11 Playing Hooky #2
Usually, I would consider it blasphemous to swipe while I was out on a date. But this was turning out to be a really shitty one, and it hadn’t even begun. I opened Tinder and let myself window shop, hoping I’d find a sweet bargain. Just as I was finishing my beer, my phone buzzed with a message.
I stared at the screen in disbelief. Had I just been …
stood up? The thought made me want to gasp in horror.
In the last three years, I’d been on more dates than most people would go on in their entire lives, and I’d never been stood up.
Not once. I’d been cancelled on, sure. But thirty-five minutes after the date was supposed to have begun? That was sacrilegious.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I said louder than I’d intended.
Next to me, someone cleared their throat. It was the man from before.
‘You look like you could use another drink,’ he said, pointing to my empty beer mug.
‘My date stood me up … so yeah, something like that,’ I said, sighing loudly.
He raised his eyebrows as he leaned his right elbow on the counter, ‘Oh, Pranav? Yeah, he couldn’t make it,’ he said, then added, ‘but he sent me in his place.’
A smile found its way onto my face. ‘Well, you’re awfully late.’
His shoulders relaxed further at that. ‘I fully plan on making it up to you. Shall I start by buying you another beer?’
I considered this man’s offer. Sure, he wasn’t the guy I’d swiped right on.
But he was kind of cute. Besides, I couldn’t help but admire his guts.
I could never approach people at bars. I preferred hiding behind the comfort of dating apps.
That way, I could meet five times as many people, and if they hit me with a terrible pick-up line, I could hit the unmatch button. It was safe, secure and easy-peasy.
This, on the other hand, was new. I hadn’t chatted up a non-virtual stranger in ages, probably since college.
‘Aren’t you here with someone, though?’ I asked, turning around to find a short, muscular man seated at their table.
‘Oh, he’s a big man. He’ll be all right,’ he said, smiling reassuringly at me.
He pulled the bar stool next to mine and propped himself up on it.
I usually didn’t like beards on men, but it suited his long-ish face.
I could see a hint of chub hiding behind the facial hair, but his broad chest and big arms drew my attention away from it.
He was on the taller side, probably five feet eleven.
His knees touched mine from where he was sitting.
‘So what kind of a fool abandons a pretty girl like you? Boyfriend?’ he asked, clearly hoping I wouldn’t answer in the affirmative.
I shook my head and said, ‘No one we need to talk about.’
He flashed me a dazzling smile. I couldn’t help but notice how magnificent his teeth were – even, perfectly aligned and blindingly white.
‘I’m Madhav, by the way,’ he said, extending a hand towards me.
‘Oh, you’re a shaker,’ I said, lightly shaking his hand. ‘I’m Ananya.’
His friend joined us a few minutes later. I suggested we could all go sit at their table, but Madhav bore his gaze into his friend until he told us he had to leave.
‘Nice friend,’ I said after he’d left. ‘Colleague?’
‘He’s technically my boss,’ he said, then added when he saw the surprise on my face, ‘We were in the same college before I joined his company, so it’s all chill between us.’
‘That’s pretty cool. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be friends with my boss,’ I said, greedily sipping the beer that had just been placed in front of me by the bartender.
‘What do you do?’ he asked, stirring his G&T idly.
I was about to tell him when he interrupted, ‘Wait, can I guess?’
‘Go for it.’
‘You seem like the creative type. But I can tell you’re also fairly left-brained,’ he said, making a big show of doing some mental calculations before concluding, ‘You’re probably in marketing.’
‘Close, but no. I work in events,’ I said, offering him a consolatory pat on the shoulder.
‘Ah, damn,’ he said.
I listened to him talk about his work. I could tell that he really enjoyed it.
He was a management consultant with a popular international firm.
My brain automatically began computing the information he was providing me.
He worked ten to twelve hours every day, six days a week.
Even today, on a Sunday, he’d just returned from an afternoon meeting.
‘Your job must leave you with no time for anything else,’ I said tentatively.
‘Well,’ he said, taking a sip of his drink, ‘it’s been a few years since I found something worthy of making time for.’
Men will say pretty much anything to get into a woman’s pants. I wanted to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, but my past experiences told me he’d be no different from all the other MBAs I’d dated – busy, busy and always busy.
Hold on , I thought. I’m doing that thing again.
You know, the thing where I write men off before I’ve gotten a chance to know them, so they can’t let me down later on?
Over the years, I’d developed a terrible habit of finding faults even where none existed.
I was the opposite of Uday Chopra’s character from Dhoom – I would meet a guy and instantly imagine all the ways it could go wrong with him.
In a way, my pessimism had worked for me.
I hadn’t had a heartbreak in a long time.
But on the other hand, I hadn’t found love either.
Forget love, I hadn’t even found a decent chap to date for more than a week.
And this guy looked pretty decent. Heck, he might even turn out to be boyfriend material – if I gave him a chance, that is. Besides, I had to remind myself, I needed this more than he did.
‘Another beer?’ he asked me.
‘Uh … I think I should call it a night. Mom’s expecting me home for dinner,’ I said.
She wasn’t. I just figured that if Madhav wanted to run for the position of my boyfriend, he’d have to put some effort into his campaign. Having bottomless alcohol with him on the first date (was it?) didn’t feel like the right card to play. I wanted to leave him wishing for more.
‘Where do you stay? Can I drop you home?’ he asked, leaning forward.
His face fell when I said the word Noida. I chuckled.
‘Don’t worry. You’re off the hook,’ I said, well aware that a South Delhi boy offering to drop me home all the way to Noida was the modern equivalent of Shah Jahan building the Taj Mahal for Mumtaz Mahal.
We split the bill, downed our drinks and got up to leave. He opened the door for me, and we spilled out into the street. My cab had already arrived.
‘Well, this was fun,’ he said.
‘It was,’ I said, motioning to my cab driver to park across the road.
And now, he just had to seal the deal. I wondered if he was going to chicken out.
‘Let’s do it again sometime?’ he asked, and I did a mental victory dance.
Ten points to Madhav!
We fed our numbers into each other’s phones and hugged goodbye.
He lingered close to me for a second, and I knew he was trying to determine if he should kiss me or not.
I don’t know if he decided that the setting wasn’t ideal or if it just wasn’t the right time, but he didn’t.
Instead, he pecked me lightly on my left cheek and pulled away.
I smiled at him warmly before crossing the road to board my cab.
‘Where to, madam?’ the driver asked me.
‘Noida,’ I said.
I didn’t realise I was still smiling until I saw the puzzled look on the cabbie’s face.
‘There’s a lot of traffic, madam. It will take us more than an hour,’ he said, clearly unhappy with the trip he’d been assigned by the taxi app.
‘No problem,’ I said, unfazed by his attitude.
I was in a fantastic mood. This unexpected date had turned out to be the pick-me-up I’d so badly needed after my monstrous week.
The fatigue from both my jobs had almost completely washed away.
I had no idea that a little bit of flirting and a fair deal of validation could revive my mind in such a way.
I no longer felt frustrated or bogged down.
In fact, I could feel the wheels of my brain spinning at supersonic speed.
I had half a mind to send Kartik a thank-you text for playing hooky.
Instead, I picked up my phone and typed out a text to V.