the kitchen, Laila turned to JD. ‘I haven’t told her yet!’

  ‘What?’ JD looked confused. Even when confused, he looked half happy. He was always at least half happy, irrespective of whatever other emotion he might also be experiencing at the moment.

  Laila held his wrist and pulled him outside the shop. He looked quite handsome in his maroon and black plaid shirt, but Laila didn’t let that distract her.

  ‘Why are you throwing me out?’ JD asked.

  ‘Because I haven’t told Maahi anything about you, or us, yet. And she’s a pain—she reads too much into everything. Trust me, you don’t want that overenthusiastic child jumping up and down while we are only just getting to know each other.’

  ‘Getting to know each other?’ JD frowned. ‘Laila, I told you I’m falling in love with—’

  ‘Shhh!’ Laila said loudly, looking around to make sure no one heard him. ‘I’m telling you, don’t encourage her. Once she starts, she doesn’t stop. We aren’t even a thing … or anything. Can we please keep this private?’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Oh, come on! Don’t give me that hurt puppy look. I’m just thinking practically.’ Laila tried to dismiss the conversation, but JD’s genuinely bothered expression made her heart sink.

  ‘How romantic,’ JD said, his eyebrow raised as he watched her.

  Laila opened her mouth to counter that but closed it again. For some reason, all that went down between them in the darkness of that night felt distant and almost unreal in the light of the day—like a dream. Now, thinking about it, she was surprised that she had opened up to him about something so personal in the first place. She barely even knew him. But at the same time, she also felt that she knew him on a whole different level—as if they understood each other. Even though they weren’t yet caught up on everything that had happened in the other person’s life so far, it hadn’t stopped them from forming this deeper connection with each other. After a pause, she shrugged. ‘I’m sorry—I’m not a very romantic person.’

  ‘Ah, that’s all right. I’m romantic enough for the both of us. Do you fancy another Kishore Kumar song? Perhaps some Mohammed Rafi?’

  ‘Thanks, but spare me, please!’

  ‘Are you sure? I sing “Dil Kya Kare” beautifully. I can even play that one on the guitar. Girls used to go crazy over that in college,’ JD said, his chest proudly thrust out.

  ‘Quite a rock star, haan?’ Laila punched his arm playfully.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Listen,’ JD lowered his voice and said, ‘if I can be completely honest with you, now that Aparna or Maahi can’t hear us, I didn’t just come here because I was in the neighbourhood and it was convenient. I mean, I was in the neighbourhood and it was convenient, but I came here because I missed you. And if you have a few minutes, let’s walk or something?’

  Laila looked from him to Two, where Aparna was busy with a customer and Maahi couldn’t be seen from outside. She looked back at JD, his words playing repeatedly in her head. I missed you. I missed you. I missed you. ‘Let’s walk,’ she finally said, ‘or something.’

  Thankfully, the sun wasn’t too hot and the buildings lining the twisty road kept them in the shade as they walked.

  ‘I guess we’re walking towards the fort,’ JD observed.

  ‘I guess so too.’

  ‘Lovely. There’s a lake there. Very romantic.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare,’ Laila said. ‘Kids skipping school to make out in nooks and corners of the fort. Be prepared to be grossed out.’

  ‘Or we could be one of those people grossing others out,’ JD said. He immediately took it back and said, ‘But clearly, we’re not going to do that because we’re not into PDA much.’

  ‘Also, you will still save the kiss for our real date.’

  ‘I will, yes, sadly. Or maybe we could renegotiate and find a way to change that …’ JD came up with several innovative ideas to expedite the pending kiss, and Laila shot them down one after the other. They reached the fort in no time and Laila looked for a spot with a good view, while JD racked his brain for more ideas to get her to kiss him. The fort was relatively deserted, and Laila made her way to the edge of a stone structure and sat down with her legs dangling, the afternoon sun hidden behind a tree. JD joined her, sighing in disappointment. ‘For real though, that real date needs to happen soon,’ he said.

  Laila laughed, shaking her head at his silliness and enthusiasm. ‘I’ll be caught up in work this whole week, thinking of ways to dazzle Roast House.’

  ‘True. Maybe after the meeting on Friday then? I could take you out to dinner or whatever you think counts as a real date.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  JD smiled at her and when she smiled back, he quickly looked away, making Laila suspicious. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘JD.’

  He looked conflicted. ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you or not. I don’t know if you’d want to know. It’s related to Roast House.’

  ‘Well, is it, like, legal for you to tell me? Would you be breaking any laws, or something less dramatic, like rules?’ Laila asked curiously.

  ‘It’s legal and everything. I know something and I guess it could help if you knew too, but I’m afraid you’d yell at me and say you don’t need my help to succeed, and you’re capable of doing it on your own and all.’

  Laila laughed loudly. ‘Are you serious? I am confident about my work but at the same time, I’m not too proud to accept help from you. I’m not insecure enough to think that accepting your help would mean I’m incapable of succeeding on my own or I’m using our private chemistry for professional gain. That’s absurd!’

  ‘Yeah, but who knows how you might react!’

  ‘Are you scared of me, JD?’

  ‘Of course not!’ JD snorted. ‘Now that’s absurd.’

  ‘Admit it. You’re scared of me.’ Laila stared at him fixedly until he gave in.

  ‘Fine. A little. But not too scared to tell you that …’ JD’s demeanour shifted to a professional one, like it had the first time they’d met—as soon as he’d realized that they were on a business meeting, he’d changed gears completely. ‘Okay, so, as you know, we have six bakeries on our shortlist, out of which we’re going to select two finalists. Now, what I didn’t tell you was that when we voted for the longlist, we did it based on a point system, according to which Cookies + Cupcakes was at sixth.’

  ‘We got the least points out of all shortlisted bakeries?’ Laila asked slowly.

  JD nodded and said quickly, ‘That might not mean anything at all, since the shortlist was based on the products and people have different tastes, which are unquantifiable and subjective. And in the final round, they want to see your business scaling strategies more than anything else, so it’s a completely different set of parameters. But I just thought that since I knew that C+C was at the last place, I should tell you, if it helps at all.’

&n
bsp; ‘It helps us get panicked a little bit!’

  JD looked nervous as he said, ‘Which would hopefully make you guys work harder for the meeting? I mean, of course, not that you’re not working hard enough already or there’s anything lacking whatsoever.’

  ‘God, JD,’ Laila chuckled. ‘Relax! What are you so afraid of? I’m not going to hate you for telling me this!’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Laila held his hand and squeezed it, but when she pulled back, he wouldn’t release it. She smirked at him and said, ‘I’m not a hand-holding kind of person.’

  ‘I know. But I am.’

  Laila let him have it. It did feel kind of nice. JD brought her hand to his lips and kissed it briefly before returning it to his lap. Laila’s heart quickened. She felt like a teenager with a secret—as if that was just hers, that no one else knew about, something that made her glow from the inside, all over.

  ‘I brought you this,’ JD said, plucking a tiny yellow flower from the weed growing by their feet and offering it to Laila.

  ‘You literally just pulled it off the ground right now—in front of me.’

  ‘I still brought it, though, from over there.’

  ‘How sweet.’ Laila snorted and accepted the little flower. JD was still holding her hand, and sitting there with him, she realized that she could easily lose track of time. She thought about all the work she had left to do for the meeting, and it made her nervous, now more than ever.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ JD said, as if reading her mind.

  ‘JD…’

  ‘Five more minutes.’

  ‘Okay.’ Laila gave in. She allowed him to take her on a walk, hold her hand, give her a flower, and make her stay just a little longer. What was happening to her? Her mind was buzzing with how quickly she’d come to accept him in her life and how excited just being around him made her feel. It felt good but also a little scary. She looked at him, while he was busy watching his thumb tracing her fingernails. ‘Listen, JD, I just want you to know that this is not going to be easy.’