Chapter 12 - That's What Makes Miss. D So Special

"I don't know if I should be happy or embarrassed about my popularity," Miss. D sighed.

"It was unintentional, believe me," Arjun confessed.

"You made a new friend indeed," Miss. D observed raising her eyebrows at Arjun and nodding her head towards Pooja.

Arjun grinned, "Very new indeed. We met three days before when she recognized me from the magazine interview."

Pooja extended her hand to Miss. D introducing herself, "I'm Pooja. And you?"

"Advika," Miss. D replied cheerily shaking her hand.

"So, now you know her name," Pooja claimed to Arjun quite jubilantly.

Arjun chuckled. "Yes, now I do."

Pooja glanced around to see her father walking away with his friends and said, "I guess I have to go now. It was nice to see you. Bye." She waved at them and turned on her heels to race after her father.

"She's cute," Miss. D remarked.

"And smart too," Arjun added.

They sat in silence for a while, till Arjun asked her, "Can I ask you out for dinner today?"

She looked at him with a gleam in her eyes and nodded.

"Great!" he cheered up. "I will be done by seven in the evening. Just tell me where to pick you up, I will come over. And any place that you would like to go to?"

"You can pick me up at the end of the street near my house. I will text you the location. And as for dinner choices, I am not a picky eater. So, I will be fine with anything."

They finally exchanged numbers, after two and half years of meeting each other.

Miss. D chattered away the morning about her vacation plans, how her father's birthday party went, the disaster with the gift she had bought him, which was apparently a perfume bottle; but as soon as her father opened the wrapping, her aunt's pet dog knocked it over accidentally leading to a commotion. Miss. D swore the living room was going to smell like musk for at least a month. Her concern wasn't about the loss of the gift, but about the dog. Thank god it didn't get hurt by the glass shards. But, what if it got an allergic reaction or something happened to its fur? She shuddered, worried and wondering if they should take the dog to a vet.

Mr. J could see she was getting back to normal with the way she talked about random things and worried about everyone and everything in the most selfless way. Just like how she used to.

But there was a tint of seriousness to her tone, something that wasn't there before. She had indeed matured over the two years she was away from him.

Arjun went home after their morning meet grinning widely, excited that he had his first date coming up and that he finally had the means to contact and talk to Miss. D.

"I will be late tonight. No need to prepare dinner for me," he informed Vinodh as he had his breakfast.

"Sure." Vinodh assumed it must be a busy day for Arjun or he would be having dinner with someone from work or his business circles. Arjun didn't specify his dinner date, lest Vinodh teased him.

As the evening came, however, Arjun found himself in a pickle. A meeting scheduled at six went way past seven, and just when he thought he could leave work at half-past-seven, a client called him up, asking for an urgent connect with his team.

Arjun kept texting Miss. D in between, explaining his situation briefly and asking her to please be patient and wait for him, that he would rush over to her as soon as the team connect ends.

She replied that she was okay with it even if he was late, that he should focus on his work. "I am on a Cinderella schedule; I can wait up till midnight. So, rest assured, you take care of your calls," she texted him with complete grammatical appropriateness and with a couple of smiley and cheering emoticons.

Arjun chuckled before putting his phone away and starting the conversation with his client.

It was half-past-nine by the time he started from office. He called her, in a definite panic mode. "I am coming over. I'm so, so very sorry the meeting went on for a long time," he tried to explain as soon as Miss. D answered the call, rushing towards his car.

"Mr. J, relax. It's okay." Miss. D didn't sound upset or put off.

"Where are you now? You haven't been waiting there at the end of the street, have you?" Arjun feared the worst.

"Actually, I am waiting at a different place close to home. I will share the location with you."

Arjun never asked his driver to drive fast. But that night, he actually pushed him to figuratively fly through the streets. When he arrived at location, he wasn't sure if that was the right place.

It was a community children's playground. Arjun got out of the car, walking towards the play area.

Miss. D, wearing a sea green coloured knee length silk dress, was sitting on a swing, swaying slowly back and forth, looking up at the sky and eating an ice cream cone. She heard Arjun approaching her and tilted her head sideways to smile at him warmly.

Arjun stopped, breathing a little heavily. He wasn't sure if he should smile back or start with an apology. His doubt got resolved as soon as she waved at him brightly and gestured him to come closer.

He grinned at her and strode towards her, then lowered himself to kneel on one knee before her so he could look at her in the same level as her eyes. "I'm sorry," he said slowly. "I never thought I would be the one to crash our first date."

Miss. D laughed. "How many times do I have to tell you that life throws the most unexpected surprises at you? It's okay."

"Have you been waiting here all this time?" he asked, a little embarrassed and more worried.

"I took a stroll, had a coffee, then bought this," she replied showing him the ice cream. "You want to have some?" she asked offering it to him.

"You must be hungry. Tell me anything you want, anywhere you want to go. Just name it," he tried to make it up to her.

"Really? Anywhere? What if I name Mars as the dinner location?" she asked, a mischievous smile on her face.

Arjun could see she was trying to make it easy for him. "Anywhere on Earth," he altered his statement.

"Wait," she whispered and took out her phone to browse something. Arjun assumed she was searching for a restaurant nearby.

"I think he's close by," she said, studying something on her phone.

"What?" Arjun was confused.

"When did you last eat?" she asked him.

"I had a sandwich in the evening," he answered hesitantly.

"God, you must be starving," she remarked, her voice heavy with concern. Her phone vibrated with an incoming call and she answered it, greeting the person and then giving directions to the playground. She got up from the swing and walked towards the gate of the playground. Arjun followed her, unsure of what she was doing. They were supposed to head out, yet she was inviting someone over.

A food delivery person drove up on a bike and stopped in front of the gate. Miss. D waved at him, collected a parcel and turned to Arjun jubilantly, raising her hands to show what she got.

It was pizza, two of them actually, and a couple of cans of soft drinks.

"I figured you would be late and hungry, and searching for restaurants in a situation like this is not good for anyone's temper," she explained as she strolled towards a surprised Arjun. "So, I got dinner here. I had just hoped for you to turn up before the pizza does, so that it doesn't go cold. You really need to take care of your meals. How can you not anything for hours?"

She was beaming at him. "You do like pizza, don't you?" she asked. "I haven't seen anyone who doesn't. For your benefit, these pizzas don't have pineapple on them." She smirked.

Arjun was tongue tied. He had expected her to be a little upset. He could have understood and handled it all had she been even angry with him. But it was none of that. She was so accepting of him, and concerned even.

She raised her eyebrows at him questioningly, prodding him to answer something.

"I... yeah, I love pizza. Not the ones with pineapple on them of course," he replied. He was staring at her so intently, his dense brown eyes piercing through the warm gaze of Miss. D, that she had to avert her eyes.

"Come on," she said, taking his hand into hers and leading him to the centre of the playground. There was a multi play station there with dual slides and a staircase to the top of the slides, with enough space on the top for three people to sit comfortably.

Miss. D climbed up the steps, turned to Arjun who was watching her from the ground and nodded her head once gesturing him to come up. He smiled and followed her.

"Would you be okay here?" she asked him once he was up on the top, anxious that he might not like the place. "I mean, I know this isn't a fancy place or a restaurant, and it's just pizza on a playground. Is it okay with you?" she asked, a little tensed.

Arjun simply stared at her, thinking hard. It was he who was supposed to ask her that question. He should be the one to worry and try to remedy the situation. Yet she was the one fixing it all. And she was happy doing it.

He took a step closer to her, and then another, till he was only a few inches away and whispered, "You're worrying about me, Miss. D? Really?" He took a deep breath and then said, "I love it here."

"Great!" she sighed. "Then let's sit here." She settled down and opened the pizza boxes. Arjun watched her briefly and then sat down facing her. She took out a bottle of hand sanitizer from her handbag, cleaned her hands and passed on the bottle to Arjun to follow suit. He watched her as she took out a slice of pizza and offered it to him, then took one for herself and started munching on it happily.

A few minutes of silent eating later, she breathed in a lungful of air yearningly and commented, "It feels so good. The night air is sweet and cool today."

"How can you not be upset with me?" Arjun asked her timidly. "I had asked you out and swore to take you out to some place good. You are really not feeling bad about me spoiling the evening?"

Miss. D looked at him tenderly, empathy playing in her eyes and answered, "Mr. J, you have a responsibility to be answerable to a number of people at work, your employees and people whose livelihoods depend on every action of yours. If you put everything aside for just one date, it won't be fair to any of them. It's not like we have just today, one day, for having dinner together. I know how sorry you already are feeling towards me. Should I be making it worse for you? No. That wouldn't be fair to you. We can go out again when you don't have any immediate, important work. It's okay. It's okay if we have one subdued date. The world wouldn't end and nothing will collapse."

She could see his heart in his eyes. He was positively melting.

She smiled at him, looked away at the night sky and added, "Besides, I love this place. My father used to bring me over here at nights when I couldn't fall asleep, so I would exhaust myself playing here and get knocked over into sleep. Till I left this city two years ago I used to come over here for night strolls. This is one of my favourite haunts. Just look up and see how starry the sky is today. The wind is just the right amount of cool, the sky is perfectly starry and bright. And I am having a delicious dinner here with you. This is perfect. The best you could have offered me."

Arjun could feel his heart pound. There was no way she could be real. There was no way someone could be so understanding, accepting and romantic. He felt like reaching over to her, to touch her face, to hold her in his arms, to hug her as closely as he could, to kiss her. The desire was getting so strong that he had to look away.

He looked up at the starry sky and finally managed to say, his voice deep and raspy, "You are so unbelievable. So perfect."

He could see why she was so special. There could be no one like her. The reason why she had touched his heart since the first time he had met her.

And as he sat wondering how much he deserved her, he couldn't but help question himself. She was always doing something for him. What had he done for her?