Page 48 of Red Flags and Rishtas
Hold on, I thought.I’m doing that thing again.
You know, the thing where I write men off before I’ve gotten a chance to know them, so they can’t let me down later on? Over the years, I’d developed a terrible habit of finding faults even where none existed. I was the opposite of Uday Chopra’s character fromDhoom –I would meet a guy and instantly imagine all the ways it could go wrong with him. In a way, my pessimism had worked for me. I hadn’t had a heartbreak in a long time. But on the other hand, I hadn’t found love either. Forget love, I hadn’t even found a decent chap to date for more than a week.
And this guy looked pretty decent. Heck, he might even turn out to be boyfriend material – if I gave him a chance, that is. Besides, I had to remind myself, I needed this more than he did.
‘Another beer?’ he asked me.
‘Uh … I think I should call it a night. Mom’s expecting me home for dinner,’ I said.
She wasn’t. I just figured that if Madhav wanted to run for the position of my boyfriend, he’d have to put some effort into his campaign. Having bottomless alcohol with him on the first date (was it?) didn’t feel like the right card to play. I wanted to leave him wishing for more.
‘Where do you stay? Can I drop you home?’ he asked, leaning forward.
His face fell when I said the word Noida. I chuckled.
‘Don’t worry. You’re off the hook,’ I said, well aware that a South Delhi boy offering to drop me home all the way to Noida was the modern equivalent of Shah Jahan building the Taj Mahal for Mumtaz Mahal.
We split the bill, downed our drinks and got up to leave. He opened the door for me, and we spilled out into the street. My cab had already arrived.
‘Well, this was fun,’ he said.
‘It was,’ I said, motioning to my cab driver to park across the road.
And now, he just had to seal the deal. I wondered if he was going to chicken out.
‘Let’s do it again sometime?’ he asked, and I did a mental victory dance.
Ten points to Madhav!
We fed our numbers into each other’s phones and hugged goodbye. He lingered close to me for a second, and I knew he was trying to determine if he should kiss me or not. I don’t know if he decided that the setting wasn’t ideal or if it just wasn’t the right time, but he didn’t. Instead, he pecked me lightly on my left cheek and pulled away.
I smiled at him warmly before crossing the road to board my cab.
‘Where to, madam?’ the driver asked me.
‘Noida,’ I said.
I didn’t realise I was still smiling until I saw the puzzled look on the cabbie’s face.
‘There’s a lot of traffic, madam. It will take us more than an hour,’ he said, clearly unhappy with the trip he’d been assigned by the taxi app.
‘No problem,’ I said, unfazed by his attitude.
I was in a fantastic mood. This unexpected date had turned out to be the pick-me-up I’d so badly needed after my monstrousweek. The fatigue from both my jobs had almost completely washed away. I had no idea that a little bit of flirting and a fair deal of validation could revive my mind in such a way. I no longer felt frustrated or bogged down. In fact, I could feel the wheels of my brain spinning at supersonic speed. I had half a mind to send Kartik a thank-you text for playing hooky. Instead, I picked up my phone and typed out a text to V.
12
A Crafty Plan
‘Walk through that withfull force and tell me if it hurts,’ I said, pointing to the mass of kaleeras we’d just hung in the changing room doorway.
Saurav looked at me like I had asked him to jump off a cliff. When I didn’t budge, he sighed.
‘Come on, is this really necessary?’ he asked, turning to his girlfriend for support.
It wasn’t. I just wanted to mess with him a little. He had been disappointing my friend for quite some time now, and I wanted a tiny payback.
V just shrugged and said, ‘It won’t kill you, baby.’
