Romi Moondi
Author
Author
Thursday — One day before the Harvest Moon
Risha Deol was the rusty third wheel to hot couples. And she hated it. She wanted to avoid them, but lately they’d been popping up like undead creatures emerging from six feet of dirt. His veiny forearms so hard not to ogle. Her shiny long legs so easy to loathe. And Risha always tethered nearby, but never quite in the mix.
Today, the sexy couple stared her down on the 6 train, where she sat between a man-spreader going to town on a meat supreme sub, and a young woman transfixed by the AI slop reels playing on her phone. The couple bothered her more than the man chomping away at seven layers of meat, or the woman co-signing the death sentence of humanity. So much more. It wasn’t just because she was recently divorced, but because the couples were everywhere, a curse of the rom com renaissance. Such was Risha’s experience when she went out in the world these days; a proliferation of posters featuring upcoming rom com films, and no escape from the two-dimensional hotties blessed with fake happy endings anchoring the glossy ads, like the couple staring her down at that very moment.
Or maybe there was an escape.
As the train slowed to a stop at Union Square station, Risha practically leapt out of her seat.
She would walk the rest of the way.
***
Risha stood at the intersection of Houston and Mercer, just a few blocks from her apartment in Nolita. She wrapped her baggy jean jacket around her frame, imagining the hot cup of tea she’d enjoy on her cozy couch, the perfect escape from the outside world.
As she headed east on Houston, the couple from the movie poster plagued her mind. She hadn’t always hated rom coms, in fact, she’d adored them once. Like While You Were Sleeping, a rom com that had made her fantasize about rescuing a man from the subway tracks and pretending to be engaged to his comatose form.
But, just like romance, the flame of the genre had burned out, giving way to uncomfortable indie films full of damaged characters, violent scenes, and sad endings that served as Oscar vehicles for countless A-list stars. If, back then, Risha had spent more time absorbing those dark meditations on humanity, and less time believing in happy endings starring Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock (and rewatching them an embarrassing amount), maybe she wouldn’t be forty-two and starting over.
But that couldn’t be the end of the curse, could it. Rom coms had to come back bigger than ever, didn’t they. From the big screen to streaming platforms and countless book adaptations.
Shoot me.
Turning onto Mott Street, she dabbed at her forehead, still matte from the setting powder she’d applied before leaving the office. She knew her effortless makeup look mattered little at day’s end, nor should it have mattered at all, but she didn’t have the capacity to analyze patriarchal conditioning in her precious after-work time. Keeping a steady pace, she combed through her elbow-length hair with her fingers, pleased the no-frizz finishing spray had held up the full ten hours. All matted and zero-frizzed up with no place to go, she admired the weather-worn headstones dotted across the cemetery at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a fine match to the overcast skies. She crossed her fingers for more gloomy autumn days, the perfect excuse to retreat from social gatherings.
Past the cemetery, she made a beeline to the building across the street, the cast-iron façade calling her home.
Within ten minutes of arriving in her apartment on the third floor, Risha had checked all the boxes of her autumnal decompression routine—cup of tea already steeping, air purifier on, Aesop candle burning, and the latest episode of a true crime podcast playing through a smart home speaker. Would the Australian woman who’d been missing for ten years finally be found, the episode teased? Or would the sighting at the bank on the Gold Coast leave listeners scratching their heads? She would soon find out.
Risha’s methodical approach to comfort matched the décor of her apartment: coordinating throw pillows arranged on a cozy sectional tailor-made for movie night, small kitchen appliances positioned in proximity of coordinating dishes neatly organized in clear-view cabinets, and tabletop lighting in all the right places to add an extra touch of warmth. Topped off with exposed wood beams and original hardwood flooring, the apartment was the perfect one-bedroom home for two. And for a while, it had been just that.
In the bedroom, decorated in calming hues of light sage and lavender, Risha changed into an ultra-soft, temperature-regulating loungewear set. Her favorite. She slipped her jacket onto a hanger and made a move to return it to its designated place in the closet, but froze as she took in the other half of it—empty. In a rare break from her routine, she hung the jacket on the empty side, resisting the urge to rearrange everything.
***
Friday — the day of the Harvest Moon
Risha’s morning coffee haunt was more reminiscent of Brooklyn than Manhattan, with a dark blue awning featuring the name Sam’s Coffee in a scrawled typeface. Inside, the shop was one-half café, and one-half plant store. Exposed-brick walls and reclaimed-wood tables created a cozy atmosphere, while metal chairs in bright colors added a bit of pop. Sam’s had been Risha’s usual morning spot for months now, and Sam himself was almost always behind the counter, a forty-something homage to the diner owner Luke from Gilmore Girls. The main difference? He was never crabby and always patient, particularly when Lorelai-wannabe customers drooled over his camera-ready features—hazel eyes, layers of chestnut brown hair that looked effortless yet perfect in that “combed it through with my fingers because I was too busy chopping wood” way, a light stubble drawing the eye to his defined jawline, and a tall frame adorned in flannel. To top it off, his shirt sleeves were rolled partway up, exposing a pair of muscled forearms.
One such Lorelai-wannabe was now in line ahead of Risha, and deep in the throes of try-hard flirty banter. Each remark from the budget-Lorelai not only grated at Risha’s will to live, but it delayed the magic moment when she’d get her hands on that perfectly crafted vanilla oat latte. She considered hurling Temu-Lorelai to the floor and locking her into a sleeper hold, but for the sake of society’s rules of engagement, settled on scrolling her phone (with a self-produced soundtrack of aggrieved sighs).
“You’re a plant expert too?” the woman blathered on. “What don’t you do?”
Poison the coffee of annoying women. Too bad.
Sam’s laugh was gentle, a sound that would normally please a woman Risha’s age who was newly single. But all she wanted to do was shake him by the shoulders. Stop being nice, this will only encourage her!
“I grew up around nature,” he finally said.
The woman ping-ponged back with another question. Gawd. Risha glanced back at the door, fully contemplating ditching the coffee she’d paid for, if only to escape the reality show of this cringey one-sided meet cute.
Miraculously, Sam managed to hand the woman her coffee, respond to her question, and wish her a great day in one fell swoop. His success in ushering her out earned a smile from Risha.
“Sorry about that,” he said, peeking over the espresso machine as he got to work on her latte.
“You were way too nice,” Risha said, wondering why she was being so familiar with someone she’d barely spoken to.
“Gotta keep those customers coming back.”
“At the cost of pimping yourself out?” She shook her head. “You should ban her. To salvage your integrity, if nothing else.”
He laughed. “How about I let her come back for the sales, but your next coffee is on the house?”
The unexpected banter would’ve been headline enough, but it was Sam’s expression that truly struck her, warm as the sunlight pouring into the coffee shop. A few seconds passed, an eternity inside Risha’s over-active psyche. It wasn’t that she’d never noticed him before—she’d gotten Lasik surgery the year before—but in the last few months of what could only be described as the unraveling of her love life, and the few months before that of trying to convince herself everything was fine, she’d filed away Sam as a conduit to caffeine and nothing more. There had been countless ‘hellos’ and ‘have a nice day” send-offs, but not anything like this moment now.
“That’s kind of you,” she managed. “But I don’t need the free coffee to keep coming back.”
Am I . . . flirting?
“Glad to hear that,” he said.
As the rusty gears of “single and ready to mingle Risha” creaked back into motion, she found herself wondering if she was all that different from the Lorelai wannabe who’d stood in front of her in line. Less thirsty, perhaps, but so deeply programmed by rom com films, TV shows, and books, that even the first seconds of flirty banter had her stomach doing flips about the swoony ‘what ifs.’ But she’d already lived that life, and for decades. A life in service of finding that happy ending. She’d reached it, even grasped it for a while, but had wound up learning the hard way that if something was truly meant to be, it wouldn’t require gripping on for dear life just to keep it. And now she was back at square one, on the cusp of returning to the timeless quest, only now as an older woman in a society that despised them. It was too much to even contemplate before she’d had her morning coffee.
Sam slid a carboard sleeve onto her latte cup and held it in front of her. “Here you go.” Normally he would leave it on the countertop, but today for some reason, she would need to reach out and grab it. When she took the cup from Sam, her fingers touched his, and in that moment of skin on skin, she experienced the very thing felt by every rom com lead before her. The spark. It was a high so full of promise, though in real life, it rarely delivered.
“Thanks.” She broke contact and headed for the door. “Have a good one.”
“You too, Risha.”
She spun around. “How do you know my name?” This wasn’t the type of place that took names with every order, and she and Sam had barely spoken before that morning.
“You come here with that guy sometimes; I’ve heard him say your name.”
“Oh, that’s my best friend from work,” she said, unsure of why she felt the need to clarify their status. “He doesn’t meet me here that often, though.” She studied him. “But you still noticed when he said my name . . .”
Sam ran a hand through his perfectly imperfect hair. “Do I sound like a stalker now?”
“I don’t know . . .” She pushed the door open with her free hand, determined to rush out and forget all about this, and yet, slowed by unseen forces. Like a stirring in a sleeping heart that had long stopped believing. “If you’re a stalker,” she said, frozen in place, “at least you’re a cute one.”
***