The man ran back even quicker than he had come. Aria was frozen in the shock of a million contradictory emotions. She raced toward the car, collecting the items before anyone else could lay their eyes upon them, and sat in the potpourri of her dismay.

Aria was embarrassed. She felt ashamed that he had discovered things about her life that she never wanted him to know. She was embarrassed that she hadn’t known someone was following her the last time she had seen him. Aria hated that because of his generosity, it felt like she owed him something. But despite that shame and imagined indebtedness, she also imagined that if he had discovered these things about her and had continued to come back, he must not have rejected her for them. This confused her more than anything else, but it also made the fondness she already felt for him grow. No one had ever done something for her in secret, because giving her something had always been a ploy to get something in return.

When Taylor came back later that night, bouncing with excitement that he had managed to procure over $35 from his efforts standing on a curbside with a cardboard sign, Aria said nothing. She listened to him talk, giving the impression that she was listening when half of her was not. She was fighting with her burgeoning feelings for the mystery man. Her wishes and fears ran through the hallways of the house of her hope. She followed them out of grace. There was no way of knowing whether any of what was happening between them would lead to anything good. But she could not kill the promise growing within herself. Like a weed, its roots had wound themselves deep into her heart, and it scared her.

She knew she had to confront him. If not to make the decision to let the flowers of that weed blossom, to decide to kill it dead. Either way, she had to see him again.

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 22

The bell on the door serenaded her entrance. Aria looked around to see if he was there, but he wasn’t. Instead, the man who was tending the counter at the Super Sun Market was an older man with a turban and fierce features that had been cushioned by age.

“Hello, welcome to the Super Sun Market, what are you looking for today?” the man asked.

“Um, is there a younger man who works here sometimes?” Aria asked him, stepping far outside her comfort zone by doing so.

“Yes, that is my son, Omkar, why? What has he done?” the man asked with the immediate assumption that his son had made a mistake or committed some offense against her.

“No, no, he didn’t do anything, he just promised to help me figure out some stuff about Indian cooking the other day, and …”