Chapter 7: The Morning After the Leap
The phone buzzed again.
Smriti stared at the screen, her thumb hovering over the green answer icon, the familiar dread coiling in her stomach like a snake waking from hibernation. The name flashed up at her—Priya, her manager, the woman who had sculpted her career from raw talent into a brand worth crores. The woman who never called before nine unless something had gone wrong.
Or something had gone right in a way that required immediate exploitation.
"What is it?" Varun asked softly from the balcony doorway. He was still wearing yesterday's t-shirt, the fabric creased in ways that made her chest ache with something she didn't want to name yet. His hair was a disaster. There was a smudge of burnt milk on his forearm.
Smriti held up one finger.
She answered.
"Priya."
"Finally." The voice on the other end was clipped, efficient, the verbal equivalent of a scalpel. "Where are you? I've been calling for twenty minutes."
"I was—" Smriti glanced at Varun, at the way the morning light caught the curve of his jaw, at the two cups of half-finished chai still sitting on the balcony railing. "I was busy."
"Busy." Priya's pause was loaded. "Smriti, the Vijay Malhotra meeting got moved up. They want to meet at eleven. Eleven. Not noon, not this afternoon. The man flew in from Singapore last night and he's flying out at three. This is the biggest endorsement deal of your career and you're—what? Doing yoga?"
"I don't do yoga."
"Exactly my point. You don't do the things normal celebrities do. You don't post on Instagram. You don't do red carpets. You don't date. You just play cricket and disappear. And now, when a nine-crore deal is dangling in front of us, you're unreachable."
The number hung in the air between them—nine crores. More money than Varun would probably make in a decade. More money than most people would see in a lifetime. Smriti felt the familiar weight of it pressing down on her shoulders, the way it always did when the numbers got big enough to remind her that she wasn't just a person anymore. She was an asset.
"I'll be there," she said.
"Good. I'm sending the car. Be ready in forty-five minutes. And Smriti?"
"What?"
"Wear something that says 'I'm worth every rupee' and not 'I just rolled out of bed and my hair is a crime scene.'"
The line went dead.
Smriti stood there for a long moment, the phone still pressed to her ear, listening to nothing. The morning light was shifting, the golden warmth giving way to something harder, more insistent. Mumbai was waking up. The city didn't care about the bubble she'd built in the last twelve hours. The city wanted its goddess back on her pedestal.
"Everything okay?" Varun's voice was careful.
She turned to face him. He was standing with his hands shoved into the pockets of his boxers, shoulders slightly hunched, like a man who'd wandered into a temple by accident and wasn't sure if he should stay or flee.
"No," she said. "Yes. I don't know."
She walked past him into the kitchen, her bare feet cold against the marble. The kettle was still warm. The scent of cardamom lingered, stubborn, refusing to fade. She poured herself a glass of water and drank it standing at the sink, her back to him, watching the city through the window above the counter.
"I have a meeting," she said. "Something important. My manager is sending a car."
"Okay."
Just that. Okay. No questions. No expectations. He wasn't asking her to explain. He wasn't asking her to choose.
That, somehow, made it worse.
She set the glass down and turned. He hadn't moved from the doorway. The morning light made his skin look warmer, softer. He looked like he belonged here, she realized. In her kitchen, in her morning, in the spaces she'd kept empty for so long she'd almost forgotten they existed.
"You could stay," she said. The words came out before she could stop them. "If you want. Wait here until I get back."
Varun's eyebrows rose slightly. "You want me to stay in your apartment? Alone?"
"I want you to stay." She paused. "Here. With me. Not alone."
The distinction mattered. She wasn't sure why, but it did.
He took a breath, slow, deliberate. She could see him processing, turning it over, considering all the angles. That was what she liked about him, she realized. He thought. He didn't just react.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't."
"There's a lot of things to consider."
"I've considered them."
"Have you?" He took a step closer, then stopped. "Smriti, last night I was your fan. This morning I'm—I don't know what I am. But I'm not naive. I know what it looks like if someone sees me here. I know what people would say about you. About us."
"There is no us yet."
He flinched, barely, but she caught it. The word had cut deeper than she intended.
"I didn't mean it like that," she said quickly. "I just mean—we're figuring it out. This is new. I don't know what it is yet."
"Neither do I." He exhaled, ran a hand through his hair. "I don't want to complicate your life."
"You're not a complication."
"Everything is a complication when you're famous. I'm not stupid."
She crossed the kitchen, closing the distance between them until she could feel the warmth radiating off his skin. He was taller than her by half a head, but he felt smaller somehow—not in a bad way, not in a weak way, but in a way that made her want to protect him.
"What do you want, Varun?"
He met her eyes. Held them. There was something steady underneath the shyness, she saw. Something solid. Something that wouldn't shatter when the media vultures started circling.
"I want to be here when you get back," he said. "If that's what you want."
"It is."
"Then I'll stay."
She reached up and touched his face, just her fingertips against his cheek, the lightest contact. He closed his eyes. The gesture was small, almost nothing, but it felt enormous—a promise made without words.
"I need to get ready," she said.
"I know."
She didn't move.
"Smriti."
"What?"
"I need to get ready too. I can't meet your manager looking like I slept in a cricket stadium."
She laughed, startled. It bubbled out of her, unpolished, real. "You look like you slept with a cricket player."
"Is that better or worse?"
"I haven't decided yet."
She stepped back, let him go. He went to the guest bathroom—the one she never used, the one with the perfect towels that still had tags on them because she'd never had a reason to create that kind of hospitality. He'd find the spare toothbrush. He'd figure it out.
She walked to her bedroom, the city's skyline glinting through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and started pulling clothes from her closet. Something sharp. Something powerful. Something that said I am worth every rupee and I know it.
The dress she chose was deep burgundy, sleeveless, cut to emphasize the shoulders that could muscle sixes over deep midwicket. She paired it with gold hoops and heels she could run in if she needed to. Armor. Always armor.
Her phone buzzed again. Priya.
Car's downstairs.
On my way, she typed, then added: Give me five minutes.
She finished her makeup in the bathroom mirror, her reflection staring back at her with the familiar detachment she'd perfected over years of public scrutiny. The woman in the mirror was Smriti Mandhana, cricket icon, brand ambassador, national treasure. The woman who had let a stranger hold her while she cried about her dead father.
She wasn't sure they were the same person anymore.
When she emerged, Varun was standing in the living room, dressed in yesterday's clothes—the jeans, the plain white t-shirt. His hair was damp, combed back. He looked... presentable, she supposed. Like someone who might have been her friend.
"Your clothes," she said. "They're wrinkled."
"I noticed."
"You can't go home like that."
"I wasn't planning to leave."
She paused. Right. He was staying.
"There's a spare key in the drawer next to the door," she said. "Don't answer if anyone knocks. Don't post anything. Don't—"
"Smriti." He said her name like it was a complete sentence, a reassurance, a boundary. "I know how to be invisible."
"Do you?"
"I've spent my whole life being invisible. It's what I'm good at."
The words hit her somewhere soft, somewhere she hadn't known was unguarded. She wanted to argue, to tell him he wasn't invisible, to promise something she wasn't sure she could deliver. But the phone buzzed again—Priya, impatient, already typing—and the moment fractured.
"I'll be back in a few hours," she said. "We'll talk then."
"Okay."
She grabbed her bag and moved toward the door. Her hand was on the handle when he spoke again.
"Smriti."
She turned.
"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "Whatever happens in that meeting. Whatever comes after. I'm here. You don't have to decide anything right now."
She didn't know what to say to that. So she just nodded, and opened the door, and walked out into the Mumbai morning.
---
The car was black, sleek, air-conditioned to a temperature that had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with control. Priya was in the back seat, tablet in hand, already talking before Smriti's seatbelt clicked.
"Vijay Malhotra is a difficult man," she said. "He doesn't like divas. He doesn't like lateness. He likes numbers and he likes winners. You're both. So show up like you know it."
"I always do."
"You seem distracted."
"I'm fine."
"Your eyes are puffy."
"I had a late night."
Priya's gaze sharpened. "Doing what?"
"Thinking."
"About?"
"None of your business."
The manager's lips thinned, but she didn't push. That was the thing about Priya—she knew which battles to fight. And she knew Smriti well enough to recognize a boundary when she saw one.
The meeting was at a hotel in Bandra, all glass and steel and vapid luxury. Vijay Malhotra was a small man with large glasses and the kind of handshake that felt like a test. Smriti shook it, held his gaze, sat when he gestured.
The pitch was straightforward. Sportswear brand. Three-year deal. Nine crores upfront, bonuses for performance in the World Cup. Creative control over the campaign. They wanted her to be the face of their new line for women athletes, a campaign about grit and grace and refusing to be limited by labels.
"You're the ideal ambassador," Vijay said. "You've never courted controversy. You're focused. Disciplined. You represent the kind of athlete we want to celebrate."
The words washed over her, familiar in their predictability. She'd heard them a hundred times. A thousand. The same praise, the same framework, the same careful packaging of her identity into something palatable for public consumption.
She should have been happy. Nine crores. A campaign with creative control. It was everything she'd worked for, everything she deserved.
But all she could think about was the burnt chai on her balcony.
The way Varun had laughed at himself, not in self-deprecation but in genuine amusement.
The way he'd held her hand while she cried.
The way he'd said I'm not going anywhere like it was a fact, not a promise.
"Smriti?"
She blinked. Vijay was watching her, eyebrows raised. Priya was watching her, eyes sharp with warning.
"Sorry," she said. "I was just thinking about the creative angle. I have some ideas I'd like to discuss."
The discussion took an hour. She was present, engaged, professional—the version of herself she'd learned to perform. But underneath, a clock was ticking. A second clock, the one that measured how long until she could go home.
When the meeting ended, Vijay stood and shook her hand again. "I think this is the beginning of something great," he said.
"I think so too," she replied, and she meant it.
But she also meant something else. Something she couldn't say aloud.
---
The car dropped her back at her building at one-forty-seven. She rode the elevator in silence, her heels clicking on the marble floor, her heart beating in a rhythm that felt new. Strange. Terrifying.
The door was locked. She unlocked it.
The apartment was quiet.
For a moment, she thought he'd left. That the morning had been a dream, a fantasy, something her lonely mind had conjured to fill the empty spaces.
Then she heard the voice from the balcony.
"...so basically you just fold the top over and pinch the sides? Like a dumpling? I think I can do that. No, wait, that's going to fall apart. Fuck."
She walked through the living room, past the couch where they'd first sat, past the coffee table where the cricket ball still rested, and found him on the balcony with her phone propped against a plant pot, a video playing—someone's cooking channel, the sound tinny through the small speaker—and a plate of misshapen samosas cooling on the railing.
He looked up when he heard her footsteps, and his face did something complicated. Hope and fear and embarrassment, all tangled together.
"I tried to make lunch," he said. "It didn't go well."
She looked at the samosas. At the flour dusting his fingers. At the way he was standing there, exposed, ridiculous, perfect.
"The first batch caught fire," he added. "But I put it out. The apartment is fine. Mostly."
She started laughing.
Not the polite laugh of interviews, not the practiced chuckle of press conferences. This was the real thing—ugly and loud and unstoppable. She laughed until her stomach hurt, until tears pricked at her eyes, until she had to lean against the doorframe to keep from falling.
"Okay," Varun said. "This is a lot of laughing for samosas."
"You—you tried to make samosas—"
"It seemed like a good idea."
"They're—" She gasped for air. "They're shaped like triangles that gave up halfway."
"I know."
"You used—" She squinted at the counter. "Is that cumin? In the dough?"
"I thought it would be a flavor explosion."
"It's going to be a texture disaster."
"I know." He was grinning now, that quiet grin that transformed his whole face. "Are you going to help me eat them or not?"
She wiped her eyes and crossed the balcony. The samosas were terrible. Rubbery, oversalted, with a filling that tasted like it had been made by someone who'd only ever seen spices in photographs.
She ate three.
They sat on the balcony floor, backs against the wall, watching the city hum below. The afternoon light was amber-soft, forgiving. For a moment, Smriti forgot about the meeting, the contract, the endless cycle of obligations that had defined her life for a decade.
"I signed a deal today," she said. "Nine crores. Sportswear campaign."
"That's huge."
"It is."
"You don't sound happy."
She turned to look at him. He was close—close enough that she could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, the small scar on his chin she hadn't noticed before. "I am happy," she said. "I'm just also... other things."
"What other things?"
"I don't know how to explain it." She picked at a piece of samosa crust, crumbling it between her fingers. "I've spent my whole life working toward things like this. And now that I have them, I feel like I'm on a treadmill. Running faster and faster but not going anywhere."
"That sounds lonely."
"It is."
He didn't try to fix it. Didn't offer platitudes or solutions. He just sat there, present, his shoulder almost touching hers.
"Can I tell you something?" she asked.
"Anything."
"I didn't invite you here because I wanted to teach you something." She paused. "I mean, that was part of it. But mostly I invited you because I was tired. Tired of being Smriti Mandhana, cricketer. Tired of the cameras and the expectations and the constant performance. I wanted to be someone else for a while. Even if only for a night."
"I know."
"You knew?"
"I guessed." He smiled, small and sad. "Your apartment is beautiful, but it doesn't feel like a home. It feels like a hotel room. Somewhere you stay between matches."
She hadn't expected that. The observation was so precise, so devastating, that it took her breath away.
"How do you do that?" she asked.
"Do what?"
"See things."
He shrugged. "I pay attention. When you're invisible, you learn to read people. It's the only way to understand what's happening around you."
The vulnerability in his voice made her chest ache. She reached out and took his hand, threading her fingers through his, the contact electric and grounding at the same time.
"I don't want you to be invisible," she said. "Not with me."
"I don't feel invisible with you."
"Good."
The afternoon shifted around them, the light deepening, the city's rhythm slowing as the day bled into evening. They sat there until the sun dipped below the horizon, until the first stars pricked the purple sky, until Smriti realized she'd given her whole afternoon to this—to him—without a single notification, without a single regret.
The phone was inside, face down on the kitchen counter. The emails could wait. The world could wait.
For the first time in longer than she could remember, Smriti Mandhana was exactly where she wanted to be.