"Okay, I've decided to accept the offer," Miss. D relayed as they were running the sixth lap of their morning jog.
Arjun stopped in his tracks, staring at her. Miss. D went a few steps ahead and noticing he wasn't with her, stopped and turned back to face him.
"You really are?" he asked, his eyes dancing with excitement.
She caught her breath and answered, "Yes. It's a good role, something I might regret if I don't take up." She could see he was about to shout out in glee and raised her hands to stop him. "Before you get too excited, I should tell you that it will take me a couple of months to officially join. I have to serve a notice period at my current workplace, hand over my role and give proper training to the person who would take over me. I don't leave things in the middle without taking any responsibility. It makes me feel guilty."
Arjun studied her noting how determined she was. Honestly, she would have been expected to do the same had she tried to switch jobs on her own. She would want to wrap things up the normal way. He nodded his head slowly thinking it over and accepted, "Okay, that is reasonable. Will you inform the team today?"
"Yes. I will call them up during their office hours." She broke into a smile as she said, "Wish me luck."
He strolled towards her saying, "Always!" Standing in front her, he was literally towering her with his height. "Best of all the luck in the world," he whispered with a compelling grin.
She looked up at him shaking her head and said, "You seriously are persistent. Sometimes I wonder if you pulled strings behind the scenes for this to happen."
He chuckled and vowed, "That's something you will have to keep guessing."
She laughed. Miss. D had never imagined Mr. J to be so appealingly overpowering. The mornings they had spent at the beach two and half years ago were always filled with moments where he was friendly, charming, endearing and sweet. But ever since they got together to be more than friends, he had turned into an attractively formidable force, a man who would effortlessly make her hold her breath and feel butterflies in her stomach. She had been trying to not make it obvious how much power he held over her.
Despite all that, she knew the power she held over him too. She knew he would do anything for her, that her presence was all that mattered to him, that just a smile from her could calm him down and every time she stepped close to him, his breath became heavy.
It was always a pulling attraction between them both that somehow intensified over the days, and they had gotten so entangled with each other so organically that they both weren't able to recognize how far they were into their relationship or how irrevocably they were in love with each other.
The ones who could actually notice it came for a visit to Bangalore. Arjun's three notoriously noisy cousins came over for a weekend with the sole purpose of seeing what was making Arjun so busy that he had refused to join them on any of their vacations. They were even more disgruntled that he rarely called them.
Arjun was coming home after a long day at office and a playground pizza date with Miss. D when he found Chaitra answering the door of his apartment.
"What the...!" he was thrown off. "When did you come home?"
"An hour back," she replied. He walked in, knowing completely well that the others were waiting for him.
True enough, Abhinav and Nihita were at the dining table having a late dinner. Vinodh was sitting next to them, serving them food.
"Hey brother," Nihita called out in between munching her dinner.
Arjun stood there, sighing deeply. He blinked and then putting on a more benevolent expression, said, "You guys didn't tell me you were planning to come."
"Yeah, we called your secretary and checked that you don't have anything scheduled for this weekend. Yet, you had told us you would be busy. So, we figured it must be something you are reluctant to tell us." Abhinav paused his eating, turned towards Arjun and affirmed, "We wanted to see what it was."
"It's nothing, I really am busy. And tired; I need to catch up on my sleep." Arjun walked towards the dining table and took a seat next to his cousins.
"You are joining us for dinner?" Nihita asked.
"No, I have already had my dinner. I am just giving you company." Arjun shifted to a more relaxing position in his chair.
"Great! By the way brother, there's something I wanted to ask you," Chaitra spoke as she came over to hover over the three of them.
"What is it?"
It wasn't until post dinner that Arjun got the question laid out. Chaitra held up a framed photograph from Arjun's bedside table and asked sternly, "Who's this?"
It was a picture of Arjun and Miss. D, a selfie he had taken of them both when they had gone for a late night stroll after a sudden shower of rain.
"Did you move on from Miss. D?" Chaitra asked.
"That is Miss. D," Arjun answered.
"What?!" the word echoed from three different places in the room from all of his cousins. They peered at the picture more closely, trying to recognize if the girl was the same one they had seen three years ago.
"You guys are together again? Wait, when did you meet her? Did she agree to go out with you?" The questions were coming faster now.
"Okay, guys, chill," Arjun tried to quiet them and then relayed the beginning and progress of his relationship as crisply as he could.
"So, that's why you shifted to Bangalore," Nihita observed.
"Partly," he admitted.
"Can we meet her?" Chaitra asked unsurely. "I mean, I am not exactly comfortable with that idea after what we had triggered the last time we got involved between you guys. Still, if you both are okay with it, we would love to get along with her."
Arjun felt his lips twitch into an apologetic smile. "Honestly, you guys did nothing wrong. Whatever happened between me and Miss. D was completely our own doing. So, you don't have to feel guilty about it at all."
The three of his cousins exchanged hesitant looks.
"I told you it's fine," Arjun reassured them.
That night he narrated it all to Miss. D over a phone call, how his cousins had been walking on eggshells around him the past couple of years, their sudden arrival that evening and their wish to meet her.
"That's quite adorable. I wish my cousins were this tightly knit with us. My brother and I have never been this close to our cousins. We are the only ones who are distant, you know. The rest of them all live in the same city and are pretty close. You are really lucky to have such a support system," she said wistfully.
"Maybe, but they can be pretty noisy. You will see when you meet them. I mean, if you want to meet them, that is."
"Let's all have dinner tomorrow. We can go for bowling and maybe a round of gaming and then have dinner. What do you say?" she suggested.
"That sounds great. They will be really excited," he answered, happy that she was okay with it.
Miss. D realized Arjun wasn't joking when he said his cousins were noisy. There was not a silent moment with them. They would speak at the same time with statements coming from two or all three of them simultaneously. They weren't unruly, they were just enthusiastic.
And man, they were competitive.
At first, when they met, they all shook hands with her, spoke to her politely and were decent enough to let her choose their plans for the evening. When they ventured for bowling, they let her pick the teams. Miss. D naturally chose to pair up with Arjun and the rest three stuck together as a team. That was when the chaos began.
Miss. D and Mr. J were natural together and easily formidable. His cousins, all the while noting how good they both looked together, challenged them quite well. They were ruthless in games. The trend followed when they went gaming at the game arcades.
Miss. D and Abhinav went against each other in a shooting game and while Arjun got amazed at how fierce Miss. D could be, Abhinav egged her on and on for more rounds to level the scores between them.
"Okay, I think this is enough," Arjun tried interrupting them.
"No!" Miss. D and Abhinav both shrieked in the midst of shooting at the game screen. "I am going to make sure he never asks me for a duel again," she vowed, her focus on the game.
"I am never agreeing for a gaming evening," Chaitra moaned as they sat down for dinner. "God, you guy are so exhausting."
Abhinav held out his hand to Miss. D and said meaningfully, "You are really welcome into this mess of a family. You would do perfectly well with us."
Miss. D shook his hand and commented, "It's remarkable how agreeable you are even after losing to me."
"I let you win," he insisted.
"You want to go for another round?" she asked mischievously.
"NO!" the other three cried. "It's enough for one evening," Arjun complained.
Miss. D took a look at his tired face and accepted. "Okay."
As the dinner progressed, Arjun's cousins noted how in sync he was with Miss. D; he would pass on the food and cutlery to her at the right moment before she could ask him, and she would refill his food and water most naturally. They would complete each other's sentences, understand what the other person was thinking and trying to say. The way they looked at each other was really intimate.
"Why do I feel like I am third wheeling between you both," Abhinav opined.
"That's just your feeling," Arjun laughed.
When they returned home, before retiring to bed, Abhinav shared a sincere word with his brother. "You are really lucky, you know. It's not easy to get what you have with Advika. I am really happy for you, brother."
Arjun smiled at him. "Thank you. And yes, I know that too."
"I know you are going to treat her really well, but I'm just saying it again. Be good to her. Otherwise it is going to be the biggest regret of your life."
"I know." Arjun nodded slowly in agreement.
His cousins left after a couple of days, and Arjun had to admit how much he missed his crazy family. Despite all the loud mess they made, they were endearing people and they held him when needed. Miss. D was right when she said he was lucky have a close knit family like that.
Work progressed and Miss. D updated him from time to time on how things were going on at her end regarding her job switch.
They were shopping for books and accessories in a mall one evening when she told him, "My HR is offering me a promotion and a salary hike to make me stay back at my company."
"I told you that you are a valuable asset to any company you work at," he chuckled. He then paused and asked, "You are not considering their offer seriously, are you?"
She laughed. "No, I am just saying it. I am so popular these days that it is hard to believe so many people want me to work for them."
He peered at her comically and remarked, "Nah, you are not exactly proud of it. You can't pull off excessive pride."
She smirked at him. "I feel like having an ice cream."
They were standing outside the book store and there was an ice cream store on the opposite end of the floor.
"How about you wait here browsing the books and I will get you a scoop?" Arjun offered.
"That would be great!"
She stood looking at the best sellers displayed at the entrance of the book store, picking one book after another to have a sneak peek of the contents, as Arjun went off on the errand.
A few moments passed and someone called her behind.
"Advika?"
She knew that voice. She recognized it.
Her heart pounding with fear, she turned back to see him standing a few feet away, staring at her.
It was indeed him. Rohit.