Chapter 13: Scene 1
The promoted buzz in Sid’s pocket the next morning wasn’t from Kirti. It was a calendar invite for a 10 a.m. logistics meeting. Subject: Goa Pitch – Travel & Stay. His stomach did a slow, uneasy roll.
The conference room was different this time. The blinds were up, flooding the space with harsh, revealing Delhi sunlight. The mattress in the corner was just a grey roll, innocuous, a piece of forgotten office furniture. It was harder to look at than the presentation screen.
Kirti walked in a minute late, balancing a laptop and a stainless-steel water bottle. She wore a tailored blazer, her hair in a severe, sleek ponytail. She took the seat farthest from him, exactly opposite, placing the table’s expanse between them. Her professionalism was a wall. It was impressive. It was infuriating.
Mark clapped his hands. “Right. Goa. The client wants the full ‘experiential’ pitch on their home turf. We fly Monday, pitch Tuesday evening, debrief Wednesday, fly back Thursday. This is a big one. We need to be sharp.”
Rahul from accounts opened a spreadsheet. “Flight bookings are done. Economy, because the client is footing the bill and they’re cheap bastards. Hotels are adjacent, not the same. The client put us at The Solstice. They’re at the fancy one, The Palm Cove, next door.”
“Rooms?” Sid heard himself ask. His voice sounded normal. Good.
“Twins. Mostly,” Rahul said, scrolling. “Unless you’re sharing with snoring Rajesh here.” He elbowed the junior designer.
A round of laughter. Kirti smiled, sipping her water. She didn’t look at Sid.
“So, we’ve got Mark and me sharing. Rajesh and Amit. Sid, you’re alone. Kirti, you’re alone. Ladies’ privilege.” Rahul clicked his tongue. “Lucky you both. Quiet rooms for your beauty sleep.”
Sid felt the weight of the coincidence. It meant nothing. It was logistics. But it landed in the room between them like a stone in a still pond. He saw Kirti’s pen stop for a microsecond on her notepad before she jotted something down.
“Schedule is tight,” Mark continued. “We land, check in, have a team dinner to sync. No beach fun until after the pitch. This isn’t a holiday.”
People nodded. The mood was light, charged with the low-grade excitement of a work trip. For them, it was free food, a change of scenery, a chance to bond. For Sid, the landscape of the trip had just been radically redrawn. Goa. Beaches. Night. Separate rooms, but in the same hotel. A hallway between them.
His phone lit up on the table. A text from her. He didn’t touch it.
It lay there, face-up. Everyone was looking at the projected spreadsheet. He let his eyes drop.
Alone. Both of us. For science.
He kept his breathing even. He picked up the phone casually, as if checking the time, and placed it in his lap under the table.
The walls at The Solstice are probably thin, he typed back, his fingers moving blindly.
Her reply was almost instantaneous. His phone buzzed softly against his thigh.
We should test that.
He looked up. She was gazing directly at Mark, nodding thoughtfully at something about the presentation deck. The sunlight caught the fine hairs at her temple. The red glow of the exit sign was gone. Here, she was all crisp edges and sharp focus. But he could see, or maybe he just imagined, the faintest flush on the side of her neck, right where her pulse would be.
The meeting droned on about deliverables and per-diems. Sid contributed where needed, his mind a split screen. Half of it tracked conversation about swimwear categories and brand integration. The other half was a dizzying reel: a hotel room door clicking shut, the groan of air conditioning, the rough texture of a hotel bathrobe on the floor, the distant sound of the Arabian Sea.
“…and we’ll need you and Sid to run the final tech rehearsal in your room on Tuesday afternoon,” Mark was saying to Kirti.
Sid snapped back. “What?”
“The projector setup,” Mark said, impatient. “Your room has the bigger living space, according to the floor plan. We’ll use it as the war room. Is that a problem?”
“No,” Kirti said, smoothly. “No problem at all.”
Her eyes met Sid’s across the table. Just a flicker. A crack in the wall. In that moment, he saw the private joke, the wild understanding, the memory of the flimsy mattress. It was there and then gone, replaced by polite attentiveness.
“Great,” Mark said. “So it’s settled. Remember, people, professionalism above all. The client is watching us even before the pitch. We are the brand we’re selling. Confident. Discreet.”
The word discreet hung in the air, choking Sid.
As the team filed out, chatting about what to pack, Kirti lingered by the door, pretending to scroll through her phone. Sid was last, shuffling his papers.
When they were the only two left in the doorway, the empty room behind them, she spoke without looking up from her screen.
“Forgot my charger,” she murmured, so low only he could hear.
She stepped back into the room. He followed, his pulse hammering in his ears. The door sighed shut behind them. They were alone again in the space of their secret.
She didn’t go to the table. She walked to the window, looking out at the smog-blurred city. He came up behind her, not touching.
“This is insane,” he said, his voice rough.
“Yes.”
“Goa. With everyone.”
“I know.”
He reached out then, letting his fingers brush the very end of her sleek ponytail where it rested on her blazer. It was a risk. Someone could walk back in. The cleaning staff had keys.
She didn’t move away. She leaned back, just a fraction, until the crown of her head almost touched his chest.
“Tuesday afternoon,” she whispered. “The war room.”
The anticipation was a physical ache, sharper than any they’d yet had. It had a date. A time. A location. It was scheduled into the official plan.
“We’ll have to be quiet,” he said. “The whole team will be next door, in and out.”
She turned then, finally facing him. Her expression wasn’t sweet or confident. It was hungry. “Then we’ll have to be very, very good.”
A handle jiggled on the conference room door. They sprang apart, Sid stumbling towards the discarded projector, Kirti bending to plug in a cable that was already plugged in.
Rajesh stuck his head in. “Hey, forgot my— oh. You guys still here?”
“Just checking the tech for Goa,” Sid said, his voice miraculously steady. “Don’t want any surprises.”
“Right. Cool.” Rajesh grabbed his phone charger from a chair and left.
The spell was broken. They were colleagues again. The sunlight was just sunlight.
They walked out separately, a minute apart. The workday resumed its normal rhythm. Emails. Calls. The clatter of keyboards. But underneath the mundane stream was a new, relentless current, pulling them toward a fixed point in time: a hotel room in Goa, with the sea outside and their colleagues in the next room, and a pitch about intimacy that they were living in secret.
Sid spent the afternoon staring at flight details on his screen. Delhi to Goa. Three hours, fifteen minutes. Seats wouldn’t be together. He’d watch the back of her head, a few rows ahead. They’d collect their luggage separately, ride in different cabs to the same hotel.
It was a meticulously planned operation for a single, reckless objective. He’d never felt more like a stranger to himself, or more alive. The promotion, the responsibility—it all felt like set dressing for this, the main event. He was on a knife-edge, and the fall was all he could think about.