The story finishes and moves on to the next, by a celebrity promoting their skincare line, but I go back and rewatch Salman’s story.
And then I rewatch it again.
And again.
Until I’ve watched it at least six times.
Why did he pick that song? It’s not massively popular or upbeat. It’s about a person asking why their partner left their relationship, and the betrayal they felt at them breaking a promise.
I play the video for a seventh time, but I’m still just as confused as I listen to the lyrics. Is he trying to send me a message? Or is this about someone else, and has he just forgotten to remove me from his close friends? I don’t know if he’s dated anybody since me, but if it is a message to me, what does he mean by it? I’m not the one who broke up with him.
I click on his profile and scroll through his posts. There’s no new ones since we broke up, and I don’t know why it surprises me that he still has a photo of us on his grid. I click on it, apicture of him kissing my cheek, and can’t help the sad smile that appears as I read the caption:Chucked the receipt, no returns required on this one.
He didn’t have a lot of followers when he posted it and his profile was private anyway, but I remember feeling so happy when I saw the post on my feed: the words were like a promise I thought he’d keep forever. I wonder why he hasn’t archived the photo. That’s the first thing I did when we broke up; the images of us were too painful a reminder to have on display.
I tap out of his profile and visit my own. I debate whether or not to unarchive the posts I have of us. It’s not like anybody would notice if I did. I only look at my profile every once in a while when I’m on a nostalgia train but still, the thought lingers in my mind. Does him not archiving the photo mean he still has feelings for me?
I sigh and lock my phone instead.
17
‘What the hell are you looking at?’ I ask Salman after he’s been staring at me for far longer than is necessary.
Over the past few days, rather than overthinking the signals Salman may or may not have been sending, I have occupied myself with liaising with clients and vendors, making arrangements for the dates that need to be set up.
Not that it makes me feel any better. As I’ve been arranging the most romantic of dates, I’ve been unable to ignore the twinges of jealousy in my chest.
‘Oh, nothing, just the mug next to you is all,’ he responds with a cocky tilt of the head, lowering his gaze towards my desk.
I scan my desk – an absolute mess with date proposals and pens – until I find what he’s referring to. I hadn’t noticed it until now but, along with my usual mug, there is another mug sitting on the edge of my desk. Except it’s not standing upright like a mug normally would; instead it’s upside down on top of a small piece of thick card. I knit my brows as I examine the mug. Why has he pointed it out to me?
And then I realise what he’s doing. He’s probably pulling a prank on me, expecting me to turn over the mug and remove the cardboard, only for there to be a spider underneath that will scare me so bad that I go running all over the office.
‘Haha,’ I say, my voice monotone as I roll my eyes. ‘Nice try, but I’m not falling for it.’
‘Falling for what?’
‘Whatever prank you’ve got lined up. I’m not as easily fooled as I used to be.’
‘Is it a prank, though?’ He makes his eyebrows dance and I have to fight against the smile that pulls at my lips. ‘Why don’t you lift the mug and find out? For all you know, there could just be an innocent note underneath.’
Curiosity tugs at me, but it’s also what killed the cat. The last thing I want is to freak out in front of the office if there actually is a spider underneath there.
‘You’re going to have to try a lot harder to get me.’
‘Is that a challenge?’
‘No,’I say fiercely, but at the same time I want to say ‘yes’.
I grab my mug – myactualmug – and head towards the kitchen for an afternoon top-up of my tea. I come back to the office five minutes later, the sweet scent of my passionfruit-flavoured green tea leaving a trail of where I’ve been. Salman has his headphones on and he appears deep in thought as he looks at something on his screen, the prank he tried to pull on me seemingly forgotten.
Whatever. I wasn’t going to play into it. Though, when I think about it, I recall he’d often use jokes or pranks as a bridge whenever he upset anyone. Like the time he accidentally broke Raju’s electric scooter and apologised by giving him a box filled with smaller boxes, each layer containing a note telling Raju to open carefully, until he got to the final package and a note that saidI’m sorry I broke your scooter. Or when he accidentally spoiled the ending to a show Lipi had been saving to binge-watch and he set up a three-day operation confusing the hell out of her with cryptic messages about ‘something big’ coming her way. On Day 3 he sat us all down for a private screening of a ‘film’, which turned out to be a one-minute clip he’d made in CapCut titled ‘The Apology’. It was so poorly edited, and there was more text than visuals, but Lipi couldn’t help forgiving himin the end, laughing too hard to be angry.
Still. Even though there has been a shift in our relationship since we did the date proposals, I still can’t forget the way he went behind my back and suggested his good idea to Sadia without running it past me. It still stings like a betrayal I can’t get over. It’s not that I want the credit; I just wanted to know that he was going to say something rather than being blindsided.
At my desk, I tap the space bar of my keyboard to wake up my laptop and go through the motion of logging in. My screen opens up to the booking page I was looking at before I was interrupted by Salman, but when I try to move my mouse nothing happens. The cursor remains in the bottom left corner, no matter how vigorously I shake the mouse. I look at the wires, wondering if Salman has unplugged it in another attempt to prank me, but all the wires are in place. I turn over the mouse but there’s nothing stuck underneath the sensor that would stop it from working.
How odd.
