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...
Too much noise, too many people trying to be funny or fake-deep. His own friends - Shubham, Ishveer - texted like they were in a constant group chat war. Brands texted like bots. And most PR people texted like they were auditioning for Shark Tank.
But Srushti?
She texted like she was already in the middle of a sentence when she opened the chat.
No extra greetings. No "hey hey!" or smiley faces.
Just:
The third slide's fixed. Removed the white space and switched the font.
Clean. Focused.
And when she wasn't focused?
Also, pls tell your media guy to stop using Comic Sans in captions before I walk into the sea.
That one had made him laugh out loud.
Actually laugh.
The kind that surprised even him.
He'd typed:
You'll find a new client before you find a sea in Mumbai clean enough to walk into.
Her reply came in two minutes flat:
Kashid. 4.5 hrs. Worth the crisis.
Kashid.
Huh.
He hadn't been in years.
Now he was picturing her there.
Wavy hair down. Bag slung on one shoulder. Sitting alone on white sand with that "don't talk to me unless it's important or about coffee" face she wore during meetings.
He blinked. Shut Instagram. Then reopened it. Searched "Kashid beach" just once, then locked his phone like it betrayed him.
Later that night, post-practice, post-gym, post-"why am I still awake," he opened WhatsApp again.
She was online.
Green dot, there and gone.
He hovered on the chat.
Didn't type.
Didn't need anything urgent.
Still tapped open their thread.
Read it from the top.
That first message. Then the one where she called him "cricketer" like it was both a challenge and a smirk. Then that cat sticker.
He smirked again, almost despite himself.
Shubham walked into the dressing room with his bat and said, "Bro,tu tere phone ko aise ghur raha hai jaise tere paise kha liye ho." ( You've been staring at your phone like it owes you money)
Abhay locked it.
"Calendar check kar raha tha," he lied. (Was checking the calendar.)
Shubham raised an eyebrow. "If you say so."
He didn't explain.
Didn't mention that sometimes - not always - he typed a reply, paused, then rewrote it before sending it.
Didn't say that sometimes she replied fast.
And sometimes? She took her sweet time.
And those were the messages he thought about the longest.
