Page 111 of A Lab Rat's Guide to Fated Love
There was no way she was going to allow herself to have some silly one-sided thing for this man.
No way in hell.
On Monday morning, Nori sat waitingin her car for Vir to step out of his apartment.
“Vir!” She waved towards him, grinning as his pace quickened when he noticed her there. “Get in.”
She was just being a friendly neighbor-slash-colleague, picking another colleague on her way to work. It was totally normal, acceptable, colleague behavior. Plus, she was helping the environment by car-pooling. She didn’t see any problem with that.
“What are you doing here?” Vir asked, buckling his seatbelt.
“You forgot your coffee in my bag.” She shrugged. “And your place is on the way to work, so… you don’t mind, do you?”
“Not in the slightest, no.”
Vir beamed, and Nori averted her gaze to stare straight ahead, hoping her face didn’t betray the melting contents of her ribcage.
Maybe looking at him while driving wasn’t such a good idea. She drove the remaining five minutes to the university with her eyes strictly on the road. While also mentally revising notes for her upcoming lecture, so she didn’t have space to think about things she had no business thinking about.
After dismissing her last class beforelunch, Nori paced in circles by her desk, negotiating with herself.
She wasn’t looking for an excuse to go find Vir again. Absolutely not. But wasn’t it ridiculously normal for colleagues to have lunch together? More so, if they were also friends? And she was friends with Vir, wasn’t she? She just didn’t remember it.
Hedid, though. He remembered.
Yes. He remembered, and he still hadn’t made any effort to contact her in all these years. Not once. Maybe he didn’t really want to be friends with her. Maybe he’d only beenfriendswith her because he’d needed her to keep him alive back then. And he didn’t need her anymore.
Right. Of course.With an angry huff, Nori gathered her things before stomping out of the lecture hall, only to walk headfirst into Vir’s chest. “Argh!”
His arms flung out to catch her as she recoiled from the impact. “Are you okay?”
His concerned, dark eyes scanned hers, and—there it was, the elusive hint of brown up close. Fanning them were the most gorgeous mascara-commercial lashes she’d ever witnessed onanyone, let alone a man. Oh, the wonders of science.
“Nori?”
She swore internally, stepping away from him while hoping the heat in her face didn’t betray the garbage churning inside her brain. Then something occurred to her.
“So, youdowant to be friends,” she blurted out.
Vir’s classes took place in the psychology department two blocks away. He couldn’t have simply been passing by. If he was standing outside her classroom, that could only mean he’d been waiting for her there. Andthatcould only mean—
“I do.” He looked unsure.
“Then why didn’t you contact me all these years?”
“I—I—” he stuttered. “I didn’t have your new number. And I didn’t think you remembered me, so… I didn’t want to bother you while you recovered. Sorry.”
Oh.That… did make sense… when he worded it like that.
Her phone had been crushed in the accident, and she’d had no use of her Indian number afterwards to bother getting a replacement sim. He was right. She wouldn’t have recognized him even if he’d gotten in touch with her back then. If anything, him reaching out would’ve made things worse for her.
“As long as we’re on the same page,” she said, ignoring the guilt poking at her for being mad at him, even though it had only been inside her head. “That we’re friends,” she emphasized.
“We’re friends.” Vir’s mouth twitched before spreading into a grin that threatened to liquify the contents of her ribcage again.
Friends.She smiled nervously.
And from that point on, Nori quickly fell into her new routine. A routine that matched with her friend and colleague, Vir’s. And thereby, a routine that was best shared with her friend and colleague, Vir.
