Accidental Attachment

Hatred

Sree

I didn't meet Vikram for a week.

At the end of the week, I had to give a demo on the corrections that Vikram had demanded on the last meet. It was an important part of the project.

I rechecked the files, and looked through them. These were important files to the project, and Hari gave the responsibility to me. Nowadays he is dumping more work on me. Part of me was angry, but I reassured myself that it was for the best.

I prepared for the demo and went with Priya for lunch.

"How s it goin", asked Priya.

" It's fine, a little stressful, but it's okay,",I said

She asked about Vikram.
" I don't talk much to him like you think, the last meet was fully about work", I told her.

Vikram again wanted us to come to his house for the meeting.
" Why does he have an office if he wants to conduct meetings at home", I pondered.

This time, Hari said he was busy with other work, so asked me to go along with Sunil.
However Sunil backed out in the last minute stating some personal emergency. He reassured me that I could handle it easily.

That evening I reached Vikram's house.
I rang the doorbell nervously. It was my first meeting alone with a client, and that client was Vikram. The servant opened the door and greeted me.

I went to Vikram's office room and knocked the door.
"Come in" , he said.

He was working on his laptop. He looked up at me, "the files? ", he said plainly.

Well no greeting, not even a " Hi sree". Direct to business.

I sat down, opened my laptop and the files and moved my laptop towards him.

" Can you come here and explain", he asked and took a chair and dragged it towards him.

I sat near him, and took the laptop, to explain. We were so close that I held my breath for a second and glanced at him for a second. He was in a casual shirt. I moved my curser over the file explaining the lines. 

" What's that second line there, towards the left? "He asked
" Which one sir?", I asked scrolling the document
"The one there", he pointed
I didn't navigate properly and he brought his hands to the laptop to scroll.

His hands touched mine, and I almost jumped. I looked at his face. I was in this room alone..  It was awkward and I moved my hands away from the laptop.
" So explain?, he said and looked up at me.

"What? " One minute, I forgot what I was about to say.

He raised his eyebrows.
"Oh ya sir, this is.. ", I started explaining. I hoped he hadn't noticed my weird reactions.

Then I had to show another file to him. I showed him the folder, so that he could navigate to whichever file he wanted to first.

He looked into it for a minute and looked back at me.
" Where is it? , He asked. ",
"what? ", I asked looking at him blankly.
" The files Sree?, where are they. ",

I hurried, took the laptop and opened the folder, I had rechecked them this morning, but now they weren't there. I searched my laptop, then restarted it, but in vain. The work was done in my laptop and we didn't have backup.

"It was there, I checked in the morning, ", I said.

" What do you mean, it was there? you know that these are very important ,perhaps you deleted them by mistake,", he said.