11:11

HER POV

"You look beautiful, Riti."
I turned left at the comment and found my friend Himanshi holding up her phone, clicking pictures of me.
"Oh God! These candids look so pretty. See, Riti," she handed me her phone with my photo staring back at me.

Hmm, they do look kinda nice.

"Thank you, thank you. Let me click some pictures of you before we leave, " I said while opening the camera app on her phone.
"Damn girl. You look amazing. Just look at these pictures, " I said while giving her phone back to her.

After a few more minutes of photo clicking, we decided to leave so as not to get late for the event.

We were going to attend the year's biggest book fest with very high hopes of meeting some of our favorite authors. We were traveling by metro (as always) when Himanshi said something so random (as always,again). I was left speechless for a moment.

"What did you just say?" I asked as soon as I could comprehend everything.
"You say you're over him, Kritika, but I've started to think that it's not the truth," she said with genuine concern in her eyes.

"Bro, you know I'm done with that person since ages. I don't want anything to do with him. Why would you even think something like this?" I replied with a little bit of sadness lining my voice.

It was true. I was over him. My reason for not dating anyone else was not that I missed him. After everything my ex had done to me, I sure as hell didn't miss that piece of shit.

"I don't know babe you never look at anyone with the slightest bit of interest. It's been more than 2 years since the breakup, but it looks like not even 2 weeks have passed. " she said that with good intentions, but it irritated me.

Just like the other hundreds of times, she's said the same thing.
I don't want to "explore other options." I'm happy focusing on other important aspects of my life.
My job as a biology faculty is very time-consuming in itself.
I don't want a man at this particular moment.

I just don't.

"Ashi, you know I don't have time for that stuff. Please stop bringing this up that too at such random times, " I complained to her.

"Kritika, listen..." her ringing phone interrupted her, and I looked away from her as she started talking on the phone.

I looked at my right when my eyes fell on a pair of sharp eyes looking directly at me.

I didn't know such beautiful eyes existed outside of the fictional world. And the face.

Oh my god!

That's a really beautiful face with incredible hair fanning on the forehead.
A guy shouldn't look like this. It's too much to take in.

Hell, a guy looking like this shouldn't be looking at me. That's the real torture.

I averted my gaze as soon as I realized that he wasn't going to look away.
Eye contact always made me uncomfortable, but this guy, I had to resist myself from looking back at him.

Fuck, my face is burning up.

From the angle I've tilted my head, he can see my extremely-red-at every-minor-inconvenience ears.
My eyes betrayed my brain and slowly moved in his direction, taking him in slowly.

Starting from his shiny ass black formal shoes, I gulped visibly when I took in his well maintained about 6 feet tall frame.

There's something about men in formals. Especially when it's all black. Black gives an unique edge when worn right.

But this handsome piece of God's handicraft didn't need black for that edge. I could tell he looks this intimidating in pink as well.

But I doubt he wears pink.

Stop right there in your tracks, Kritika! Just fucking stop.

I looked back at Ashi and found her immersed in the phone conversation.
I dared to give a quick glance to the hot stranger and

TA-DAA!

he was still looking at me.

That's when I knew I shouldn't have looked away from Ashi.

Thank you so much for reading🫶🏻

Will update the next part as soon as humanly possible

Take care, good peeps🌻