Is the city bleary or my vision is?

Ayaan's eyes stay fixated outside the window of his office on the thirty-second floor of the building that had never seemed like a place where he belonged, for the very first time regarding the perfectly blank slate that his mind is instead of the busy roadway under him.

He does register his sister's adenoidal voice coming through the other end of the phone, but only distantly. Her words seem to come quicker and quicker the more distracted he feels.

"Are you even listening?" Her tendency to emphasize her words when she begins to feel increasingly annoyed with something is what eventually brings him out of the haze he's stuck in.

"I am." He's not. And he knows Tanvi can sense when he's lying. He doesn't know how, but she had said, "It's because I'm four years older than you," when he had once asked. He was twelve then, and he had narrowed his eyes in her direction.

"I can tell when you're lying," she would always say.

Ayaan was never much of a talker. So although he was curious, he never asked what their ages had to do with whether she knew he was lying or not.

"What's the name of the agency of the event planners I just mentioned?"

He blinks once and shakes himself internally, trying to grasp the name he never even registered inside his head. Well, shit. "Um..." He looks up at the sky in front of him, pleading the Lord for the phonecall to somehow disconnect itself. "...Planners "R" Us?"

Ayaan can see Tanvi grit her teeth on the other end as she spits out her reply. "I'm going to bash your skull in if you don't pay attention to what I'm saying, Ayaan. This is very important."

He lets out a light, instinctive chuckle at her threat but then sighs defeatedly right after, stepping back and then away from the clear window to take his usual seat behind the mahogany office table. His free hand comes up to massage his temple in an attempt to calm a nearing headache, and he lets his shoulders sag as he finally pays attention to his sister's words.

"The boss--Gwen McCrae--is a really good friend of mine. And because she can't be here, she's sending someone over to plan out the details of everything you want at the wedding."

I haven't even officially proposed to Avni yet, he thinks with a start, straightening in his chair with realization.

He's getting married to her. His best friend. In just a few months.

The phone almost slips out of his hand and in a scramble to save it, he accidentally knocks a few things down the table and comes back to his senses.

And Tanvi isn't done.

"...in three hours or so. He's very good at what he does but he doesn't usually meet people in person, so you better be nice."

Who?

"I'm sorry, what?"

His sister goes silent on the other end for a solid fifteen seconds. And just when Ayaan thinks the line is dead, she lets out an exhausted sigh and says,

"You know what. Never mind. I'm just going to mail you the details."

And then she hangs up.