But she’s too late. They make eye contact.

Damn it.

The room becomes blurry. Suhani can no longer see the tables, covered with linen tablecloths and tea-light candles, the people bustling toward the bar, or her co-residents getting refills of red wine. All she can take in is him. The hair on his knuckles. His hands, dry from years of using harsh hospital soaps and not moisturizing despite how many times Suhani bought him tiny bottles of lotion for his white-coat pockets. The scuffed-up black Cole Haan shoes he’s had forever. The future they both envisioned: two successful doctors, healing and achieving and growing together. That was before she discovered who he really was, what he was truly capable of.

He takes steady, smooth steps toward her. She ignores the voice in her head telling her to walk away. He’d take that as a sign of weakness. And weak is the last fucking thing she’ll let him see her as.

“Suhani, hi,” he says, as though he’s running into any old friend and not someone he used to see naked every night. She forgot how deep his voice is. It was the first thing that attracted her to him when they started talking on the phone late at night, when they should have been studying. God, relationships could start for the dumbest reasons. They were supposed to be a place of safety, not anchored in something as trivial as how deep someone’s voice is. She scolds her twenty-four-year-old self for not picking out any red flags back then. But was it all her fault? Are there always warning signs, clues about an inevitable ending, if you’re willing to look hard enough?

“Hi.” Suhani bites her bottom lip to prevent herself from having any facial expression. “I’m, um, I didn’t realize you were going to be working here.”

“Yeah, well, they offered me a great position in the neurology department.” Roshan furrows his thick brows as he glances at her. “And I was ready for a change. There’s a lot I’ve been wanting to do here. And figure out. You know, personally and professionally.”

She nods as though it’s perfectly normal to hear this from him, when really it makes no sense at all. Some covert Facebook research already taught her that he was an attending at UCLA, enjoyed living in a small house near the beach, and didn’t seem to be in a relationship. It also taught her that his old roommate’s girlfriend’s nephew got a Pomeranian puppy, which is when Suhani realized she had gone way too far with her stalking.