I put it on. It fits. Of course it fits. The universe is apparently committed to this bit.
“Do you know his size?” Maria asks.
I do. Ring size seven. I know this because I know everything about Arjun Kapoor's hands, because I’ve spent two years watching them across operating tables and break rooms and supply closets, cataloguing every tendon and knuckle and vein with a thoroughness that would qualify as clinical research if the subject weren't my secret crush.
“Seven,” I say, and Maria doesn’t ask how I know, and I don’t volunteer the information, and we maintain a dignified silence on the topic of my obsessive hand-relatedknowledge.
She sizes the rings. She boxes them. Two small velvet boxes, dark blue, the kind that snap open with a satisfying click. I pay, and it's not cheap, but it's not insane, and I figure if I'm going to be fake engaged I might as well do it with rings that don't turn your finger green.
“Good luck,” Maria says, handing me the bag. “With the complicated thing.”
“Thanks, Maria.”
I walk out into the cold. The ramen place next door is steaming up its windows, and the smell hits me on the sidewalk, rich and deep and porky, and I make a mental note to come back here someday. Maybe with Arjun. Maybe after all of this is over and we're back in Toronto. Once the fake engagement’s dissolved and we've gone back to being colleagues who don't touch, and I can sit in this ramen place alone and remember the afternoon I bought rings for a man who will never know that the woman behind the counter called it love and I didn't correct her.
Or maybe I'll bring him here and we'll sit by the window and he'll order something specific, and I'll order the thing with the most noodles, and our knees will touch under the table, and he'll pretend not to notice.
I tuck the ring boxes into my coat pocket and walk home through the frozen city with my hand curled around them the whole way, two small circles of metal that mean nothing and everything.
Oliver greets me at the door like I've been gone for six years instead of six hours, and I let him knock me flat on the hallway floor and lick my face while the rings press against my thigh and the weight of what I'm about to do settles over me.
It's Tuesday evening when the dossier arrives.
I'm on the couch with Oliver, eating a peanut butter and jelly Uncrustable (strawberry this time, because I contain multitudes),watching the Leafs get dismantled by the Habs in a way that should be illegal, when my laptop chimes with an email from kdbookonline.com.
Subject line: Preparatory Documentation — CONFIDENTIAL
I open it. There’s a single attachment: a PDF, thirty-two pages long.
I put down the Uncrustable.
The document’s title, “KAPOOR FAMILY: COMPREHENSIVE BRIEFING,” appears in a crisp, austere font that practically salutes me. There’s a table of contents, section headers, and footnotes. Arjun Kapoor has written a thirty-two-page intelligence dossier about his own family, and it is, without question, the most magnificent thing I’ve ever read.
Section one: “Key Personnel.” Each family member gets a full-page profile. Name, age, role in the family hierarchy, known alliances, potential threat level. Meera Kapoor's entry is three pages long and reads like a CIA brief on a hostile foreign leader. There is a subsection titled “Tactical Communication Patterns” that includes phrases she commonly deploys and their actual translated meanings. Example: “How lovely!” (Translation: I am deeply unimpressed.) Example: “What a charming choice.” (Translation: This is catastrophically wrong, and I will be discussing it with everyone.)
Section two: “Extended Family Network.” An actual diagram. He drew it by hand and scanned it. The aunties are colour-coded by threat level. Auntie Sunita is in red. Auntie Kavita is in orange. There is a dotted line between them labelled “Intelligence Sharing (High Frequency).”
Section three: “Dev Mehindra — The Arranged Suitor.” Clinical. Factual. Height, weight, surgical speciality, educational background. A note at the bottom, in slightly smaller font: “Personality: adequate. Interests: beta-blockers, polo, owning property in Kensington. Threat Assessment: moderate. He is notunpleasant.” Coming from Arjun, this is the most devastating takedown I have ever encountered.
Section four: “Cultural Protocol.” Twelve pages of engagement customs, dietary considerations, dress codes, religious observances, Hindi phrases organized by situation (greetings, compliments, deflecting personal questions, expressing gratitude), and a subsection on gift-giving etiquette that is so thorough it includes a flowchart.
Section five: “Daadi Nirindra.” This section’s shorter than the others. Barely a page. It reads differently, too. The clinical distance that characterizes the rest of the document softens here, just slightly, like a held breath being released. “My grandmother. Eighty years old. Silver-topped cane. Green eyes, like mine. She will see through everything. Do not attempt to deceive her. Do not attempt to charm her. Simply be honest, and hope for the best.” Below that, a single line: “She is the only person in my family whose opinion I am genuinely afraid of.”
I read it three times.
Section six: “Rohan Mathur — The Charming Menace.” Dev's best friend and wingman. Arjun's description of Rohan carries a distinct undercurrent of irritation that borders on allergic. “Charismatic. Magnetic. Immune to social boundaries. Will almost certainly attempt to befriend or seduce you. Exercise caution.” There's a note that reads: “He finds confrontation entertaining. Do not engage.”
Section seven: “Additional Family Members of Note.” Arjun's sister Priya gets a half-page profile that is noticeably warmer than anyone else's, though I’m certain Arjun would deny this under oath. “Intelligent. Observant. Possesses a cutting wit that she deploys with alarming accuracy. Threat level: low. She is likely to identify the deception early. Do not panic. She will not expose us if she believes the alternative is Dev.” There is a line underneath that reads, simply: “She is the best of us.” No elaboration is provided.
His younger brother Yash gets a paragraph that feels carefullymeasured, like Arjun weighed every word on a surgical scale. “Charismatic. Diplomatic. Bears the full weight of the family's business expectations with a grace I have never been able to replicate. Threat level: green.” There’s no further tactical analysis. No communication patterns. No known alliances. Just a final note, almost an afterthought: “We speak less often than I would prefer. This is not his fault.”
Cousin Karan gets three sentences, which is either ruthless efficiency or an accurate reflection of Karan's complexity. “Enthusiastic. Reckless. Will almost certainly attempt to involve you in some form of ill-advised culinary or recreational activity. Threat level: yellow, but only to himself.” There is a parenthetical: “He once crashed a polo pony into a dessert table at a garden party. There were casualties. The casualties were meringues. Karan never forgave himself.”
I read the entire dossier twice, cover to cover, cross-legged on my couch with Oliver's head in my lap. I read it like I used to read scouting reports before a big game. Position by position, player by player, memorizing the tendencies, the weaknesses, the patterns. Except these aren't opposing forwards and defencemen. These are the people Arjun grew up with, the people who shaped him, the people whose approval and judgment and love built the walls he hides behind.
Between the lines of threat assessments and tactical communication patterns, I can see him. The boy who grew up in a sandstone palace with turrets, surrounded by colour-coded aunties and astrological charts, who learned to clasp his hands behind his back to hide his emotions, who fled across an ocean to cut open children's skulls because it was the only place he could be in control. Who wrote a thirty-two-page dossier about his own family because reducing them to data is the only way he knows how to cope with the fact that they terrify him.
I pick up my phone to text him.