Chapter 31: An Indecent Proposal
She got to the office the next day much earlier than usual. She had done so purposely so that she would be earlier than Arnav... not just Arnav, but everyone. But she saw that there was a car already in the parking lot when she got there. It was Rajeev's car, which was a surprise. Unlike her, Rajeev had always had very good parameters around work. He arrived no sooner than five minutes earlier than reporting time on any given day and stayed no later than fifteen minutes at the end of the work day. And he certainly never came in during weekends. And still he managed to get his work done on time, always! It was one of the main advantages that he had over her. Not just her, but the rest of the employees as well. But for all that he was a Harvard MBA and she was small-town folk, her work was just as good as his, so what if she had to slave her nights and weekends away to get to that level. She figured that a bit of professional competition and rivalry could only be good. It kept her mind continually challenged and sharp. And Rajeev was as good a rival as any.
When she walked up to the second floor, she could see the light coming from beneath his door even though it remained closed. She knocked and waited and heard him walking towards the door.
"I swear to God, Veronica, I told you..." she heard him say as the door opened, but then he stopped when he saw her.
Vaibhavi has been visiting him here? What was between them anyways that could set him on edge so easily? Rajeev was always calm and collected, even when being an ass.
"Khushi... I'm sorry. I thought... well, it's nothing really." He said as he brushed it aside, his face now back to the Rajeev that she knew, or rather, the Rajeev that she has been seing during the past few weeks... which was a rather polite Rajeev...
"Do you suffer from multiple personality disorder or something? I mean, I can't figure you out. For the past several years, you have always made it clear that you clearly hold yourself on a higher plane than me. And then without reason, you turn into this nice and polite guy, and that too after you see some of the weaknesses in my work and now have real reason to blame me for incompetence. And then you insult the boss' cousin in public, I mean..."
"Leave her out of it." he said suddenly, his face changing once again.
"Alright... touchy subject I see. Sorry."
"I'm sorry, Khushi. It's just been... a rough few days..." He said just as she turned around to walk away.
His apology surprised her more than anything else and she turned around, her eyes wide.
"It must be indeed... if you're apologizing."
He looked up in surprise, but then smiled when he saw that she was teasing.
"Do you want to come in? Since you've been playing hooky for two days, Mr. Shyam Mohan has been more irritating than his usual self. I think he will keep scheduling meetings everyday until he sees you back in person."
This time it was her turn to be surprised. "You do have a sense of humor after all." She told him and he laughed as he held the door open wider to let her enter.
She walked to his desk to put her laptop there before she turned around and leaned back against it. "So, I have to ask. Because a lot has happened in the past month that makes not a whole lot of sense to me, you just being one of them. What has changed?"
He closed the door behind him as he walked to his chair.
"What do you mean?" he asked turning on his laptop.
"You know what I mean. Why are you nicer now? You don't think of me as a threat anymore? Ahh.. maybe that's it. Seeing my professional weaknesses have made you realize that you needn't have worried after all? Is that it?"
To her surprise, he didn't take offense to it and laughed instead. "Khushi. I never thought you were a threat. Don't get me wrong, you are quite good at what you do, but let's just say that I have never had to compare my work to anyone else's." he smiled to himself as if her question was genuinely amusing to him as he scanned through something on the monitor.
She was annoyed, she had to admit.
"Are you that cocky about your skills then?" she crossed her arms at her waist and faced him as she asked.
"There's nothing cocky about it, really. A man like ASR wouldn't personally recruit someone who he didn't believe in, now would he?"
She shook her head as she laughed now. "Wow, you really are one cocky bas***d."
He looked up and gave a wink before looking back down towards his screen.
And the surprises just kept coming...
"So I was serious about my previous question. Do you honestly have some sort of multiple personality disorder? And if not professional rivalry, why all the attitude towards me before?"
He sighed as he ran his hair through his unruly hair before falling back onto his chair. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes as she answered her, almost in exasperation.
"First of all, it hasn't been called multiple personality disorder in a while. It's dissociative identity disorder and I am of the opinion that everyone struggles with that in everyday life, some just have stronger boundaries between their identities than others."
She tried to wrap her head around both the correction and his theory while removed his hands from his eyes. He crossed one leg over the other so that his polished boot hung over the edge of the other knee that he moved up and down in a restless fashion as he said, "And secondly, I was rude to you probably because I was attracted to you, not because I felt professionally threatened by you. Don't worry, I have only come to this realization recently, so don't feel like it was some secretly harbored attraction that I was aware of. Call it a sort of reaction formation."
"Reaction formation?" she asked, somewhat feebly, feeling a bit like a deflated balloon at his easy admission of something that quite nonliterally blew her mind.
"Yes. It's a psychoanalytic term for acting out in almost the exact opposite way of how you feel so as to mask some sort of... unacceptable impulse... but the psychobabble aside, I want to assure you that I have come to terms with it and that you are under no threat now of either my rude and juvenile and obviously untrue digs at your competence or, alternatively, any part of my... shall we call... amorous attentions."
He didn't look at her as he uncrossed his legs and directed his attention back onto the computer monitor.
She couldn't quite grasp her mind around how easily he said his piece and left it.
"So what, that's it? You have made your peace with it and I don't get any say in it?"
This time he looked up at her with a surprised laugh. "Khushi, I just made a particularly embarrassing confession and assured you that it would in no way have an adverse effect on you from now on. How would you have any further say in it aside from being relieved?"
When she spoke next, it was on impulse, but she said it before she took it back or could explore the merits of doing something like this, which when she thought about it later than night struck her as if she had just taken a direct leap from the frying pan into the fire. But in that moment, she was prevented by no such caution or logic.
"What if I was interested?" she asked, feeling her chest pick up speed as the words came out.
"What if you were interested in what?" he asked while looking at the laptop, but then she saw his fingers pause on the keyboard and this time when his gaze returned to hers, it appeared to be almost in slow motion.
She raised an eyebrow as if to say, Well?
"Do you realize what you are saying?" he asked.
Of course she didn't.
She nodded.
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Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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