"That's true."
"I think that trusting him again requires evidence over time, not just a conversation that went well and a very good kiss."
"Also true."
"I think I want to trust him, which is different from trusting him, and I need to not confuse those two things."
"Also true. And also—" Priya's voice shifted slightly. "Zara. You are the most capable person I know. You are also the person who spent fourteen months being exactly as sad as you had decided it was appropriate to be and not one degree more or less. You are very, very good at managing yourself. And managing yourself is not the same as living. Do you know what I mean?"
Zara was quiet.
"You managed PayAxis closing. You managed the grief of it. You managed the rebuild. You are excellent at management." A pause. "I think it might be okay to also be a person who wants something and moves toward it, even if the moving is a bit risky and a bit unpredictable and not perfectly structured."
"I hate it when you're right," Zara said.
"I know. It's my best quality."
She hung up and looked at her phone for a moment. Then she typed: Are you free Saturday?
His response was immediate: Yes.
I want to take you somewhere. It's important and I want you to see it.
Where?
The PayAxis office building. The one we had in Andheri. It's been re-let to a different startup and I need to see it with you and I don't entirely know why yet but I think I will understand once we're there.
A long pause. Then: I'll be there. Whatever you need.
She put the phone down and finished her coffee. Outside, Mumbai was fully awake now, doing what it always did — vast, loud, moving, completely indifferent to the small private decisions happening inside its apartments and offices. She had always found that indifference comforting. The city as proof that the world was large enough to contain your grief and your hope simultaneously without either one crowding out the other.
She had a company to run, a round to close, and a man from Matunga who was learning, in his late thirties, to say things out loud. These three facts did not naturally belong in the same sentence. She was going to make them belong anyway.
She opened her laptop and went to work.
