Silently Falling in Love: Lucky Charm

Chapter 4 - Frantic Husband

Current Day – leading up to Anjali fleeing to the hotel.

He thought he would surprise Anjali by showing up in the middle of the day at the De Young museum.  He’d just gotten off the phone with her and she said she was going there to meet a friend.  He walked into the café and saw her having coffee with a man. 

He knew she didn’t have many friends here and he certainly didn’t remember her mentioning a guy friend.  They had moved to San Francisco two years ago from NYC.  He’d gotten an incredible offer to start up a new type of Venture Capitalist (VC) firm that actually works with the companies full time for a few months.  It wasn’t your usual VC firm that puts in a ton of money and then just shows up for Board meetings.  He was a risk taker and he always liked doing things differently with a twist.  Just like he had done back East.  Plus, working with start-ups would help keep him young – it was great to be surrounded by such energy and enthusiasm and idealism.  Youth always had a different outlook on life. 

Anjali had grown up in New Jersey, gone to college in Pennsylvania, and then lived in NYC ever since she graduated from college.  She was an East Coast girl.  Most of her family and all of her friends were on the East Coast.  When he got the offer, she was in full support of him taking the offer.  His parents lived here and she liked the idea of living closer to them and having the kids get to know their paternal grandparents better.  She had also been accepted to Stanford for college but her father hadn’t allowed her to go because he hated the thought of his daughter being so far away from him.  So she was thrilled to finally live out her dream of experiencing California.  He had lived on the East Coast since college and he also liked the idea of coming back home.  He was tired of the winters especially after having kids and having to drag their gear and them through the crappy weather.  His brother, Arjun, had also decided to move back to the Bay Area from Seattle.  It had been a long time since his family had lived near each other and he had looked forward to living near them.  Except work had kept him so busy, that he almost felt like he saw his family more when he lived on the East coast.  He knew the move had been harder on Anjali than him since he was always busy at work.  After they had their son, Samir, she had gone back to work as an Architect part-time.  Then after having their daughter, Jaya, she decided to give it up all together.  It was too hard juggling her part time job, the kids and he wasn’t always around given his travel schedule for work.  Since they could financially afford to live off of his salary she quit. She didn’t like staying at home full-time so she focused on her hobbies of dance and yoga to give her a break from raising the kids.  She had always danced and taught yoga and choreographed before the kids, but she spent more time doing this after the kids and began to make this her career.  Because of the flexibility and not having to be in an office 9-5 she could manage it better with the kids.   As she spent more time doing this she built quite a name for herself in the NYC area.  She taught classes and she choreographed dance numbers for Bollywood songs whenever they happened to film in NY and many of the Broadway musicals would ask for her help to choreograph numbers that needed more spice to them since her specialty was Bollywood dance numbers and she is a classically trained Baratnatayam dancer.  After moving to San Francisco and once the kids were settled into school Anjali had more time on her hands.  With fewer friends and not as much work since she didn’t have any reputation on the West Coast she had a lot more time on her hands.  Having to start all over in your early 40’s is harder to do.  He knew he had to do a better job helping her adjust.

He walked over to her table and then bent down and whispered “Surprise” in her ear.  She turned around and looked shocked.  “What are you doing here?” Anjali asked. 

“I thought I would surprise my lovely wife and spend the day with her,” he grinned.  He looked up to see her companion and he noticed that the gentleman having coffee with his wife was none other than Jordan Kowalski.  He’d met Jordan a few times but didn’t know him well.  Why was he having coffee with Anjali?