Page 1 of The Plus One
CHAPTER 1
Indira
T-MINUS FIVE WEEKS UNTIL THE WEDDING
Indira knew, rationally, it wasn’t doing her much good to keep canceling her therapy appointments.
But, irrationally, it was a hell of a lot easier to ride the wave of a decent week than to sit down on Dr. Koh’s beige couch and sift through her feelings until she realized she’d been deluding herself and her week was, in fact, total shit.
Indira also knew, as a psychiatrist herself, that this was called avoidance. And it wasbad.
Fatal flaws, et cetera, et cetera.
Pushing away the tiny pang of guilt she felt for canceling, she stopped at the market a few blocks from the apartment she shared with her boyfriend, Chris, to buy ingredients for her mom’s old chicken parm family recipe and a way-too-expensive bottle of wine, hoping to surprise him. While Chris worked from home, he wasn’t much into cooking, and most nights Indira was too tired from her long shifts at the children’s outpatient center to want to whip anything up. They were in a rut of delivered food eaten in silence as they scrolled through their phones, together in the most disconnected way possible.
They’d moved in after only five months of dating, riding a high ofdecent sex and early relationship happy hormones. But after almost a year of on-again, off-again whiplash, the relationship was starting to feel more like roommates than romance, and they both knew something had to change.
At least, she thought they both knew that. It wasn’t like they talked about their relationship. They didn’t talk about much, if she were being honest…
But it would all be okay. If the emotional roller coaster of Indira’s childhood had taught her anything, it was that there wasn’t a problem out there that couldn’t be (at least temporarily) fixed by her mom’s red sauce.
Indira checked out, even grabbing an impulse-buy of dessert to try and lift her glum mood.
Practicing her brightest—albeit forced—smile, she made her way through the cool October evening to their apartment, giving herself a pep talk. Chris was, at his core, a good guy. And Indira could get over her mental blockade of past relationship failures mixed with melodramatic ennui and get this one to work. Besides, she’d been down the whole single-and-searching-on-dating-apps road. The grass was definitely not fucking greener; relationships take hard work; insert platitude here; blah blah blah.
Indira hiked up the stairs of her building and let herself into the unit, sweeping into the kitchen with a flourish.
“Surpri—”
The unexpected sound of lusty moans killed the greeting in her throat.
For a moment, Indira wondered if she’d walked in on Chris watching a particularly vocal porno.
And then she saw.
Oh, the horror of the things she saw.
There was writhing.
And grinding.
And an… open jar of peanut butter?… (???)
Indira’s jaw was on the ground as her fucking boyfriend groped—with very little finesse, skill, or sensuality, thank you very much—a stranger on their fucking couch.
With peanut butter smeared on their faces.
(Seriously, what the hell?)
Her mind was slow and sluggish to process the tableau of betrayal she was witnessing in real time. The entangled couple finally registered her presence, separating their sticky faces long enough to stare back at her. The shocked silence held them all captive.
It was the soul-shattering howl of her cat, Grammy, that finally snapped Indira out of her daze.
Her head whipped around, looking frantically for Grammy, who had a propensity for inserting herself in the center of most human interactions. A little paw batted under the crack in the pantry door.
Indira saw red.
Oh no. There’s no way this dickhead locked Indira’s cat in a closet to pat down the titties of some rando without interruption.
