Case reference and small revenge

Heena sent the case-reference line and I read it twice and for exactly one breath the sky opened. One breath. Then Ramesh had already texted Niharika and Niharika had already screenshot it to me and the sky closed again. Blacklisted. The word sounds like something you earn, like you were important enough to ban. I keep wanting to call Ramesh and say do you even know my last booking rate, do you know what I charged at the Hilton last December, and then I remember I can't because he will say the thing about the photograph and the thing about Kishan and I have no answer for that.

Trupti posted "booked and blessed." I sat on my bed at ten p.m. and stared at it and felt something hot and stupid rise up my throat. She took fifteen hundred rupees less than my rate. I want to say she doesn't know how to read a room, how to feel the silence before a joke lands, how to make an uncle's retirement speech feel like it mattered. I want to say I am better. I can't say that anywhere except here.

The retirement gig tonight was ten people in a room that smelled like floor cleaner and old cushions and I made it feel like something anyway. I counted the cash twice in the auto. It was correct. It felt like a tiny win against the universe, which is pathetic, I know, but the universe started it.

Heena is drafting the legal notice. I said yes to everything. I don't know what breach of contract looks like when the contract was a WhatsApp voice note and a handshake, but I want them to feel something. I want them afraid the way I have been afraid.