|| THE PURPLE HEARTS ||

16. They Plan

The next day found Annika rushing. The alarm she had set failed to wake her up, the meeting with the models was due in an hour. Vidhi had called and filled in with her schedule for the day.

That was a pretty hectic schedule, the meeting ends late in the afternoon, and after a short lunch break she had a site visit and around seven, she had planned to check on the preparations at the venue where the event was to be held.

The post- launch production works had to be reviewed, and there was more to look into the pre-orders and the time was really less.

"Vidhi, push the site visit to some other day and just arrange a meeting with the production and R&D departments together at that time.", She was saying that when she came down.

"Sunaina, pack me the breakfast.", She shouted as she took her cup of tea, newspaper and settled down on the table.

The table became extremely silent. Annika slowly looked up from the newspaper only to see everyone looking at her pointedly. Only then she noticed the person sitting beside on her right.

It was Shivaay, she felt awkward would be an understatement. She gulped and gave him a small smile, which he reciprocated. Then slowly she put the paper down and looked at everyone and greeted them with a 'Good Morning'.

"You are not going anywhere without breakfast, Anu!", Dadi told her passing the aloo puri, winking at her.

Annika grinned. Her dadi was such a sweetheart. She could see Gauri mumbling something like, 'why is it Aloo puri everyday', staring at her plate. Oh! How she loved irritating her. Annika grinned like an idiot. A really good start to a long day.

She then, turned her head towards Shivaay who was sitting with a Stoic face. She sighed, she had messed up a big time. And now it was time to rectify that. She took in a deep breath.

"Hai Shivaay! How you, doing?", She asked him.

He looked at her with accusing eyes. "Oh, I'm just doing GREAT! Thank you so much for asking!", He replied casually and turned to his plate.

She sighed. This was going to be hard, but she was happy about the progress that she was making. Mentally patting herself, she tried again.

"Thank you for keeping a tab on me. I'm glad.", She tried again. Everyone were busy eating to notice their exchange.

"Pardon. I don't do anything stupid as that", he said putting his knife and fork down.

"Who am I to keep a tab on the great, Annika Trivedi", he continued.

"Shivaay! I'm sorry. I've been busy all these days and, you know that too", she said.

"Excuses.. and excuses. Go on. I'm all ears for all that's to come", he replied as he resumed eating.

Annika felt bad. She shouldn't have taken so long to meet him and the grave mistake was that she avoided him for no reason.

"Shivaay. I'm really sorry. Please na, I'll do anything to make up for the mistake I made", she made a puppy face.

The awkwardness she felt was slowly wearing off, she felt nice talking to him just like the olden days where, they would talk about nothing for hours together. But, now she had to focus on the task in hand.

"Really! You'll do anything?", He asked turning to her.

"Promise! I'll do anything", she said immediately trying to reach his pinky finger. He held out his hand.