Page 71 of Not Safe for Work
‘HR declared work from home after last night’s storm.’
Her eyes widened as the realization hit her. ‘Oh shit! When did you even get back?’
I scooted over to make room for her. ‘This morning … It took me three hours to get home. The waterlogging was insane.’
She whistled through her teeth. ‘Shit, that’s intense.’
‘You’d think after decades of the same monsoon cycle, someone would’ve figured out how to prevent the city from flooding every year, but—’
‘Babe, as much as I’d love to hear you rant about Mumbai’s shitty urban planning … can wepleasetalk about what happened last night first?’ She folded her legs under her and settled onto the couch like she was gearing up for a full debrief.
‘Nothing … we just stayed up late and talked.’ I rubbed my forehead in a feeble attempt to hide my face.
She leaned forward, a mischievous smile playing on her lips. ‘And … did you do it?’
‘Do what?’
She wriggled her eyebrows at me. ‘You know …it.’
I smacked her leg with a cushion. ‘Niks, no!’
‘Okay … so you kissed him?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, feeling weirdly flustered. ‘I’m not going to kiss my intern.’
‘Hotintern,’ Nikita added unhelpfully.
‘Besides the point.’
‘Um,’ she said, giving me a knowing look. ‘That’sexactlythe point.’
‘You’re reading way too much into this.’
‘So you’re telling me,’ she leaned back against the sofa, pulling her knees into her chest, ‘that you got stuck in the office with your crush all night … talked for hours … andnothinghappened?’
I didn’t even bother objecting to her usage of the term ‘crush’. It’s not like she would’ve magically forgotten how I had gushed about him like a horny teenager last night. There was no coming back from that.
‘What a waste of my favourite romcom trope.’ The acute disappointment on her face made me feel like I’d failed some kind of a test.
I pressed my lips together. ‘Well … we did fall asleep on the couch together.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘And?’
‘And we may have snuggled a little bit … or at least our legs did.’
Nikita let out a slow breath. ‘That’s a start … I guess.’
I used to think that Murphy’s Law, ‘anything that can go wrong will go wrong’, was unnecessarily pessimistic, but I’m beginning to reconsider my stance. Because not only were Neil and I up last in a five-hour pitch-off where everyone pretty much checked out after the first fifteen minutes, we also had the pleasure of following a lineup that had individually decided to peak today.
Saloni had pitched a campaign that didn’t involve a single sale (even Rajat was shocked), Inayat had come back from the dead with a deck that looked like it had been made by a pro, Nitya’s idea was not as mediocre as we’d assumed and Tanya had knocked it out of the park with her ‘Wear Your Space’ concept. TL;DR: We were screwed.
And as if that hadn’t been enough, when it was finally time for our presentation, the projector screen died without any warning. Neil and I tried everything we could to bring it back to life—reconnecting the HDMI cable, restarting the system, changing the remote batteries—but even the IT guy couldn’t resurrect it.
After a few more minutes of waiting patiently, Rajat cleared his throat. ‘Kavya, can you present without the deck?’
My eyes immediately shot to Neil, who was still fiddling with the wires.What the fuck do we do?I tried to communicate with him telepathically. He caught my eye and gave me an encouraging nod, abandoned the remote and joined me on the floor.
‘Um … yes, okay. We can try,’ I managed weakly.
