Oh, no. I’m not staying here. I’m not staying here withhim. There’s no way. We won’t survive it. I’d rather take my chances with the hurricane.
I turn back to my phone. I can find a hotel. There must be something available. Somewhere. I press the icon that looks like my travelapp, but I know I’ve tapped the wrong thing when Olivia Rodrigo’s last album starts playing instead.
“Shit.” I press the same icon, but instead of stopping, the music seems to only grow louder.
“Here, let me,” Nikhil says, reaching for it. I yank my arm away, but not before his fingers lightly brush against mine.
It’s fleeting. Over in less than a second. But electricity tingles at my fingertips, sending tiny shocks toward my elbow. I shake my hand, trying to get rid of the sensation, which somehow, miraculously, silences my phone. I look down in surprise, then groan when I see that the screen is now pitch-black. This thing is officially broken.
“Maybe I can switch to an earlier flight,” I say. “If I could use your phone. Or your computer. I could…”
“People are evacuating, Meena. Those flights are going to be booked.”
The small hope that had been building within me dies a quick death. He’s right. I hate that he’s right. Now I understand the mad rush at the airport.
“It’ll be okay,” he says gently. “We’ll get through this. The house is in good condition, and like I said, we have everything we’ll need. Flashlights and radios and I even installed a backup generator last year. It doesn’t always work, but it should kick in if we lose power.”
I nod along as if I’m listening. As if it’s thestormI’m worried about and not the fact that I’m about to be stuck sharing a house with the man I’m trying to sever ties with once and for all.
Turns out I was right before. I am in hell. But it’s worse than I thought. Because now I’m trapped here. With the one person I hoped I’d never have to see again.
Myhusband.
2
Nope. I take that back.
I refuse to be trapped here. I refuse to accept it.
“Can I borrow your phone?” I ask. Desperation swims through me, but I do my best to hide it. To keep it buried deep, deep down.
Nikhil’s forehead creases, but he doesn’t say a word as he pulls his phone out of his back pocket and hands it to me.
I clutch it like a lifeline and my hand shakes a bit as I check every airline I can think of. Unfortunately, it takes only a few minutes to confirm that Nikhil was right. Almost everything is booked. And prices are sky-high for the few seats that remain—there’s a flight to D.C. going for north of $1,000 right now and really, we need stronger legislation to prevent corporate greed during a time of crisis like this—but even with those prices, almost everything is gone.
“How many hours until it gets here?” I ask, switching tracks andtrying to search for rental cars. Only it seems like everyone musthave had the same idea, because when I select “Houston” as the pickup location, the page freezes. I refresh the page, but thetraffic must be overwhelming, because a 404 error alert pops up. I groan.
“Meena, what are you—”
“Your car,” I say, walking toward the garage, pausing in the hallway and swiping the keys off the hanging shelf instinctively. I don’t even think twice about it. It’s only when I reach the garage door that I register what I’ve just done. And what I just saw out of the corner of my eye.
I look back over my shoulder, a bit stunned. It’s the same hanging shelf Nikhil had installed when we first moved in. And it’s still hanging in the exact same spot. He’d made it back then, out of some leftover wood he’d brought home from a construction site. And then we’d painted it together.
Pale green. With a border made out of little vines and flowers. The colors have faded a bit with time, but the scrawled script in white is still legible.
Welcome to M&N’s
We’d debated what to put there. We hadn’t wanted to be too cringey. Like something you’d find in the discount aisle at a T.J.Maxx.
“ ‘Home is where the heart is,’ ” I’d joked after we’d struggled to come up with a better option.
“No, that’s too long,” Nikhil had said. “There’s not enough room on the shelf. We have to pick one of those one-word ones, like ‘Gratitude,’ ‘Peace,’ or ‘Love.’ ”
I’d gasped. “It’s so simple, Nikhil. It’s been staring us right in the face. I can’t believe we didn’t see it until now. ‘Live, Laugh, Love.’ It’s timeless. A classic for a reason.”
He’d laughed, and I’d grinned.
“What about, ‘Welcome to Our Home’?”
