She wanted a career. She got a crush she couldn't afford.
Srushti Rao is a final-year BTech student in Mumbai with a head full of spreadsheets, side hustles, and soft dreams of building her own PR empire. Smart, organized, and emotionally allergic t...
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By Thursday, Srushti's entire life could be summed up in four colors:
Yellow for her own classes. Green for Abhay's PR commitments. Blue for Zoom meetings, she mostly kept her camera off in. And red, reserved for breakdowns - both emotional and digital.
She scrolled through the shared calendar while standing in line at the college canteen, thumb hovering, eyes flicking over every little square.
"Fri 12:00 PM - Shoot rehearsal (CricketMart)" "Sat 9:00 AM - Physio + media briefing (Wankhede)" "Sun - Recovery window. No meetings."
No meetings, yes. But still texts.
Her phone buzzed at 10:47 PM the night before with:
"Tomorrow ka event location confirmed? Or still pending with Ritu?" (Tomorrow's)
She was half-asleep when she read it. Eyes burning. Hair in every direction. Wearing a too-large T-shirt from some forgotten tech fest.
But her fingers moved.
Still pending. Want me to ping her again?
Nahi. I'll follow up. Tu soja. (No. You sleep)
Two seconds later:
Btw, good call on moving the sponsor deck deadline. Team was late af.
She blinked at the screen.
There was no period at the end of that sentence.
But it still felt like one.
The next morning, she was sitting in the college library - not reading, obviously - just alternating between pretending to work and pretending not to stare at her phone.
Shifa dropped into the seat across from her, took one look at her face, and said, "You're making that expression again."
"Konsa?" (What)
"The one where you're falling in love with your notification bar."
"I am not."
Shifa leaned over the table. Whispered: "Kisi cute naam se save kiya hai kya? Ya still 'Abhay Sharma - PR' like a liar?" (Have you saved it by a cute name?)
Srushti clutched her phone to her chest. "Bitch, go back to your Python project."
"I will," she said, standing up smugly. "After I remind you that you replayed his voice note three times yesterday. Teen baar, Srushti. That's not project management. That's a situation." (Three times)
Srushti's cheeks burned.
She waited until Shifa was gone before pulling out her headphones.
