Stay With Me

5(i).

"Ladies always rise above
Ladies know what people want
Someone sweet and kind and fun
The lady simply had enough"

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"Hello madam, andar aa sakti hoon", she heard a high pitched feminine voice, while she worked on some designs. There was only one person who would come without knocking and then pretend to be civilized and 'ask' for permission.
"Tumein zaroorat hoti hai meri permission, I'm sure you are already half way in.", she didn't bother looking up when she heard the door close with a loud thud and a body preached herself on the seat across from her.
"Nahi vese zaroorat toh nahi hoti, but phir bhi formalities kar leni chahiye na...", finally looking up she saw a woman of her age, with golden brown hairs, all tangled as if she just came back from a fight, charcoal black eyes which according to the lady herself made her look mysterious. Even though there wasn't any secret or mystery about her. She was like a open book.
Arushi Khanna, a well known actress in the television industry. She is one of the most prestigious name in the Bollywood film industry. And a childhood pal of her, she has known her for as long as she remembers.

"Well leave that and tell me about this.", she looks at the newspaper Aru, short for Arushi, as she like to call her, placed on her desk with some headline, in bold red font.
She knew when she said that the paparazzi were gonna make a new, but the headline isn't what she thought.Rather than the ones she had thought, the one in today's newspaper was something different, totally different.
"CEO of Arora Designs, Arman Arora, was met with an accident last night."

She already saw it, infact this was the first thing she saw in the morning.
The police cleared that he was drunk driving, probably because of the after party hosted yesterday after the Designers Dreamscape fashion show and the car hit the tree due to some unknown reason. Some articles were even accusing Nurvi for the accident, saying she was the one behind it after the argument they had in the party. Well, they were. Because as soon as she came across such article, they were taken down almost immediately. Any article accusing her were vanished in thin air, as soon as they came up, from every site, be it news channel, social medial handles or newspapers.

No, she wasn't behind this vanishing, someone else. Her first thought were her parents but they had always said to ignore such articles, they do not define you or your doings, so they can't be it.

Second thought was Style Icon Models, as if because of this their name might get corrupted but the thought faded as soon as it came. She remembered the incident that happened yesterday, no way he has forgotten that already, he would have been pleased to know about all the accusations made towards her.

But she somewhere knew about this mysterious person. The one who did this accident and who vanished all those accusing articles.
This was no way an accident, it was planned. There was someone.

She had this feeling for the last 2 years, someone had been looking into her life from afar, that person knew about everything happening in her life and she knew he was behind all those so called accidents of people who had downgraded her in the past 2 years. Either they were her well-wishers or some psychotic serial killer, who was removing any threat from her life, just so he can murder her with his own hands.

The thoughts made a shiver run through her whole body, the thought of some mentally ill person being obsessed with her was terrifying.
She came out of her thoughts when she felt a hand squeezing her's, "Hey, what happened? Everything okay?"
Shaking her head towards her, she narrated everything, leaving the information about her suspicion.
Maybe she's just overthinking.

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Flashback:- At the party.

The after party was organised after the fashion show was completed.
Designers, models, celebs and investors were all around the big party hall in the building of Style Icon Models.

While every company was trying to make a deal with the investors and make more money, Nurvi seemed to zone out on every occasion.
Surrounded by some people, she seemed to be physically there but mentally absent.

"Ah! If it isn't the great Nurvi Rao herself.", she heard a manly voice call out for her, from behind her and if just didn't boil her blood and she remembered all those books she read about secretly murdering someone without anyone knowing.

Oh, how she wished she could kill this man.

She turned around to find a man in his early thirties, dressed up in a charcoal black three piece suit, standing with all glory with a smirk plastered on his face, as if he hadn't stooped so low just to win a competition.
The results were out before the after party started, he had obviously not won, but didn't win either. It was third company who had won, unfortunately but that company was her ideal, someone whom she always looked upto, so she wasn't nearly upset. She'd work harder next time.

Failures didn't justify a person's hardwork. Win or fail, it depends on your capabilities. What happened if you loose once, you always can win next time. What matters is how much you are actually dedicated for the competition. Be it in a fashion show or in life.

But seems like this thing wasn't understood by the man standing infront of her, if he had lost after doing hardwork and not cheating, she would atleast have some respect for him, but forget respect, she despised this man. Not only had he dropped hurdles in her way but also of others. But they all managed, like her.
She also heard that he had stolen some of the pieces from other company's collections, obviously the judges saw the similarities between his and some other company's works.

"I'll be honest, it's actually nice meeting you.", she could clearly hear the fake enthusiasm in his voice, " Sad, I can't say the same, Mr. Arora.", she did hear a few gasps from a little far, but she chose to ignore them.
People were just dramatic.

The colors seemed to fade away from his face for a minute before he composed himself, the smirk long gone. "Isn't it too much of an attitude for someone who just lost.", his attempt to humiliate her didn't work, everyone knew who was the sore loser here. She didn't need to prove herself to someone like him.
"Haar jeet toh chalti rehti hai, Mr. Arora. The main point of this whole competition was to learn. Learn from your mistakes, from others. Gyaan charo taraf hai, jab moka mile, loot lena chahiye. Par mein bhi kise lootne ki baat kar rhi hoon, the man who is expert in stealing, others works, their hardwork and god knows what.", his face turned red from all the anger and humiliation he was facing. The media was also here, they just need some headline to make news. And this was definitely going to be tomorrow's news. She could already imagine the headline.
"The CEO of Arora Designs, Arman Arora humiliated by the CEO of Afterglow, Nurvi Rao.", or something like, "Rift breaks through between the CEO's of Arora Designs and Afterglow."

Dramatic af!

"Don't cross your limits, Ms. Rao", he seethed coming dangerously close, but seeing her stand straight with no fear whatsoever, it made him furious.
"Show the attitude all you want, for now. I make sure to break it soon.", as if his threat would work.
Let him try.

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But instead of consoling her, saying the typical best friend dialogue of, "It's okay. Chill dude.", or like, "You killed it gurl. I shouldn't have been there to watch it with my own eyes.", all she got was a hyena laugh of her so called bestfriend. Rolling her eyes at her friend bowling her eyes out due to laughing so hard, that she had to clutch her stomach.
Give the damn organ some rest.

To be continued...

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Hey guys!
This is part (i) of 5 of "Stay With Me", the other will come on next Saturday or Sunday, cause this part just crossed it's word limits...

What do you feel about Arman Arora? Do you like him?
And a new character Arushi Khanna was introduced today, she's the typical supportive, bubbly and extroverted bestfriend of the female lead. Nothing new!
And I'm also thinking of giving the male lead a bestfriend, but seeing his rude "sadu" behaviour, I'll have to think about that.
Comment below if you want it 👇🏻

I hope you enjoyed reading and if you did, do like and comment.

Stay tuned!
Bye 👋🏻
KM