Dil Beparwah | ✔

Bonus ▪︎ 1.1 | Super Last Minute Confessions

||BONUS 1||
《¤》

┊V A R U N┊

Heat clawed the back of my neck, my words stuck mid-sentence, mind fùçķìñģ astray.

Thought might get you a house-warming present x

And wrapped taut in a ribbon, the present posed in the empty bedroom, newly painted, barely furnished. Mirror selfie, slightly misaligned. Really shouldn't have handed her the keys, because holy shìť.

"Uhm... sir?"

Kriti's voice knocked me back inside the conference room with five other journalists and their publisher. Pressing my phone shut, I cleared my throat and looked back at the line piping up the stats chart on the monitor. "Right. Mirrors."

"...mirrors?"

I glared at Mikesh, who prompted me for an explanation for a completely unrelated term in the meeting.

"Bombay Mirror," I tested. "We should, uhm, restart the weekly blog thing and call it Bombay Mirror."

But the very obvious elephant in the room hung over my proposal. "Are you suggesting that we bring back Esha?"

God, no. "Or Meera here can take it up," I glanced at Esha's replacement.

A loud slurping caused us to look at Girish, who had transformed pitch meetings into his personal doodle class. Sensing unwanted attention, he pulled his notepad of a canvas under the table and nodded. "Meera's Mirror, sounds awesome boss!"

"Ooh, I like that one more," Meera announced.

"From Esha's sheesha to Meera's mirror," Kriti muttered under her breath. "Quite a transition."

Funny, because I wasn't the one who was awaiting their approval. Mikesh raised a brow appreciatively, pumping his shoulder. "That's settled then. We should start rolling it out soon, it will definitely help with the targets."

On that note, we concluded the meeting, because obviously, I was in a hurry. However Mikesh seldom read the room, and walked in with his sneering chihuahua curled up in his arms. "I have a super last minute thing to confess."

"Kind of in a hurry here," I made a show of stuffing my laptop in the bag.

"I've got a date tomorrow..."

"Clearly uninterested."

"...morning."

I paused. "Are you saying that you won't be coming for the Puja?"

"No, no, no... kind of. I mean, I will be there, but will be a little late. It's a breakfast date. But," he held his dog up, "Molly would be more than happy to fill my presence."

Smart way of hunting a dogsitter, but, "Absolutely not."

Molly snarled back, flashing her canines. Mikesh patted her head, cooing some gooey shìť in her ear before turning to me, "C'mon Malhotra, I'd have taken her along but she gets too possessive over me and is a little stern around my date. Moreover... Molly loves Uncle Varun, ow wyes she dwoz, dowzn't she."