“I just think it might help to relax a bit.”

“Easy for you to say. You’ve already found someone,” I muttered scornfully.

Tania turned a deep red.

“Look, Leila. I know what it’s like to be tossed aside at first glance,” she said, her voice slightly quivering. “But no one is perfect. Everyone you meet is going to have flaws or something about them you may not like.”

I looked down at my hands and sighed. I didn’t want flaws. I wanted the quintessential, human embodiment of those seven napkins.

“Choosing to focus only on a person’s flaws rather than all the other things they may have to offer is only going to hinder you in this process.”

I slumped back in my chair, allowing her words to sink in. My mind drifted back to all the men I had rejected from the matrimonial sites without so much as meeting them because they had used a dangling modifier, or liked pineapple on their pizza, or mentioned “collecting stuff” multiple times in their bios. I still felt justified in most of those dismissals . . . but perhaps there may have been some instances when I reacted too hastily.

“It might help to ease up on some of your expectations, Leila. That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

I sat there for a moment ruminating over her advice. I wondered if anyone had ever told Rani Mukerji’s character to “not be so hasty” when she dressed up as a man to impress her sexy yet serious cricket coach in Dil Bole Hadippa! Or if they had asked Aishwarya Rai’s character to be “more realistic” when she spent decades pining after a childhood crush despite his family’s disapproval in Devdas. I sighed again, taking a sip of my drink.

As much as I wanted my real-life love story to mirror the fictionalized romances I saw in the movies, maybe it was time to come to terms with the fact that these tantalizing fantasies were nothing more than just that. Fantasies. What if I did invest more time in people? What if I gave myself more than an hour to get to know someone? Maybe Tania had a point. I was starting to come to terms with the fact that Mr. Perfect probably didn’t exist, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t find someone great.

Suddenly, my phone vibrated, jolting me from my thoughts. Before I could check to see who it was, Tania grabbed the phone off my desk.

“Who’s Zain?” She searched my face for a reaction as she held up my phone.

“Zain?” The single syllable floated in the air for a few seconds before registering in my mind. Suddenly my mother, Yasmeen aunty, the plate of laddus—all of it came rushing back. “Give me that!” I reached for my phone.

She swiveled back in her chair, just out of my reach. “He enjoyed meeting you the other day,” she read the text message aloud, her voice emphasizing each intonation. “He wants to see you again—minus the supervision this time.” Tania raised an eyebrow. She cleared her throat when I refused to say anything. “Um. Mind telling me what this is about?”