Husband For Hire

34. Sleepless and Heatless

34. Sleepless and Heatless
My lamp, my Ashar, brought me to life.

* * *

Ashar moped about his phone until dinner time. His baba took him to a phone shop which only gave him a trade-in amount. The display was unrecoverable as a static neon green square blocked the whole display.

Around nine at night, Ashar returned with a new iPhone but still had the old SIM card. He ate dinner in five minutes (yes, I checked). Thereafter, I followed him upstairs to our room where his stepmother had to give us a new blanket. Jhanvi and I had apologized profusely for spilling food on the other one. Thankfully, the lady was sweet enough to let it go easily.

I changed into my pink cotton night suit. It was freezing in the house, making me wonder if I needed to add a thermal underneath my half sleeved shirt. When I returned to the room, Ashar was sitting on the bed struggling with his new iPhone.

"Your SIM isn't working?" I asked cautiously.

"The SIM is working, but it's not retrieving the data I saved on the cloud," he said upset. "How am I supposed to call home now?"

"You can use mine," I offered, "as long as you don't call my mom or my uncle."

"Why?" he asked, standing up. "Why can't they know?"

"Jhanvi and I . . . " I thought hard of what lie to sell him, "wanted to avoid Sunny."

"What?" Now, he was puzzled.

It was lie I had told my uncle and he had believed it. Hopefully, Ashar would also accept it.

"He's been following me and Jhanvi because of the divorce," I said which was mostly the truth. "He knows Jhanvi's favorite vacation spots, so we wanted to avoid them. He would never guess we're in India."

"And why can't your mom or uncle know this?"

"I told my uncle," I replied. "He kept repeating Brazil because it was Jhanvi's favorite country. He thought it was the only place that'd help Jhanvi feel better."

In my defense, I had told Ashar everything truthfully except for the fact that we came to India for him. If he were to double check with uncle, our stories would align.

"Why follow me to Amritsar?" he asked almost defeated. "Why not Shimla or Ooty or Goa?"

"We followed behind you because we didn't know where else to go," I replied. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize Jhanvi and I were adding on to your problems. I'll talk to her tomorrow and see if we can book a flight to the places you mentioned."

He looked at his phone and then back at me as if contemplating something. I didn't actually want to leave him, but it seemed too harsh to stay. His baba had already given him a surprise by the lies. Then, Jhanvi and I came along and fed him more.

He was on no vacation himself.

"I'm sorry about your phone too," I added.

Strange enough, I was apologizing to him without thinking twice. It reminded me of the first time we had met in jail and he had forced me to apologize. Back then, it was done begrudgingly. Now, the words were genuine.

"It's okay," he said and sighed. "I don't understand you or your cousin. Feel free to stay here if you must, but I'll be leaving tomorrow."

I looked at him alarmed. "Why? Where?"

"As you saw, baba is perfectly fine," he said pointedly. "I'm in no mood to stay with him or his wife. Amritsar has plenty of hotels. I'll finish selling those properties in ma's name and go back."