I stared at the screen for a long minute, the light of the phone illuminating my face in the dim hallway of my aunt's house. The noise of my cousins laughing in the next room faded into a dull hum.
Did you reach safely?
Four words. It shouldn't have felt like a confession, but coming from him, it was. This was the man who had spent months hiding behind a mahogany desk, the man who had built a wall of "business" to protect a broken heart. And yet, he had reached over that wall just to check on an 18-year-old student who had left his office only a few hours ago.
My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. I didn't want to seem too eager, but I didn't want to be cold either.
Me: Yes, just finished dinner with my family. Thank you for asking.
I set the phone down on the nightstand, but I didn't leave the room. I waited. Usually, a manager would stop there. A "Good" or "Okay" would be the end of it.
But then, the bubbles appeared. He was typing.
Adi: Good. It's unusually quiet in the office without your keyboard tapping away at the back. The files look lonely.
I felt a smile tugging at my lips. He was teasing me—the old Advisor was peaking through the Manager's mask again.
Me: I'm sure the files will survive two days without me, Adi. Don't tell me you're actually working late on a Friday night?
Adi: Old habits are hard to break. Or maybe I'm just realizing that the office is much bigger than I thought it was when it's empty.
There was a weight to that sentence. It wasn't just about the office; it was about the space he had been living in since his heartbreak.
The Unspoken Shift
The next morning, the messages didn't stop. It started with a photo of a coffee cup on his messy desk with the caption: "The cafeteria coffee tastes worse when there's no one to complain about it with."
I found myself smiling at my phone during breakfast, earning a curious look from my mother. I was physically at my aunt's house, but my heart was 100 kilometers away, tucked in a corner desk in Ahmedabad.
As the weekend progressed, the conversation shifted away from work. We talked about my BBA exams, about the books I liked, and for the first time, he asked me about my dreams beyond the office.
"I want to build something of my own," I texted him on Sunday evening as I packed my bags to return. "I don't want to just 'manage' someone else's files forever."
Adi: I know you will. You have a fire in you that most people double your age don't have. I saw it the day of your interview. I see it every day at 6:00 PM when you refuse to let the clock beat you.
My heart thrummed. He hadn't just been "testing" me all those months; he had been watching me. He had been admiring the very things I thought were making me look like an amateur.
The Return
Monday morning felt different. I didn't feel like I was going to "work." I felt like I was going to see him.
I walked into the office at 1:00 PM, my university bag heavy on my shoulder. The glass doors swung open, and I headed straight for my desk. I expected a busy office, but the atmosphere was strangely still.
I looked toward the private office. The door was open.
Adi was standing by the window, his back to the room. He heard my footsteps and turned around. The professional suit was there, the sharp jawline was there, but when his eyes met mine, the "Manager" was nowhere to be found.
"You're back," he said, his voice lower than usual.
"I'm back," I replied, standing by my desk. "Did the files miss me?"
He walked toward me, stopping just at the edge of my desk's partition. He didn't look at the reports. He looked at me, a soft, genuine smile breaking across his face—the kind of smile that didn't belong to a boss.
"The files were fine," he murmured, leaning in just enough so that I could smell the familiar scent of cedar. "It was the Manager who had a hard time."