Free The One She Was Warned About by Shoma Narayanan Page A

she’d reacted without thinking.
    ‘You’re a pestilence and a disease,’ she told Priya crossly as Priya came out of her room with a big grin plastered on her face. ‘A foul blot on humanity. A Nosey Parker. The worst excuse for a flatmate in all creation. The only—’
    ‘Dry up,’ Priya said firmly. ‘I’ve saved you from a terrible fate. Just think—what if Mrs Ahuja had looked out of the window and seen you standing on the pavement, making out in public? She’d throw both of us out of the flat before you could say hot hunk . Which he is, by the way. But that would have only annoyed her more.’
    Sidetracked for a second by the thought of their terrifying landlady having spotted her kissing Nikhil, Shweta protested, ‘She should be happy! She’s always nagging me to find a “good boy” and marry him and have twenty children.’
    ‘Reached that stage, has it?’ Priya teased. ‘Daydreaming about marrying Nikhil and having his children...? And without doing a single online compatibility test? What have you done with the real Shweta?’
    Shweta flushed. Priya had caught her checking her compatibility with Siddhant on a matrimonial website’s compatibility scorer, and she hadn’t let Shweta forget it. But her words brought her back to reality with a rather sickening thump. She’d been so carried away the last few weeks, she hadn’t really thought things through at all. Living in the moment was all very well, but she was in real danger of falling in love with Nikhil now.
    Seeing the changing expressions on her face, Priya groaned. ‘I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth,’ she said. ‘Spit it out, now. What’s bothering you?’
    ‘I’m in this way too deep!’ Shweta wailed. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve never made a fool of myself over a man like this before.’
    ‘Then it’s about time you did,’ Priya said briskly. ‘It’s natural, Shweta. You’re young—you need to loosen up, live life a little. I fully approve of this Nikhil person, by the way. He’s super-hot, and he’ll be amazing in bed. Even if he doesn’t turn out to be the love of your life he’ll give you a rocking time.’
    ‘I don’t want a rocking time,’ Shweta muttered. ‘I’m not the kind of person who rocks. I’m more into stones and pebbles.’
    Priya ignored her feeble stab at humour and eyed her with misgiving. ‘Don’t tell me you’re thinking of going back to Siddhant?’ she asked. ‘I hope you’ve told him it’s off?’
    ‘I told him the day after we got back from Kerala,’ Shweta said.
    It had been a difficult conversation. She’d expected Siddhant to be offended, but he’d been genuinely upset and hurt, and she’d felt dreadfully guilty. Not so guilty that she’d wanted to go back to him, obviously, but enough to stay awake a couple of nights beating herself up about it.
    ‘He thought I hated you!’ Shweta burst out suddenly. ‘Nikhil, I mean. Not Siddhant. He doesn’t know the first thing about me.’
    ‘We bicker all the time,’ Priya pointed out reasonably. ‘You can’t blame him if he thought we don’t get along.’
    ‘I did an internet search on him last week,’ Shweta said. ‘He hangs out at celebrity parties, and there are pictures of him with all these glamorous women... There’s no reason for him to choose me over them. The novelty will wear off in no time, and then where will I be?’
    ‘Right where you are now,’ Priya said. ‘But at least you’ll have taken a shot at making things work with him so you don’t have to wonder about it for the rest of your life.’
    It was sound advice, and Shweta knew it, but when she was in her room, trying to go to sleep, the doubts all crept back. She’d never had a very high opinion of her own attractions, and the more she thought about it the more convinced she was that Nikhil would lose interest pretty soon.
    She dozed off finally, but her dreams were troubled with images of Nikhil striding away from her as