Cupid never had a chance in their messy, parental-restricted love story
Karishma Jha, a twenty-one-year-old recent graduate with the world at her feet if only she chose to face it. Plagued with the worries of the future and yet healing from the scar...
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"Yes, I have noted down that you would like to include vegan dishes in the buffet."
The call had started with me relaying some basic information on the status of his daughter's wedding. However, it didn't take much time for it to spiral into more modifications.
In the wedding months, most of my time went into calming fretting fathers, on their wit's ends to ensure their daughters have the perfect fairytale wedding while dodging last-minute changes. On normal days, I could anticipate almost all of their concerns even before they could cross their minds. But my mind was a bit scrambled that day.
I looked at the clock to see it was already 10.20 am. I had asked Rishabh to meet me at 10 near my office building as I had to attend some calls and pick up some files before we could go out for the day.
We had been working for the past few days in choosing a venue first. Unlike normal people who had genuine work to complete and preferred to choose halls through catalogs, Rishabh wanted to visit every available venue and check them out in person. And that meant I had to accompany him. My own hellish Tour De Delhi.
My eyes had drifted down to my screen to look for a quote Mr. Gupta had just asked when a whistling tune had me snapping my head up.
Did he just stroll into my office whistling?
Meeting my eyes, he gave me a cheesy wink and a thumbs up and disappeared into the common area.
I heaved an exasperated sigh and rubbed my forehead. I had to put every shred of patience into not chasing him and giving him a piece of my mind that he absolutely didn't get to treat my office like a garden, toying with my life. Though he hadn't brought up anything personal in the last few days, I couldn't help but have my guard up around him. It was exhausting.
"Hello, Karishma? Are you still there?" The voice in my ear snapped me out of my head.
"Y-yes, I am here, Mr. Gupta," I stuttered and moved the mouse to restart my sleeping computer. "That will increase the price per plate by a thousand rupees."
I wrapped up the call and took an extra minute to stop at the restroom. As I walked out of my room, loud laughter reached my ears and I shook my head. My employees had a busy month. If Rishabh wanted to entertain them for free, who was I to complain? And a good mood might help them later when I handed them the list of extra instructions Mr. Gupta just gave me.
After taking a few minutes to rebraid my hair and apply some concealer under my eyes, I walked into the common area to find Rishabh perched on a table while my employees gathered around him in their chairs, like a scene from a kindergarten room. Heads whipped around as soon as I entered and their smiles got wiped off their faces. Only Rishabh looked at me with his lips stretched into a small smirk.
God help me if it was me they were talking about. If Rishbah did share something embarrassing, then for the next few months, the office could talk about how the boss threw a grown man out of the fourth-floor window.
