Chapter 9
Next Morning
The vibration wouldn’t stop.
Then the images loaded.
Her breath left her body.
There she was. There he was.
His hand firm at the small of her back as he leaned toward her near the car. His face angled down. The frame cropped tight enough to erase the crowd, the reception, everything but the two of them.
Close. Too close.
The headline screamed: “Vikram Khanna’s Secret Romance? Superstar Caught in Intimate Moment with Assistant at Brother’s Wedding.”
Her stomach dropped.
“Divya?” Her mother’s voice, sharp with panic.
The curtain flew aside. She stood there, nightgown askew, phone clutched in her hand. The same photos glowed on her screen. Enlarged. Zoomed. Circulating.
“Building group has eighty-three messages,” she said, voice trembling. “Mrs. Deshmukh sent it. To everyone.”
Divya fumbled for her glasses with shaking hands. The room felt too small, too airless.
“It’s nothing, Maa. Just gossip. They twist angles...”
“Twist?” Her mother’s voice cracked. “His hand is on you. And that look on his face...”
“What look?” Her father’s voice cut in from the doorway.
He stood behind her mother, already dressed despite the hour, hair neatly combed. Five AM discipline untouched by scandal.
Her mother thrust the phone toward him. “Look at this.”
He took it without reacting. Swiped once. Twice. Studied each frame with the same careful attention he gave his newspaper. His face revealed nothing.
Divya wished he would shout. Anger would be easier than this measured silence.
“Explain,” he said finally.
Her throat felt tight. “He walked me to the car. That’s all. I was leaving early to work on my thesis. He was being polite.”
“Polite.” Her mother repeated the word like it tasted wrong. “Men like that aren’t polite to girls like us without reason.”
The statement landed like a slap. Girls like us. The division was clear. Them. Us. Lines that shouldn’t be crossed.
Divya’s phone vibrated again. Another message. Then another. Then ten in rapid succession.
Her brother burst into the room, still in sleep clothes, hair wild. “Di, have you seen.” He stopped, reading the room. “Oh. You know.”
Her phone continued buzzing. Messages from college friends. From distant cousins. From people she hadn’t spoken to in years. All asking the same questions with the same thinly veiled excitement.
“I believe you,” her father said quietly, cutting through the noise. “If you say nothing happened, nothing happened.”
The simple statement struck her harder than accusations would have. Trust when she’d expected interrogation. Faith she wasn’t sure she deserved given how his touch had made her feel.
Her mother wasn’t as easily convinced. “What will people think? The neighbors are already talking. Mrs. Apte from third floor called to ‘check if everything is okay.’ As if we’re having some family crisis!”
“Enough.” Her father’s voice carried finality. “Divya says nothing happened. That’s the end of it.”
But it wasn’t the end.
By seven AM, her mother’s phone rang constantly. The kitty group had transformed into an emergency newsroom.
“Arre, we’re just asking out of concern, na?”
“Is it serious between them?”
“He looks very involved in those photos…”
Concern dripped with curiosity. Sympathy masked gossip.
By eight, Aditya emerged looking half horrified, half thrilled. “My college group is insane right now. They’re saying you’re the reason he stopped being seen with Riya Sharma.”
“That’s ridiculous.” The words came automatically. “He and Riya were never really.”
She stopped mid-sentence.
Her brother looked up. “Never really what?”
“Never mind.”
That wasn’t information she was meant to have. That was something she’d inferred quietly over months of carefully coordinated dinners she’d arranged herself.
Her mother appeared with tea she hadn’t asked for. “Drink. You look pale.”
The tea scalded her tongue but she drank it anyway, needing something to do with her hands. Outside their flat, footsteps paused by their door. Whispers. Then continued on.
The building was watching. Waiting. Judging.
At nine-thirty, her phone lit up with a notification.
“Vikram Khanna’s official statement released.”
Her fingers felt numb as she clicked it.
“Mr. Khanna values all members of his professional team and was simply escorting a colleague to her transportation after a long evening of work. Any romantic implications are baseless speculation.”
She read it three times.
Colleague. Baseless speculation.
The words were correct. Professional. Exactly what should be said.
So why did they feel like erasure?
She set the phone down carefully, as if it might shatter.
Her mother looked up from her own phone. “See? He’s clarified. It’s nothing.”
“Yes,” Divya said quietly. “Nothing.”
But the statement didn’t end things. It multiplied them.
New headlines appeared within the hour:
“Body Language Experts Decode Vikram’s Protective Gesture: ‘That’s Not How You Touch a Colleague”
“The Assistant He Couldn’t Stop Looking At: Timeline of Vikram’s Distraction”
Someone had compiled every photo from the wedding where Vikram’s attention had drifted toward her. Proof assembled from moments she’d thought were invisible.
Her mother hovered nearby. “You should stay home today. Let this settle.”
Divya looked up from the screen. “I need to submit my thesis. The deadline is noon.”
“But people will talk.”
“People are already talking.” She stood, suddenly certain. “My thesis won’t submit itself.”
She showered. Dressed in a simple blue kurta. Braided her hair with steady hands. Checked her thesis one final time. Six months of research, analysis, citations. Work that existed independent of scandal.
When she stepped into the corridor, three aunties fell silent mid-conversation. One adjusted her dupatta. Another pretended to scroll her phone. Their eyes followed her to the stairs.
The security guard avoided her gaze when she said good morning.
She walked to the bus stop without lowering her head, even as awareness prickled across her skin. She could feel the stares. The whispers starting the moment she passed.
Her phone vibrated as she reached the bus stop.
Vikram.
She stared at his name on the screen. Three rings. Four.
She answered on the fifth.
“Divya.” His voice was low, urgent, carrying an emotion she couldn’t name. “I’m so sorry about all this. The photos...”
“It’s fine.” She kept her voice neutral, professional, as the bus approached. “Tabloids make stories out of nothing. I understand how it works.”
“That’s… not exactly.” He paused. “Are you okay? Your family?”
She boarded the bus, moving to a seat near the back. “We’re managing. These things pass.”
“Divya, I...”
“Your eleven AM with Director Mirza is confirmed for tomorrow,” she continued, flipping through her mental calendar with practiced ease. “He sent an email yesterday evening about script revisions. I’ve forwarded them to you.”
The silence stretched so long she thought the call had dropped.
When he spoke again, his voice sounded different. Flatter. “Right. Thank you.”
“The afternoon shoot timing has been adjusted to accommodate the meeting. Rahul confirmed the change.”
Another pause. “You don’t have to.”
“It’s my job.” The words came out sharper than intended.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
“Yes. Tomorrow.”
The call ended with a soft click.
She stared at her reflection in the bus window. The same face. The same glasses. The same girl who’d woken up yesterday morning with everything in its proper place.
The bus lurched forward, carrying her toward the university.
◆◆◆
At the university gate, conversations dipped as she passed. A few students pretended not to look. Others didn’t bother pretending.
One girl whispered to her friend, loud enough to be heard: “That’s her. From the photos.”
Divya kept walking. Spine straight. Chin level. Eyes forward.
She walked down the corridor to the office where Mrs. Menon waited behind a desk stacked with identical black folders.
Divya placed hers on top.
“This is my final submission, ma’am.”
Mrs. Menon looked up. Studied her for a moment longer than usual. Not with gossip in her eyes. With assessment. Recognition.
“Good,” she said simply. “On time, as always.”
Something in Divya’s chest loosened slightly.
This, at least, was something she could control. This, at least, belonged to her alone. Six months of research. Analysis. Argument. Work that existed independent of who touched her back or how cameras framed it.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Divya nodded once and left.
◆◆◆
The rumors didn’t vanish overnight. They lingered, stubborn and dramatic, feeding on speculation and slow news days.
Then, as Mumbai rumors always did, they began to thin.
A starlet’s leaked chat appeared, screenshots full of indiscretion.
A director was accused of copying a Korean script frame by frame.
A producer’s company came under investigation.
The machine moved on to fresher meat.
But Vikram’s PR team didn’t leave it to chance. Two more carefully worded statements. Three public appearances with Riya spaced strategically across ten days.
Coordinated outfits at a charity gala. Coordinated smiles at a film premiere. Coordinated proximity at a restaurant with perfect sight lines for photographers.
The headlines adjusted obediently:
“Vikram and Riya: Stronger Than Ever After False Rumors”
“Golden Couple Laugh Off Baseless Speculation”
Each article included the same photo. Vikram’s hand at Riya’s waist, her head tilted toward his shoulder, both smiling at some shared joke the camera had captured.
Divya saw them. All of them. On her phone. On news sites she told herself she wasn’t checking. On the entertainment channels playing in the college canteen.
She looked at each photo with the same careful blankness she’d perfected over four months. Professional assessment. Nothing more.
She did not think about how his hand rested differently on Riya’s back. Higher. More casual. Less like he was anchoring something precious.
She did not think about how his smile in those photos was the public one. The one that never quite reached his eyes.
She did not think about any of it.
By the third week, her name had slipped from bold type to footnote to nothing. The gossip sites moved on. The building WhatsApp group found new scandals. Mrs. Apte’s daughter’s engagement, the broken elevator on fourth floor, the water shortage last Tuesday.
Her mother stopped checking her phone every ten minutes.
Aditya returned to hostel armed with a story that grew less impressive by the day.
Life resumed its familiar scale.
Except it hadn’t. Not quite.
Because Divya had learned something she couldn’t unlearn: people would always see her as the girl who didn’t belong in Vikram Khanna’s world.
Even when, especially when, she was standing right beside him.
And Vikram had learned something equally uncomfortable: defending Divya publicly meant lying about what he’d felt in that moment by the car.
The way his hand had settled at her back without thought.
The way he’d leaned in because she’d looked small and overwhelmed in a room full of people who made her feel invisible.
The way every instinct had screamed mine when he’d seen her trying to disappear.
The PR statement had been necessary. Professional. The right move.
It was also a lie.
And lies, Vikram was learning, had a way of feeling worse than scandals.