Her Husband's Rival

sixteen

AN: late update ke liye maafi🙏🏻 diwali mein busy hogayi thi. but shuru krte hai aaj ka dramaaaaaaa

Amit is standing in my office like a damn statue and staring at me like I ate his lunch. When I start to get up from my chair, he narrows his eyes and shakes his head, then tips his chin for me to sit back down.

Seriously? What the hell does he want? I’m almost sure my dad has sent him to keep an eye on what I’m doing but Amit seems to forget I’m his employer, not my Papa.

I roll my chair back and away from my office desk, button my suit and get up with a determined intention of leaving this room, no matter what. When Amit’s expressions make an immediate comeback, I just make a disgusted face. “What?” I ask, frustrated.

“Kaha jaa rahe ho?” he says and crosses his arms across his chest, not disturbed.

(Where are you going?)

“Tumse matlab?” I scoff and round my desk to get to my door but he jumps with a startling yelp, including himself between me and the door so I’m unable to reach the knob. I shut my eyes and count backwards from ten to zero. When I’m done, I open my eyes again, hoping for Amit to have taken a hint and get lost but he’s still standing right here, guarding my door like a lap dog. “What do you want?” I ask finally.

(Why do you care?)

“Look, about ten minutes ago, when I came in, you had earpods in your ear and you were grinning like crazy. You didn’t even notice I had entered until I knocked on your desk,” he recites. And the longer he speaks, the more annoyed I get. “Then, when I begin to talk to you, you shush me and lean back in your chair and then grin again. You kept doing that for five minutes straight, then suddenly your smile dropped like— like from this,” he tries to imitate, first leans his head back against the air, closes his eyes and sways with a creepy smile on his face and then stands back up normal, pointing at his face, “to this. Look.” The idiot takes his previous position but instead of smiling creepily, he dramatically furrows his brows and comically drops the smile. “And now you want to leave! Tell me, where are you going?”

I cannot begin to ever believe a time when I used to think Amit was a determined, quiet, straight-to-point kind of a person. When he first joined, he was normal for the first two weeks and then transformed into this— this. Whatever this is.

I pride myself on being extremely good at noticing ticks and reading emotions by the face but I somehow always seem to forget I have a goddamn mahagyaani sitting right next to my office.

(Mahagyaani: someone who has a lot of divine knowledge.)

“Amit,” I call him and gently grab his shoulders. His eyes light up like I’m going to tell him something so important that he can go and rat it to my family but instead, I squeeze his shoulder caps, not quite hard to damage but enough to hurt.