Mahira Khan as Ridhima

Karan Singh Grover as Karan Singhania

Ileana D'cruz as Ishika Singhania

Varun Dhawan as Varun (Karan's best friend)

Mikaal Zulfiqaar as Ayaan (Karan's other best friend)
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Karan wonders, when this attraction will fade away. Sitting in a plane, looking at Ridhima sleeping on his shoulder, peaceful and innocent. He was jealous of Siddhant, why wouldn't he? Ridhima never talked to him so much, and here she is complementing a stranger. And this shameless twat, he was flirting with her. And then she goes around being impressed with his typing skills.

Typing skills!

who doesn't know how to type like that.

He may never admit it, but being here in this plane, with her like this, sleeping, her head on his shoulder, it is the best feeling ever.

"Your wife is gorgeous."Sidhant says, making Karan's blood boil, and a green monster bubbles up within him.

"she is not that gorgeous"Karan replies. he does not want anyother man to think his wife is gorgeous, rather, he will be more happy if they think she is 'the average' type, so that Karan would not have to fight off unnecessary attention off of her.

"Then you really need an eye-check up. Anyone with two eyes can see that she is a gem. How did you two meet anyways?" Sidhant opens his trap.

All Karan wants to do is put a sock in this creep's mouth. who is he, going around leering at other's wives.But he answers him anyway.

"arranged marriage."better to make it as uninteresting as possible.

"That means I have a chance."

"Excuse me?"socking, is what is coming for him next.

"uh... nothing,, just talking to myself. Don't mind me, please"

Ridhima shifts in her sleep, and pushes her face closer to Karan's neck, and hugs his arm at the bicep.

She might be sleeping, and feels nothing, knows nothing about what this is doing to Karan. But Karan can feel each and everything. The skin to skin contact, her warm breath on his neck, her perfume. Everything.

Now he is regretting, keeping her head on his shoulder, and not letting it rest at the window.

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Karan is waiting for his luggage at the New York airport, with Ridhima and unfortunately, with Sidhant.

  He is quite but Ridhima and Sidhant wouldn't shut up. And it is irritating.

Sidhant's bag has already arrived but he wouldn't leave.

"where are you staying in New York? I'll visit you someday."

"I actually have no idea where we will be staying."

Good. Now I would have to worry about this twat nomore. Karan thinks

"Then give me your phone number, we can stay in contact,  and when you know the address, then we can meet up?"

"sounds good to me. But...I dont have a cellphone"

Karan has never felt so happy about confiscating someone's cell phone.
He tried really hard not to smirk, but couldn't help it.

He felt Ridhima's gaze at his back, as he stood ahead of them near the luggage belt, hands in his pockets.

"What!? In which century are you living? Even toddlers own cellphones these days." Sidhant said.

"Now that is an exaggeration, Sid. I do have a cell phone but don't have it right now." Ridhima laughs out. Karan was less annoyed at her laughing when she was laughing at some immature puny youtuber. Also this annoying nickname, 'Sid'.

What is it with people nicknaming others unnecessarily, are they not satisfied with the names their parents gave them?
Karan's brooding and idiotic thoughts are put to a halt when he spots his and Ridhima's bag.

Picking them up, he goes towards Ridhima and Sidhant.

"Let's go, Ridhima. Bye Sidhant"
He passes Ridhima her bag, and takes her unoccupied hand in his.
And starts directing her towards the exit.

"Siddharth." Ridhima says.

"What?"

"His name, it is not Sidhant. It is Siddharth. And don't be rude to him. He is so nice." Ridhima reprimands Karan.

"Yes, he is lovely, so lovely that you are best friends and you call him Sid, instead of Siddhant" Karan tells her sarcastically.

"Siddharth, actually. You got the name wrong buddy. Ridhy, I thought you would correct him"  The root of Karan 's infuriation has followed them to the exit and is now walking with them.

Karan ignores him, gritting his teeth.
"I did but he must have forgotten." Ridhima says politely.

She is always rude to me. Why can't she be rude to him and get rid of him.?
Karan wonders irked by her behaviour.

Karan has never appreciated his driver's punctuality as he did right now. The man was waiting for them outside the airport gates and Karan didn't  hesitate to open the doors to let Ridhima into the car before him. But that was a bad idea, because his wife stopped in front of the open car door to say goodbye and hug him.

While they were hugging, Karan was thinking that even though Ridhima is his wife, she has never hugged him. And then his eyes drifted to Siddharth's hands around Ridhima's waist, and he was counting the number of teeth he will knock out of Siddharth's mouth, in only one punch.

"Okay enough hugging. Sidhant, don't you have to be somewhere. Go away. Ridhima, get in the car, or I am pulling you in. "

Siddharth looked displeased at being interrupted from the hugging session or maybe he was irritated at being called Sidhant.

Ridhima, had her mouth wide open, eyes squinted, obviously mad at Karan for being rude to her beloved friend.

But she didn't complain about it, Atleast not until she was in the car.
Before getting in the car himself, Karan turned to Siddharth , who would not leave, and said while smirking "bye Sidhant, just to ruin his day a little more"

"How can you! He was so polite to me during the flight......" Karan should have predicted Ridhima would start yapping about his bad behaviour towards her friend, as soon as the car doors closed, but now he can do nothing about it but ignore her.

And ignore her, he did.

••••••••

It has been an hour since, they have reached their apartment. Karan loved this place, it was the 10th floor of a residential building, in a very busy part of  the City.

A three bedroom apartment with attached bathrooms and balconies each, the view was fine too. The place was in the heart of New York City, the roads were busy 24/7 and tall buildings surrounded their building. So there was not much of a view from the balcony, but if someone considers busy roads and tall buildings beautiful, then the view was amazing.

Apart from the three bedrooms there was a kitchen, and a drawing room. The house was fully furnished. The furniture was in contrast with the cream walls, and was made of dark mahogany wood.

Karan has made sure that the  interior designer chose these specific colours for the furniture and decor.

He noticed, pleased with himself that Ridhima liked it too. And since, they were the only people who will be living here he had given her a separate room.

This marriage is just for the world. For him it means nothing. She can't be his wife, she is a liar. She lied to him.
And no matter how attracted he is to her, but that is no reason to forget that she is his mother's murderer's daughter.
He has been attracted to many women in the past. He will find someone better.

Karan fishes out his cellphone from his dress pocket. "Karan Singhania" he says.

"Stop with the formal crap, Singhania." Varun  says.

"Oh, hey Varun, didn't see it was your number. I am in New York by the way" Karan tells him. Varun is his childhood best friend. And now he is a business partner too. 

"Cool, got married...Han?"

"Yeah."

"You owe me a party bro. Missed the wedding, all because of you. Couldn't leave the company alone, and you had to marry out of the blue. Party tomorrow. Introduce me to your wife then."

"I can't actual-"

"Ayaan told me, he made you promise that you will throw a party, are you going back on your promise, Karru" Karan rolls his eyes at the weird nickname Varun gave him. He usually uses it with a fake girl voice, which sounds nothing like the voice of a girl.

"Fine, I will thr-"

"Great, party tomorrow at your place. I'll send out the invitations. Inviting all the business partners, and the HR department of your software business. They have some hot chicks."

Karan sighs and hangs up the phone.

Then makes necessary arrangements for tomorrow's party.

"Karan, I am going to make tea, do you want some?" Ridhima peeks through the half open door and asks him.
"No."

"Are you sure? You usually like to drink tea while you are working." Karan would have really appreciated a wife like Ridhima, only if she wasn't Ridhima.

"Don't bother. I will ask the maid to do it." Karan tells her and goes back to reading the clauses of the new merging he is about to do.

It is really useless, with her around, he can't really focus on the words. Atleast it helps to avoid looking at her.

Ridhima made a surprised sound, which made him look at her. Her eyebrows were raised and she said "We have maids? I didn't see anyone in the house."

"They don't live here with us, they live in the basement quarters, if someone needs them, we call them through the intercom.

"I see...don't trouble them, I'll make it for the both of us."
"They get paid-" the door of Karan's room slams shut.

Karan sighs and pushes the papers back. Standing up from the office chair, goes to lay down on the bed.

As it is an apartment and Karan had been living alone he made the master bedroom, his bedroom cum study. Apart from the bed, there was a table and chair at one side of the room, right in front of the door , and on the other side a sofa set and coffee table was placed.

Karan drifted to sleep as soon as he hit the pillow.
••••••••••

"Karan...Karan....ka-" Karan wakes up, panting.
Sitting up he notices that Ridhima is sitting beside him a concerned look marring her face, eyebrows curved into a frown.
"What?" Karan says rubbing a hand over his face, his gaze lands on the wall clock, to see that it is nighttime now. He has been asleep for a few hours.

"Someone named Ayaan was on the phone when you were sleeping. I came here to wake you and saw that you were mumbling something, looked like you were having a nightmare." Ridhima tells him.

"I will call him back. You can go." Karan says to her.

"What were you dreaming about?" Ridhima asks him in a small voice.

"I don't remember. Why?" Karan speaks and stands up from the bed to get the jug of water kept on the bedside stand and fills a glass with water.

"You kept repeating my name and also kept calling for your mom" She utters.

Karan pauses the glass of water mid air and tries to remember anything he dreamt of, but all he came up with a blank. He could only recall the restless and tiring feeling, like he was running or something. Nothing else.

"I don't remember." He says.

When he keeps the glass of water on the bedside stand, his eyes fall on his cellphone kept there and it reminds him of the party.

"Oh, by the way, I am throwing a party, my friends will be here to meet you."

Saying that he walks out of the room, not bothering to see her reaction.

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Thank you for reading.

I will blame my delay in updating this part on all the Pakistani shows.

I have completed watching
Kuchh pyaar ka pagalpan,
Manjali and
Sher-e-Zaat

Out of which I loved Kuchh pyaar ka pagalpan the most.

You all are awesome and kind and amazing and everything in between. Thank you for reading and voting and commenting.