# Chapter Nine: Two Weeks of Almost

Two weeks is a strange amount of time. Long enough to change everything, short enough that you can still remember exactly what you were before it started.

It started in the office. It always starts in the office.

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Monday. I got in at 9:40 and she was already at her desk, and the second I sat down she looked up from her screen, straight at me, and held it. Just held it. Three full seconds, no smile, no blink. Then she went back to her work like nothing had happened.

I spent the next hour trying to remember what I'd been doing with my hands.

Sneha: did u see me see u

Me: I saw you see me.

Sneha: good.

That was it. That was the whole message. And it set the tone for the next fourteen days.

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Tuesday. She got up to refill her water bottle, which meant she walked past my desk, which meant I got about four seconds of her from the side — the kurta, the fitted pyjamas, that walk. She didn't look at me once. She didn't have to.

Sneha: u looked.

Me: You walked.

Sneha: i walked NORMALLY

Me: You never walk normally.

Sneha: 😌 true

Sneha: what did u look at

Me: All of it.

Sneha: be specific

Me: The walk first. Then the waist when you turned at the water cooler. Then the legs on the way back.

Sneha: and?

Me: And I had to sit with a file on my lap for ten minutes.

Sneha: 😳

Sneha: a FILE

Me: A thick one.

Sneha: vickey 😭

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Wednesday was the day of the white shirt.

She came in wearing a plain white cotton shirt, tucked into grey trousers, hair up. Nothing about it should have been a problem. It was the most ordinary outfit in the world. It was also thin enough that the light from the window behind her did what light does, and by eleven o'clock I had clocked that she wasn't wearing a bra under it. Not a padded one, anyway. Maybe nothing. Maybe a very thin one. Either way, when she stood up and turned to talk to Amol about something, the whole shape of her was right there through the cotton, and I watched two small points form and sharpen as she leaned over his desk.

Amol …