Chapter 1: Tanvi

The café smelled like cinnamon and regret.

Cinnamon because Kavita Aunty had started her autumn menu — the masala chai latte, the elaichi biscotti, the pumpkin halwa that she insisted on calling "seasonal fusion" and that the locals of Kasauli called "that orange thing Kavita makes when the weather turns." Regret because Montgomery — Mohit — Biddington, correction, Mohit Bhardwaj had just walked through the door of The Chai Loft with a duffel bag over his shoulder and the specific grin of a man who knew he was about to ruin someone's morning.

Mine.

"Tanvi Kapoor," he said, dropping the duffel on the floor with the thud of a man who had never once in his twenty-six years considered that other people might not want his belongings on their freshly mopped café floor. "Miss me?"

"Like a stomach cramp."

"Ah, but you'd know all about those, wouldn't you?"

I turned my back to him and focused on the espresso machine — a temperamental Italian beast that Kavita Aunty had imported from some dealer in Chandigarh who swore it was refurbished and not stolen, a distinction that mattered less than the fact that it made the best espresso in the Kasauli-Solan belt, the specific crema-topped, dark-as-disappointment espresso that kept the café alive during the off-season when the tourists went home and the locals remembered they could make chai at their own houses for: free.

Mohit leaned on the counter. I could feel him leaning without looking — the specific gravitational disturbance of a six-foot-two former gymnast and current kabaddi team mascot who had been leaning on things in my vicinity since we were eight years old. Leaning on my school desk. Leaning on my bicycle. Leaning on the railing of my grandmother's verandah while eating her aloo parathas and pretending he'd been invited.

"I need a favour," he said.

"No."

"You don't even know what it is."

"I know it involves you. That's enough information to say no."

"My flat flooded."

I turned. The turning was: involuntary. The way you turn when someone says "accident" or "free food" — the body responds before the brain has decided whether it cares. Mohit's flat — the one-bedroom above the old pharmacy on Mall Road, the flat he'd rented since moving back to Kasauli after his gymnastics career ended with a knee that decided, during a competition in Patiala, that it no longer wished to participate in the sport of landing — had flooded.

"The pipe in the bathroom," he said. "The one Gupta ji has been promising to fix since August. It burst last night. The bedroom is — I mean, it's basically a swimming pool. A very small, very cold swimming pool that smells like sewage because the pipe was also connected to—"

"I get it."

"So I need a place to stay. Temporarily. While Gupta ji fixes it, which, knowing Gupta ji, means approximately: never."

"Stay at a hotel."

"Tanvi. It's October. Peak season. Every hotel in Kasauli is booked. Every homestay is booked. The dharamshala is full because there's a kirtan group from Ambala doing a ten-day programme. I've called everyone. I've called people who don't even have rooms — I called your Nani, and she said, and I quote, 'Beta, you can sleep in the garden shed, but it has spiders.' I don't do: spiders."

"So your choices are spiders or me."

"My choice is: you. Because you have a spare room. Because your flatmate moved out last month when she married that accountant from Shimla. Because you've been paying double rent since September and could use someone to split it. And because—" He paused. The pause of a man deploying his final argument. "Because I have something you want."

I knew what he had. He knew I knew. The knowledge sat between us on the counter like an unexploded device — the specific device of mutual need, the device that had been ticking since I'd heard that Mohit Bhardwaj, through his family's connections in the Himachal Pradesh Kabaddi Association, had access to the one thing I needed for my coaching career: a recommendation letter from Vikram Rathore, the state kabaddi coach, the man whose endorsement could get me the head coaching position at the Kasauli Sports Academy that I'd been applying for since: forever.

"You're blackmailing me with a recommendation letter."

"I'm proposing a mutually beneficial arrangement. You give me a room. I get you a meeting with Vikram sir. Nobody's blackmailing anyone. This is: commerce."

"Commerce with a side of emotional terrorism."

"Tanvi." He dropped the grin. The grin that I'd been enduring for eighteen years — the grin that had been aimed at me during every school function, every colony cricket match, every Dussehra mela where he'd show up at my family's stall and eat three plates of chaat without paying. The grin disappeared and what remained was: Mohit. Not the performer. Not the mascot. The person. The person who was, despite everything, my oldest — I refused to say "friend" — my oldest: acquaintance.

"I genuinely have nowhere to go," he said. "Gupta ji says two weeks minimum. I can pay rent. I can stay out of your way. I'll even — " He looked at the espresso machine with the expression of a man making a sacrifice. "I'll make my own chai. I won't use your special oat milk. I know about the — situation."

The situation. The delicate, publicly-known, perpetually-managed situation of Tanvi Kapoor's digestive system, which had been the bane of her existence since she was fifteen and a gastroenterologist in Chandigarh had diagnosed her with IBS, gluten sensitivity, and lactose intolerance — the trifecta of dietary restrictions that made eating in India, a country whose cuisine was built on wheat and dairy, approximately: a military operation. Every meal was a calculation. Every restaurant was a negotiation. Every dinner invitation was a risk assessment. And every person who knew about it — which, in Kasauli, was: everyone — treated it with reactions ranging from sympathy to suspicion to the specific Indian aunty response of "just eat a little, nothing will happen."

Something always: happened.

"Two weeks," I said. "Not a day more. You pay half the rent. You clean up after yourself. You do not — do NOT — bring any food into the flat that contains gluten, dairy, or anything from Sanjay's dhaba, because the last time someone brought Sanjay's butter chicken into my space, I spent two days in the bathroom and lost three kilos that I couldn't afford to lose."

"Deal."

"And the meeting with Vikram sir."

"I'll call him today."

"Today. Not tomorrow. Not 'soon.' Today."

"Today. I promise."

Mohit extended his hand. The hand that had done backflips and cartwheels and the specific gymnastics move where you launch yourself over a vault and hope your knees don't betray you — the hand that was now being offered to seal a domestic arrangement that I was already regretting.

I shook it. The handshake was: brief. Firm. The handshake of two people who had known each other since childhood and who understood, with the clarity of eighteen years of rivalry, that they were about to make either the best or the worst decision of their: shared history.

"Welcome to my flat," I said. "The spare room is on the left. The bathroom schedule is posted on the fridge. And Mohit?"

"Yeah?"

"If you use my oat milk, I will end you."