Page 71 of That Same Old Love

It has been done in a lot of places too, but I personally decided to invest in such a community venture as a tribute to Badrinath uncle,” he said.

She was touched by his gratitude towards their kind and generous neighbor.

CHAPTER 24

It was mid-November and close to four months into their deal.

Samrat had to fly overseas for a couple of weeks to attend a lawsuit hearing. Someone was suing the company claiming that Stimmulus was unnatural and that it might lead to severe brain damage.

He had to fly in personally for the court proceedings where a team of doctors, scientists and lawyers were working together to resolve the lawsuit either as an out of court settlement or to argue against the false claims.

Samrat tried to tempt her to join him in the trip. “Come with me. It might take less than two weeks too. We can fly back or just spend some time there sightseeing.”

He had asked Mahi repeatedly to accompany him to the trip for two weeks since it was the longest they had been apart since their deal.

But Mahi refused to join him since she had a busy work week.

“Two words. Phone sex,” she said with a shameless smirk.

Samrat sighed. “This is going to be a very long trip for me,” he told her and kissed her senseless.

By the time Mahi woke up in the morning, Samrat had already left.

***

A week later, Mahi was missing Samrat like crazy. He had been calling often whenever he had any free time. They usually spoke about their day. Samrat told her about the case and she told him about her work and some of the things she was doing outside work.

After they got those out of the way, they spoke about what they would have done to each other if they were lying next to each other on the bed. Not surprisingly, their dirty talk got them hot and bothered and made them miss each other more.

On the first weekend, Mahi was meeting her friends at a restaurant for lunch for a celebration. Ashwini was promoted from a Senior Director position to a Vice President of IT in her company.

Everyone raised their Margarita glasses and toasted her successful promotion.

“To Ashu! May you receive many such promotions!”

Ashwini had told them before how hard she had to work for it, often sacrificing her family time and missing some of her kids’ school events.

“So what did the sleazy shorty have to say about your promotion?” Mahi asked her.

Ashwini had another contender who was vying for the same promotion.

“Oh as usual he made passive aggressive digs at me informing me that I didn’t deserve the promotion and that my face and body got me what I wanted,” said Ashwini.

Everyone at the table felt outraged.

“That bastard. Bahh why do such idiots exist. Why can’t he just trip and fall on the sharp end of a knife and die already,” said Jhanvi.

“You have a great track record and success rate with all your projects. That alone should be proof enough for that moron,” said Mahi feeling equally outraged on Ashwini’s behalf.

“I know. I wanted to graduate my feeling of always wanting to slap him to throwing a jaw breaking punch. But this wasn’t the first time I met such nasty sore losers. They call me all kinds of names… bossy, pushy, cold and selfish. I don’t care. Well… I do sometimes, but I try not to care,” said Ashwini.

“Oh yes. I get those labels all the time too. And surprisingly from other women,” said Smitha.

Everyone began discussing the different characters they came across during their careers.

Mahi started to tell them about something that was bugging her at work.

“I’m managing a team right now and I’m having some issues with one of the team members. It’s kind of weird but I feel something is off about her situation. The colleague’s name is Chithra and she is a brilliant programmer. She had been working on many high profile projects since past two years and has a great track record. And slowly things have been changing since she got married a few months ago to another coworker from a different team. She started missing deadlines, skipping work often and has been more withdrawn lately. She was one of the chirpiest girls until a few months ago. The entire situation is raising huge red flags for me. I’m not her direct manager and I didn’t mention this to Samrat because she works in his company. What should I do?” Mahi asked in concern.

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