That was the last thing Reena remembered that night. The next thing she knew she was waking up in Nadim’s bed with terrible heartburn. Thankfully, alone.

CHAPTER SIX

Waking after passing out in a drunken stupor should include at least a moment of blissful ignorance of all the events of the night before. An innocence before the wave of humiliation crashed in. But despite rousing in her familiar childhood bed, Reena experienced no such luxury. She remembered everything that had happened yesterday—losing her job, her asinine mixing of gin gimlets and sinus meds, letting Nadim film her making bhajias … and …

They’d made the contest video. Together. Shit.

She quickly looked through the videos on the phone. Yup. It looked like he’d sent her the five-minute clip. She had no intention of actually entering it on the FoodTV site. She wasn’t even going to watch the thing.

Head pounding and muscles aching, she sat up in bed. To add insult to an already abysmal situation, her cold had intensified. She sneezed, covering her nose to muffle the sound.

Quietly padding out of his bedroom, she found Nadim out cold on his purple sofa, a thin bedsheet covering his lower half and a yellow T-shirt covering his upper half. Thank the lord. She didn’t need an eyeful of toned chest and shapely biceps now. She crept closer. He looked younger asleep, with his expressive brows relaxed and that world-weary yet amused expression missing. How old was this man, anyway? She’d assumed about her age, but from what he told her yesterday, he’d achieved so much more in his life than she had. An undergraduate and graduate degree from the London School of Economics. Lived in Dar es Salaam and London, before moving here to Toronto. He was miles ahead of Reena, with her community college diploma and no job. She sighed. Nadim Remtulla was an ambitious match for her. She didn’t know if she should be pissed at her parents for setting her up to fail, or happy they thought her worthy of this man.

A wave of nausea overcame her. She needed to get out of here before he woke.

It truly was a walk of shame as Reena snuck out of Nadim’s apartment with her cutting board and chef’s knife in one hand and flip-flops in the other. She’d buy new spices and vegetables. It wasn’t worth the embarrassment.

She needed to put that whole night out of her mind.

The first two days of Reena’s newest stint of unemployment were spent baking bread or curled up on the sofa watching Jane Austen movies while her aroma diffuser shot eucalyptus and lavender essential oils at her congested face. Saira texted a few times to set up an eggplant dip lesson, but Reena finally managed to brush her off with the convenient truth that she was feeling too sick to cook. Thankfully, Nadim didn’t call, text, or knock on her door. The more time that passed after that gin night, the less mortifying it would be when she inevitably saw her neighbor again.