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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He wasn't the type to "view stories," but that morning, his thumb hovered over her name. The screen was dim because it was too early. He'd just finished his breakfast and opened Instagram while stretching.
He tapped it. A single frame: sun-kissed, grainy, legs buried in white sand, sea in the background.
His brain didn't plan. He didn't mean to click "Reply," but he did—opening a message window and typing:
This your escape spot?
He hit 'send' before he could question: Why did I just do that?
Fifteen seconds later, her reply appeared:
Maybe. Depends who's asking.
He smiled, dropped his phone.
Srushti's shade. Her style. Her tone.
That alone would've been enough—if it wasn't that something clicked in his chest. That gentle pull of recognition. Not attraction, exactly. But when her voice showed up in print? It felt like waking up.
Later on, in interview prep, hair and makeup, while chatting with the PR coordinator, he found himself checking his phone between snippets. No charge. No chirp. But the hope—explicit and weird.
When another story showed up—someone else's paid post—he ignored it. But he thought of her story. And her reply. And his reply.
He wasn't sure if it was brave, stupid, normal, or insane. But he sent it anyway.
In the afternoon team meeting via Zoom, he sat with earphones, his background blurred. He clicked back to her story one more time—just to look again.
White sand. Grainy. Peace.
He closed the app, shaking his head. Focus.
During the drive home, he played a random playlist but couldn't place the songs. His head kept going back to that one line:
Crickter... main khud drama hu. Let me live. (I am drama)
He'd been thinking about her tone—her casual honesty, how she could dish him some sass but remain her. That wasn't light. Not casual. That meant... Something. Something inside him was... stirring.
Before sleeping, he made a decision. He opened his notes app—brand shoot schedule scrolled down—and added one more line at the bottom:
He didn't like texting before calls — felt like overthinking. But he always checked his own reflection in the screen. Twice. Not for vanity. Just habit.
