How had she ended up here? Her restaurant crowded, Rico back in her life. The mother who had done everything to stay away from her suddenly all over her like a rash. It was some sort of somersaulting déjà vu.
Whoever had told Ashna she needed to change one thing to change everything wasn’t kidding around. Could she kill the person who had suggested it, please?
She picked up the last order. Baba’s stuffed bitter melons.
The one thing no amount of changing could change was that Baba would never be here to see this. She tried to visualize him—if anything could put a smile on his face, it would be this. But all she saw when she thought about him was blood dripping from her hands. The oil in her pan started to smoke and Khalid left his station and threw the chopped onions in for her. “I can take care of it, boss.”
“I got it. Thanks.” She gave the onions a stir. The memory of Rico going at the lumping dough as though it were a workout machine brought her back to this moment.
This divine intervention or whatever stroke of luck she was having with the cooking challenges was not going to last.
“Just did the last call for lunch, we’re almost done!” Wilfrieda announced, and everyone cheered.
This wasn’t going to last either, not once Ashna had to drop out of the competition because she passed out from a panic attack on television. Not once her mother got to say I told you so and sold Curried Dreams.
AFTER THE LUNCH rush, DJ drove Ashna to the studio. Trisha and he had stopped by because Trisha was excited for DJ to meet Shobi. No big surprise that Trisha loved her. Shobi was the cool, badass (albeit mostly absconding) aunt.
“Your mother is magnificent,” DJ said as they turned into the studio lot. “Now I know where you get your beauty, and your ability to kick arse!”
“You’re too kind.” But I’m nothing like my mother.
When they got to the studio, DJ went off to a staff meeting and Ashna headed for the contestants’ lounge. For the first time in years she had to do that thing where she tightened her gut to brace for the impact of seeing someone.
There he was.
The punch landed dead center in her ribs, like a ball slamming her at full speed. She let it vibrate through her, the impact zinging electric sparks right down to her fingertips.
He sat in a wing chair, feet planted, bent over a newspaper, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. It was his frustrated-with-the-world face.
The passion playing across his features, across his whole body, was mesmerizing. Ashna took advantage of how absorbed he was in what he was reading to study him. He looked almost nothing like the boy she had been in love with. His thick sable-brown hair was pulled back into that man bun that had the internet aflutter. Her insides, this one time, agreed with the internet, even though it was still wholly incomprehensible to her that he had grown out his hair. The texture of his hair, cropped short in the back and long in the front, was something she still felt between her fingers in her dreams. Also new was his stubble, a shade darker than his hair, not quite full enough to be a beard but almost there, lined up to perfection.
He was chewing on those distinctively shaped lips. Whatever was in that paper, it had him in a rage. Sensing her study, he looked up. Would she ever get used to the physical impact of their eyes meeting? Fighting the warmth rising up her cheeks was a futile exercise, so she waited for it to pass. He responded with a shuttered look.
Shuttered was perfect.
They made their way silently to the staging area for their first elimination. There would be no cooking today, just the judges assigning scores that would be added to the votes from two weeks to determine the eliminated pair. Afterward, the producers had a surprise planned. Another sadistic idea to torture the contestants with, no doubt.
Ashna and Rico stepped up in front of the judges—a mix of two chefs, a food editor, and inexplicably, a director of romantic comedies.
“I’m going to put this right out there,” one of the chef judges started. “Your churro was nowhere near as delicious as your chemistry.”
The smile on Rico’s face froze in place, or maybe Ashna was projecting. When Rico was on camera it was hard to tell what was real and what was not.
The monitor played the judging clip from their cooking episode yesterday when the food editor had held up the churro. The churro had been admittedly lame. Or rather, limp. On the screen, it curved down in an arc. In front of them the judge traced an arc with her finger with impressive drama.
That made Rico bless everyone with his full-throated, self-deprecating laugh. The judge fanned herself with her notepad. Ashna pasted a smile on her face as they watched the rest of the footage of the judge holding up the curving churro.
Her mortification had to have shown because Rico leaned close to her ear. “Lighten up. It might not have been a fabulous churro, but it is another fabulous television moment, so they’re going to milk it.”
She realized she was leaning into his whisper and pulled away. Her body retaliated, soaking up the caress of his breath on her earlobes, and sent another ungodly zing through every one of her traitorous internal organs.
DJ threw Ashna and Rico a smile. How had DJ developed this repertoire of smiles for the camera so fast? He held out his mic. “The judges think your churro didn’t . . . ahem . . . quite stand up to the test. What’s your reaction?”
Would they stop with calling that churro names?
Rico was about to open his mouth, but Ashna grabbed the mic from DJ. “I agree that it could have been . . . well, stiffer, but given that this was Frederico’s first time making one, I for one was very impressed. I’ve eaten a few churros in my day, and I don’t think I’ve ever tasted one quite that delicious. Looks aren’t everything.”
The studio audience, which was in complete darkness today, lost its collective mind all over again.
DJ let out a delighted—albeit surprised—laugh. “You’ll be glad to know that you weren’t the only one who thought so. I think you’re going to enjoy this next part.”
The large screen played footage of the judge holding up the curving churro one more time to audience boos and then played clips of social media reacting to it. An endless number of people had an opinion on the matter. Someone had even spelled out their names in churros for an Instagram post.
ASHNA + RICO.
(Inside a churro heart. Groan.)
From behind the cameras, China bounced on her heels and blew Ashna grateful kisses.
Unsurprisingly, the judges’ scores were as lukewarm as their criticism.
As they walked away, Rico’s smile was too arrogant by half. It was the other half of his smile that told Ashna she had made a mistake by taking the mic.
One by one the other pairs braved the recaps and the judges’ comments—mostly lackluster, except for Danny El, who had made, wait for it . . . mac and cheese that the judges “wanted to lick off their dishes.”
As DJ waited for the combined scores to be computed so he could announce them, Jonah ran up to Ashna and Rico at their station. “That was amazeballs.” He gave Rico a fist bump and Ashna a worshipful glance. “You guys are trending everywhere!”
What was wrong with people? Ashna didn’t understand this obsession with other people’s lives. Jonah pulled up Twitter and Instagram on his tablet and waved it about, parroting all the hashtags she and Rico now were: #knifegate #churrosolimp, and the one that made Jonah the giddiest: #Ashico, which when said out loud sounded far too much like the Hindi word ashiquo which, disastrously enough, meant “lovers.”