✿ A Tale of Love's First Glance ✿

✿ch 2 ♡The Hustle♡

Kriya pov:

I scrambled to find my balance as another bike hit my Activa from behind, just as I was trying to slow down and take the only parking spot available.

"Hey!" I turned and yelled. I lifted the flap of my helmet to show my face to the bikers.

Kiya Ma'am! So sorry!" Came the smooth reply and the very next second the helmet was removed to reveal the ever-charming heartthrob of the entire college Anant Singhania smiling at me.

I parked my Activa and marched straight over to him.
"
You come with me!"

"Sorry, I applied brake but the bike took a while to stop. I didn't mean to hit your precious Dhanno!"

I controlled the urge to yell back at him to not call my bike as Dhanno, that was the name my little sister, "Kavya" had given to my Activa. And I controlled my urge to yell more at him for hitting me while I was trying to park. There was no use, he wouldn't be bothered and he would just keep smiling at me and working his boyish charm on me, which was absolutely wasted. He didn't faze me at all, he must be three or four years younger than me.

He was, unfortunately, my sister's best friend and her classmate. I was his senior, well now a pass-out graduate of this college, though I was working on a Librarian job here, while I prepared for my fashion designing course exams.

I came from a middle-class background, a few years ago I could have called myself form upper-middle-class family but one tragedy snatched everything away from me.
My mother passed away in an accident and my father lost his job at the same time. We had no means of income and I had to grow up overnight to become the bread earner of the family.
A family of an alcoholic father and his three daughters, well actually only two daughters because one daughter, my elder sister was married and lived with her husband now.

She was the lucky one among us, she was married and settled by the time our mom passed away and she didn't have to put up with our dad's drunken beatings and thrashings that came mostly my way because I did my best to shield Kavya , my little angel like sister as much as I possibly could.

But kavya as we all called her was actually no angel, she was the devil incarnate herself. Always up to some mischief and she had found her match in Anant, another devil prankster. I smiled as I thought of their bond, their friendship and often wondered if it was something more and they were both hiding it behind the façade of friendship.

I thought I would be happier if that turned out to be the case. Anant though a prankster, was a gentleman, a rich spoilt prince but with a heart of gold. He belonged to the affluent Singhania family, the business tycoons but he was down to earth and never showed off his money or status and that was what I loved about him.
He dropped in home often to drop kvaya if they were late and sat on the floor to eat with us. He said he loved the simple food I cooked more than what the army of butlers in his mansion made.

He was a charmer and I knew these were all his talks to show that he didn't find a difference in class or status among us and he actually didn't. He had asked me politely if he should talk to his elder brother and pay the hospital bills, when mom and dad were in the hospital and I had blanched at his words. He had cared and he knew our reality. I wasn't working at that time either, I was studying too.

"No way!" Had been my stunned reply and he had backed off not uttering another money word, but I knew he was always on the lookout for kvaya and my safety and if we needed anything. I had never met anyone from
his family but was sure they would all be warm people given how good he was.