Page 55 of Okay Boss
The explanation sounded thin even to her own ears.
“The building is already talking,” her mother said quietly. “I had to mute the WhatsApp group.”
Her father appeared in the hallway. White kurta crisp and ironed. Proper. Controlled. Yet something about him seemed diminished. Shoulders curved inward.
“Baba.”
He met her eyes. No fury. Only worry. And something heavy.
His gaze shifted to her hairline.
“Divya, filling the maang with sindoor is not acting,” her mother said softly. “It is a ritual. It binds two lives. Even if this is clarified, the world saw a man place sindoor in my daughter’s maang. Real sindoor.”
Her father’s jaw flexed. “I may not understand cinema, but I know this is not how scenes are done. Not like this.”
He gestured faintly toward her forehead.
Divya felt blood drain from her face. She’d forgotten. In last night’s chaos, she’d forgotten the thin red line still marking her.
Her hand flew to her hairline.
“Go,” her father said quietly. “Wash it off.”
The words weren’t angry. They were spoken to the room. To fate. To irony.
Divya turned and hurried to the tiny bathroom, heart thudding so loud it drowned everything. She locked the door and stared at herself in the mirror.
The red line gleamed.
Her fingers trembled as she turned on the tap. Cold water splashed. She cupped it and pressed it to her hairline.
The color smudged first. Then streaked. Then began to fade.
She scrubbed harder than necessary, as if she could erase not just powder but the moment itself.
Outside, her parents’ voices murmured low and strained.
In the mirror, the red thinned to pink. Then nothing. But the skin beneath still felt warm.
???
Riya Sharma’s phone vibrated at 7:03 AM.
“The news has it that Vikram married,” her publicist didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Every outlet wants a statement. They need your comment.”
Riya sat up. Sleep vanished.
By the time she reached the bathroom, the image had loaded. Vikram. His hand lifting. Sindoor pressed into the hairline of a girl in glasses.
This was not the look Vikram wore during their staged appearances. No camera awareness. His expression was unguarded, almost fierce.
She called him. He answered on the third ring.
“I don’t know what the hell is happening,” he said immediately. Voice strained. “Don’t get dragged into this.”
“Too late. My name’s trending. ‘Vikram Khanna Cheats on Riya Sharma.’ I need to respond.”
“There was no cheating. We were never together.”
