Enchanted pen

ACCIDENTALLY REAL

VEER

It has been three days since Anaya asked me to think not just about the deal but everything else. 

It looked like I had been breaking my own rules a lot now. I started thinking about decisions before my morning coffee which was cold and untouched. I don’t know what was about to happen, I checked my phone and there were no texts from Anaya. I was controlled but I wasn’t feeling controlled, it was a different feeling.

I looked over the terms of the deal again, note by note and sentence by sentence. I knew that there was nothing to review but there were notes by Anaya there and it was the closest thing I had to her right now. Her handwriting in the margins of the printed copy she apparently sent back through her grandfather’s office. Notes. Sharp ones. Fair ones. One that made me almost smile.

While I almost chuckled my assistant walked in.

ASSISTANT

“Sir, the Kapoor Estates board has approved the preliminary terms.”

VEER
“I know.”

ASSISTANT
“They’d like to schedule a meeting.”

VEER
“Schedule it.”

ASSISTANT
“With you and Ms. Kapoor. Together.”

Silence.

VEER
“Of course they would.”

ASSISTANT
“Should I confirm?”

I looked at my phone

Still nothing from Anaya.

VEER
“Confirm it.”

She leaves.

I looked over at the margin notes again.

One in particular — next to a clause about decision-making authority, she’d written in her specific slightly-aggressive handwriting:

This needs to be equal or it doesn’t work.

I sat with that sentence for a long time.

It wasn’t about the clause.

ANAYA

I had been thinking about the meeting and the engagement for over three days now. It felt like a ticking time bomb inside me but at the same time it did not feel like it was wrong. 

And at that moment I assumed that something was wrong with me. The guy who had given the best terms for the deal without any mistakes, is gracefully accepting any changes made but all over I just can’t stop thinking about that summit.

“18 months was a long time.” This sentence ran along with me the whole time. 

I looked back at everything. The summit. The sentences I spoke. The version of me who was certain of what she was doing. What her future looked like. And the guy she walked passed through without even noticing him. 

I suddenly snapped back to the current situation thinking about the version of the current day. Sitting on the kitchen floor. Counting petals. Compiling involuntary glossaries of a man’s smallest movements. And not certain what to do today. 

I changed.

Not sure when.

Maybe just a few weeks ago before I started to notice.

While I was going crazy Rhea arrived with coffee in her hands. Not called this time. Just showed up unannounced. She had all my favourite foods and a specific energy of someone who has been wanting to say something for a long time and she ran out of patience.

RHEA
“Three days, Anaya.”

ANAYA
“I’m thinking.”

RHEA
“You’ve been thinking since the day you saw that guy.”

ANAYA
“That’s not how this works.”

RHEA
“How does it work?”

ANAYA
“I need to be sure.”

RHEA
“Sure of what? That he noticed you first? He did. That the deal is fair? It is. That you haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since a members club three weeks ago? You haven’t.”

ANAYA
“You don’t know that.”

RHEA
“You called me at 2 AM to tell me he remembered you don’t like flowers.”

Silence.

RHEA
“Anaya.”

ANAYA
“What.”

RHEA
“What are you actually afraid of?”

A long pause.

The honest kind.

ANAYA
“That it might be real.”

RHEA
“Yes.”

ANAYA
“That’s terrifying.”

RHEA
“Also yes.”

ANAYA
“What if I—”

RHEA
“You already did. You’ve been doing it for three weeks. You just haven’t told him yet.”

Anaya stares at her.

Rhea stares back.

The most useful thing Rhea has done in this entire time.

ANAYA
“I hate you.”

RHEA
“You love me.”

ANAYA
“Same thing.”

I picked up my phone and called for a car.

RHEA 

“You might want to look good before you scar him or scare him.”

ANAYA

I went upstairs, gave myself a quick change and drove away.

I did not go to the members club or a cafè. I drove straight to his office where he is the most controlled, where he is the most Veer he can be. I went into his space on his terms because that is what equal would mean.

I obviously made a dramatic unannounced entry. 

His assistant tried to say something. I walked past her, ignoring her completely. I had made a decision and other distractions at that moment were unimportant.

I opened his office door.

He’s at his desk. Jacket off. Sleeves rolled. Looking at something on his screen that he’s clearly not actually reading because he looks up the moment I opened the door like he’s been waiting for exactly that sound.

We looked at each other across the room.

Neither of us spoke at that moment.

VEER

When she walked through that door I knew she was firm on something so either that was a good thing or a really disastrous thing. She wore this gorgeous floral dress hugging her body perfectly. She looked like she could be a man’s obsession , loose waves just the right amount of jewellery with the perfect hint of confidence.

ANAYA
“Your assistant is going to report to me.”

VEER
“Probably.”

ANAYA
“I read the margin note. The one about equal decision-making.”

VEER
“That clause needed work.”

ANAYA
“It did. I fixed it.”

VEER
“I saw.”

ANAYA
“I also read all of them. Every term. Three times.”

VEER
“I know.”

ANAYA
“It’s a good deal, Veer.”

VEER
“I know that too.”

I walked further into the room.

Not stopping at the visitor’s chair. All the way to his desk. Standing on the other side of it — close enough that the desk between them is the only distance left.

ANAYA
“I have a question.”

VEER
“Ask away.”

ANAYA
“The summit. Eighteen months ago. When I walked out.”

VEER
“Yes.”

ANAYA
“What did you think?”

A pause.

The real kind. Not calculating. Just — remembering.

VEER
“I thought you were the most certain person I’d ever watched be wrong about something.”

ANAYA
“I wasn’t wrong.”

VEER
“You were. Kapoor Estates did need a partner.”

ANAYA
“It needed the right one.”

His eyes did  that thing. The unguarded thing. The thing she’s been cataloguing against her will for three weeks and has finally stopped pretending she doesn’t know the name of.

VEER
“Yes.”

ANAYA
“I have another question.”

VEER
“Do ask.”

ANAYA
“If I hadn’t gotten fake engaged to you at Rhea’s party—”

VEER
“Yes.”

ANAYA
“I haven’t asked it yet.”

VEER
“I know what you’re asking.”

ANAYA
“Would you have—”

VEER
“Yes.”

ANAYA
“You don’t know—”

VEER
“Anaya.”

She stops.

VEER
“Yes. The answer is yes. However you were going to finish that sentence — yes.”

The room is very quiet.

I looked at him.

He looked back.

Neither of us were performing anything.

I walked around the desk.

He stands — not dramatically, just the way he always does when I enter a room, that thing I’ve always hated and never once believed was only politeness.

I was standing close enough to see the exact line of his jaw, the dark watch on his wrist and the way his breathing changed just slightly but just enough.

ANAYA
“I need you to know something.”

VEER
“Tell me.”

ANAYA
“I didn’t notice you at that summit.”

VEER
“I know.”

ANAYA
“I walked out and didn’t look back.”

VEER
“I know that too.”

ANAYA
“I’m looking back now.”

Something shifts in his expression. The last wall. The final careful thing.

Gone.

VEER
“I know,” he said. Quieter this time.

I reached up

My hands found his jaw — and I tipped his chin.

Look at me. Actually, look.

He does.

ANAYA
“The engagement started as a lie.”

VEER
“Yes.”

ANAYA
“I’d like to see what happens when it isn’t.”

He doesn’t answer with words.

He closed the remaining distance instead — one hand on my waist, the other covering the hand I had against his jaw. He pulled me closer with just the right amount of firmness — and kissed me in a way he does everything.

Quietly.

Certainly.

Like he’s been sure about this since a closed room eighteen months ago and has simply been waiting for me to catch up.

I pulled  back first.

Just slightly. There were enough butterflies in my stomach. I was vulnerable but I still met his dark eyes

ANAYA
“For the record—”

VEER
“Yes?”

ANAYA
“You still have to tell my grandfather about the summit.”

VEER
“I know.”

ANAYA
“He’s going to be difficult.”

VEER
“I’ve been handling difficult negotiations for twelve years.”

ANAYA
“You’ve never negotiated with my grandfather.”

VEER
“How different can it be?”

ANAYA
“He once made a Fortune 500 CEO cry in a boardroom.”

VEER
“What did you do?”

ANAYA
“I took notes.”

VEER

I looked at her.
“You’re terrifying.”

ANAYA
“You noticed that eighteen months ago.”

VEER
“It wasn’t a complaint.”

She smiles.

A real one.

Not the polished version. Not the professional liar’s smile. Not the one she wears at charity events and family lunches and members clubs.

The actual one.

ANAYA

He looked at my smile  like it’s something he’d been waiting to see properly.

ANAYA — alone, later

I didn’t go back to the members club.

I ended up where it all started — the hotel ballroom where Rhea’s engagement party happened just a few weeks and approximately one lifetime ago.

I did not go inside. I just stood outside for a moment.

Thinking about the woman who walked in here eight weeks ago — controlled, composed, absolutely certain she had no intention of complicating her life.

I thought about the champagne. The aunties. The particular moment of irritation that made me look across a ballroom at a man I barely knew and say something that changed everything.

Suddenly I thought about what Rhea said. You already did. You’ve been doing it for three weeks. You just haven’t told him yet.

I told him now

And the world had not, in fact, ended.

Interesting.

My phone buzzed.

Veer.

A message.

Just three words.

Dinner. Bukhara. Tonight.

I stared at it.

Then I smiled again — that real smile, the inconvenient one, the one I apparently should get used to.

I  typed back:

You’re still nervous.

Three seconds.

Extremely.

I laughed.

Out loud.

On a pavement outside a hotel ballroom, by myself, at a text message, like a person who had completely lost control of her own story somewhere around eight weeks ago  and had finally, completely, stopped minding.

---

ANAYA

Eight weeks ago I walked into this ballroom with three reasons to hate engagement parties.

I still have those reasons.

I also have considerably more complications than I started with.

One fake engagement.
One real deal.
One man who remembered things I’d forgotten.
And one reservation at Bukhara that I am absolutely going to be seven minutes late to.

Some things don’t change.

Everything else did.

THE END.