I Was, I Am.

-PROBLEM-

EDITED CHAPTER#8

Mihir was great at what he did. Not only did he manage to give us a detailed explanation of exactly how our three months would be spent, but also helped us get accustomed to the office staff by introducing us to the core members that we would be working with.

And I will admit; I loved the whole time. So much so that by the end of the day, I found myself purposefully slowing down my walking pace so that I could strike a conversation with him.

I clutched the strap of my purse, fidgeting with the work schedule that we'd been given and pretended to read it with utmost care.

"Hey." He had seen me, and he had called. I found my lips curled into a smile reflexively.

I turned around, putting on a bewildered face,

"Oh hi!"

He flashed me a smile and jogged up to me,

"You in a rush?" he asked.

And though I was not the kind of girl who'd been flirted with or hit on a lot of times, I knew what was coming next. The shyness in his earlier confident smile and the nervous look in his eyes were the testimony to my guess.

My mind blanked out instantly.

He was going to ask me out.

And I was not ready to say yes. Not when I was so hung up on Aakash.

Not when I knew he was my boss.

"Oh. Yeah, I kind of have an errand to run." I was surprised to hear the conviction in my tone, almost as if I really were going to run an errand.

He was walking with me towards the elevator and was quick to respond, "I see."

A silence crept in the air next, and I wondered if I had come across as too harsh to him. Apart from not wanting to hurt his feelings, I wanted to make sure I hadn't riled up my senior for that would lead to a bumpy start to my designing career.

When the elevator reached our floor, we quietly entered and I watched as he selected the ground floor for us.

"Just uh..." he cleared his throat next, "...just putting this out there. I'm only your temporary boss." At this, he turned to gaze at me.

"As in?" I asked.

"As in, if you manage to land yourself a job here after this training, you will be reporting directly to the Design Head. So, Dev is your boss in the literal sense of it."

I tucked a stray chunk of hair behind the curve of my ear awkwardly, now realizing the reason behind his sudden explanation of the organizational hierarchy of SENSES.

He wanted to make sure I wasn't hesitating with going out on a date with him just because of his seniority.

"I...I see."

But where things had seemed flattering at first, now they felt rushed and too forward for comfort.

How were men so fast? Like seriously, how much did he even know me to get to the point of asking me out like this?

The very next second however, a weird, feminine instinct kicked in and I realized I was certain that Mihir was a decent man. He didn't mean any harm. 

I sighed. What was I to do with his decency if I was just not ready for the kind of an exchange he seemed to want to indulge in?

A thousand thoughts raced through my head all at once.

Mihir had been very nice to me, and he didn't seem like the inappropriate kind.

A small part of me; albeit a really small one; seemed to want to give it a shot. If I didn't start doing normal things like letting other people in, how would I possibly move on? Aakash hadn't reached out, and he was leaving. That was a closed door now, I had to accept it.