Page 15 of Not Safe for Work
‘How did you figure it out …’ I asked, my voice low. ‘My secret?’
He let out a low, throaty chuckle. ‘You didn’t make it very tough, to be honest. I was already suspicious when you had nothing to offer about your time at NYU … but then when Kenzo said he’d never heard of you …’ He shook his head in amusement. ‘All old students have access to the alumni database. So I looked you up.’
I took an unsteady breath, willing my nerves to calm down. He was right. Ihadn’tmade it tough. Him finding out so easily … it wasn’t bad luck. It was carelessness. My cheeks burned with the humiliating truth.
‘Relax, most people wouldn’t have bothered checking. I’m just annoyingly thorough,’ he offered by way of consolation before turning the corner onto Worli Sea Face.
For a moment, I let myself forget about the mess I’d landed myself in and admire the beauty in front of me. The sea stretched as far as the eye could see, waves breaking gently against stone walls and filling the evening breeze with a tinge of salt. Along the road was an unusual mix of homes—old bungalows with sloping tiled roofs and bougainvillea spilling over their gates, side by side with glossy multi-storey houses whose glass balconies jutted out towards the water. I found myself wondering what it would be like to wake up to this view, to open your windows and have the ocean greet you first thing in the morning.
‘You live here?’ I asked, a hint of wonder seeping into my voice despite my best efforts to conceal it.
‘Down the road,’ he said, then turned to face me. ‘Where should I drop you off?’
Right. Time to go back to my side of the town.‘The nearest station is fine.’
Neil leaned over to tap the car’s console, his arm grazing mine in the process. Almost instinctively, my fingers brushed the spot, a flicker of how he’d gripped my wrist in the parking lot flashing through my mind before I shoved the memory aside. When‘Gravity’ by John Mayer filled the car, the memory receded, replaced by mild surprise at his taste in music.
‘I don’t mind dropping you home,’ he offered, surprisingly polite for a blackmailing bastard.
I passed him a tight-lipped smile. ‘I live in Andheri.’
He chuckled, making a sharp U-turn that made me reach for the door handle. ‘Nearest station it is.’
six
Excess Baggage
I’dspent the entire long weekend trying to convince myself that I was not, in fact, royally screwed. So what if my intern knew my deep dark secret and was blackmailing me over it? It could’ve been alotworse. Like if he’d demanded a bunch of money in return for his silence. Or … sex. Getting ready for work this Monday morning, the thought alone opened the floodgates to unwanted memories from the other day, like how strong his hand had felt clamped around my wrist in the parking lot and, worse, the irritatingly expensive cologne my brain had refused to forget.
My hand trembled, smudging the nude lipstick I was applying in front of the mirror. I wiped it off with a fingernail. ‘You’ve got this. Everything is going to be okay,’ I assured my reflection. All I had to do to survive this nightmare was let Neil sit on his ass and do nothing.How hard could that be?
The first dent in my optimism came after the morning meeting. It had been one of those never-ending marathons—nearly two hours of ‘strategic brainstorming’ where everyone from the marketing team pitched in for the year’s events calendar. I’d tuned out halfway through a debate on whether Christmas deserved a bigger budget than Diwali.
Neil had been sitting next to me, dutifully scribbling the minutes Varun had asked him to email to the team after the meeting was over. Or so I thought. You can imagine my surprise when I later discovered that he hadn’t been taking notes at all. He’d spent the entire meeting doodling. Pages after pages of stick figures in superhero costumes, a clumsy attempt at Iron Man’s armour and something atrocious that looked vaguely like a female Hulk.
‘Wait, is that supposed to beme?’ I gasped, squinting at the green monstrosity in his diary.
He gave me a smug smile. ‘You do have a bit of a temper.’
My nostrils flared as he sniggered, tapping the sketch for emphasis.
‘How are you going to send the minutes of the meeting if you didn’t take any notes?’ I demanded, suppressing the sudden desire to whack him across the arm.
‘Good thing I have you to cover for me,’ he said, already pushing his chair back and strolling towards the pantry. Which is how I found myself scrambling to reconstruct a two-hour meeting entirely from memory.
By the time Tuesday rolled around, my confidence in this whole thing working out was teetering. Jittery on caffeine and irritation, I powered through designing creatives at superhuman speed to keep up with the incoming workload. Of course, Saloni’s team treated my extra pair of hands as an open invitation to offload more impossible tasks. Every time Varun asked how my intern was settling in, I pasted on a smile so wide it threatened to crack my face into two. Every time I caught Neil watching YouTube videos from the corner of my eye, I came dangerously close to hurling my mouse at his perfectly moisturized face. But I knew he held all the cards. So, I forced myself to keep my head down and channel all that murderous energy into hunting down pretty fonts.
On Wednesday when I got back to my desk after lunch, my inbox was waiting with an email from him.
