Luxury and style with real substance? Reena nearly threw up. Well, this was the confirmation that Nadim was not only involved with this London boutique hotel kerfuffle, but also indeed was engaged to Jasmine.

But wait … Reena remembered something. Egypt. That day Saira came over with her bone soup, she had some gossip that Jasmine Shah had been abandoned by her fiancé in Egypt. Had that been Nadim? She checked the date on this article. It was almost a year old. She grabbed her phone and called her sister.

“Remember when you told me that Jasmine Shah’s fiancé left her in Egypt?”

“Yeahhhhh …” Saira paused. “Oh, that could have been Nadim! Did you ask him?”

“No.”

“Shouldn’t you?”

“I’ve decided to ignore his messages.”

“Reena, you’re impossible. I’ll call Rish. She can probably find out.”

Reena walked around her apartment for a while, waiting for her sister to call. Eventually she sat back on the couch and lowered her head in her hands. She couldn’t believe she had resorted to fishing for gossip again. Why couldn’t she just ask him? What was she so afraid of?

It was an hour later when a knock sounded at the door. She peeked in the peephole to make sure it wasn’t Nadim. It was Saira.

When she opened the door, she saw that her sister was holding a carton of low-sugar frozen yogurt and a selection of organic juices in lurid colors.

“I stopped at the store. I think you’ll need this,” Saira said as she walked in.

Damn. Saira had more bad news. Hopefully not devastatingly bad, because Reena was pretty sure that nonfat fro-yo and cold-pressed juice wouldn’t have the self-medicating properties she’d need.

“What did you learn?”

“Let’s dish this out first,” Saira said.

Unexpectedly, the ice cream substitute didn’t taste terrible, and the dark chocolate flavor went well with the sour cherry juice.

“Okay,” Saira started once they were settled on the couch. “I asked Rish to ask her cousin. Apparently, they’re not fighting anymore. Remember I said her cousin was obsessed with this socialite?”

“Vaguely.” In all honesty, she didn’t remember the convoluted tale Saira had told.

“Well, that socialite is Jasmine Shah. And yep. The fiancé who left her in Egypt was Nadim.”

Relief spread through Reena’s shoulders. If he had dumped her in Egypt it meant they weren’t engaged now. But why did he hide this from her?

“So, he wasn’t engaged when I met him.”

“Not so fast, sis, there’s more. As I said, the cousin doesn’t really know Jasmine well, but she pretends they’re real tight. She was posting screenshots of Jasmine’s Instagram on the family WhatsApp. Rish was able to get some of the screenshots.” She handed Reena her phone.

Reena scrolled through the pictures. Nothing interesting here, basic Instagram pictures of an immaculately styled Jasmine. She recognized the one in London from that article.

“Read the hashtags, Reena.”

Reena did. #engagedlife. #marryingmybestfriend. #travelwithmylove.

Reena exhaled. “So, she is engaged.”

Saira shrugged. “The last screenshot is from about a month ago. That seems to be when she deleted her account.”