The VIP floor of Zenith was everything it promised to be.

Music reverberated from walls to create a buzz that wasn’t loud enough to drown out voices but was enough to make you feel alive.

Table reserved for Khushi’s birthday celebration was scattered with glasses and half-filled liquor bottles; signs of a night partying non-stop for the past two hours or so.

Lucy sat between Riya and Khushi, her back straight in that unconsciously proper way of hers that somehow looked elegant rather than stiff.

She had been watching everything with those wide, quietly observant eyes of hers, absorbing the music, the lights, the laughter, the way these women talked over each other with no proper honorifics and no shame whatsoever.

She had not said much.

She was in a foreign land now she had to get accustomed to this culture first, understand its rules before she could participate in them. That was simply how things should be.

This was a different kind of education entirely, and she was taking it all in as much as she can.

"Okay, okay," Khushi was saying, pointing her glass dramatically at Sneha across the table.

"You cannot tell me that the CFO did not have feelings for you. That man practically handed you the entire quarterly report just to have an excuse to knock on your door."

"He handed me the quarterly report because I am the only one in that office who actually reads the quarterly report," Sneha said flatly, though the corners of her mouth were fighting a losing battle against a smile.

"Same thing," Khushi declared.

"So," Sana who had been sipping silently from her drink looked at Lucy, "are you having a good time?"

"Very much," Lucy said honestly. "Everyone here is very... lively."

Sana laughed. "That is one way to describe Khushi."

"I heard that," Khushi called from across the table.

The rounds kept coming.

Meghna had taken charge of ordering food and she did it well. The table was never empty. Glasses were being raised. Birthdays were being toasted never stopping in the middle.

All was going well.

But it was Meghna who noticed it first.

She reached across the table to top off everyone’s glass only to be surprised when her eyes fell on Meera’s glass, which contained juice.

Meghna froze in the middle of pouring with her eyes glued to Meera’s glass.

She blinked as if in confusion and wiped eyes, but to her horror found that it still contained juice.

Meghna set the bottle down slowly. She looked at Meera. Then she looked at the glass again. Then back at Meera again.

"Meera."

"Hmm?" Meera did not look up from the table.

She seemed a little lost in her own thoughts that evening.

There was nothing wrong with her laugh and her smiles, yet it was evident for everyone that something was wrong.

Like a painting hung slightly crooked on a wall. You could not immediately say what was wrong but you knew something was.

"That is juice in your glass."

"Yes." Meera picked it up and took a sip with perfect composure. "It is mango... Quite good actually. Why?"

A silence fell over that corner of the table.

Sana put her glass down. Riya, who had been mid-sentence explaining something to Lucy, stopped talking. Even Khushi, who had been thoroughly occupied with her own birthday, turned to look at her.

They all looked at her glass, containing mango juice.

Not even a single mixer!

"Are you drinking mango juice in my birthday, goddammit," Khushi said slowly as if she needed to convince herself that her friend had indeed done that.

"She just told you that," Riya said with amusement evident in her voice.

"Meera," Khushi’s tone changed. The birthday-party atmosphere seemed to disappear as she looked at her friend with concern.

"Remember that time you won a drinking competition against Aakash? At my cousin’s wedding?"

"How can I forget it, that guy once drank Australian tourists under the table at a resort in Goa. Then ordered dessert," Sneha added.

"Thanks for reminding me that, I know what you are trying to say but people change Khushi," Meera said lightly.

"Not that much, they don’t."

Sneha leaned forward slightly. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything is fine." Meera smiled. It was a good smile. A practiced smile. The same iconic smile she gave on TV shows, on magazine covers, in every public appearance where a smile was required and a real one was unavailable.

The kind of smile that her friends, who had known her long before any of that, could see straight through without even trying.

One by one, almost without coordination, the glasses came down.

"Meera," Meghna said, and her voice was no longer light or teasing. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened. I told you...."

"Cut the crap and tell us the truth," Khushi said flatly.

Meera looked down at her glass.

She was quiet for a long moment.

"I have never told this story to anyone before and that includes my own family."

Nobody spoke until she finished telling.

"Three months ago," Meera began, and then paused as if deciding how far back to start.

"Three months ago I had a meeting scheduled. A business collaboration discussion. Nothing unusual about that, it happens all the time in this industry. My assistant Sunny arranged the whole thing." She paused on the name, and something crossed her face briefly before she smoothed it away. "She had been with me for three years. I trusted her completely."

"The meeting was at a bar near Marine Drive. Sunny insisted it had to be there, that the producer preferred that location. I did not think anything of it. She promised she would be there with me the entire time."

Meera turned the glass slowly between her hands. "Midway through the meeting she excused herself. Said she needed to use the restroom. I had one glass of fruit juice while she was gone."

The pause that followed was very short.

But everyone at the table understood exactly what it contained.

"I felt it almost immediately," Meera continued, her voice steady in the way that costs something to maintain.

"The room started tilting. My vision went blurred. I knew something was wrong. I knew at once that I have been betrayed. I have been around this industry long enough to know what wrong feels like."

Her jaw tightened slightly. "I got up and I got out through the back. I do not remember it very clearly. I was holding onto the wall and trying to keep moving toward the street."

She stopped.

The club music continued its indifferent pulse all around them.

"The man who had arranged the meeting came out after me." She said his name once, quietly, and it landed on the table like something cold.

"He had planned the whole thing. He told me so himself, standing right there in that alley while I could barely stand upright. He said he had spent months planning it. That Sunny had been paid to bring me there and make sure I was alone."

Khushi made a gasp.

"I do not know what would have happened," Meera said quietly, "if someone had not walked into that alley."

"Someone was there?" Sana asked.

"A security guard." The faintest, most involuntary smile crossed Meera’s face then.

"He just appeared out of nowhere. I do not know what he was doing in that particular alley at that particular time. But he walked in, he saw what was happening, and he did not hesitate for even a second."

"What did he do?" Sneha asked, leaning forward without realizing it.

"He threatened to call police and scared him away. Once he disappeared, he tried to wake me up but failed. In his desperation, he took me away. He took care of me throughout the night and then sent me to a place where I could get proper treatment."

No one spoke.

"After I regained my consciousness, I found myself in a strange apartment, sleeping in a stranger’s bed. Still dressed in the clothes that I wore the previous night."

She paused here for a second and continued with self-reproach.

"And in rage, I abused him in many ways, considering him guilty. I even treated him like I had never done before. Throughout the night, he had been taking care of me."

"He offered to escort me home afterward. On his bicycle.. although foolish that was another matter."

"And instead of being grateful I made him feel like an inconvenience and walked away."

"He sounds incredible," Meghna said, with the plain directness that was entirely her own.

"Genuinely incredible. Most people would have walked past that alley. Most people would have convinced themselves it was not their business."

She paused. "And don’t you dare blame yourself for how you reacted. You had just gone through something no one should ever have to go through. Anyone would have reacted the same way."

"I know," Meera said quietly.

"That is why you stopped drinking," Sana said.

Meera nodded once. "I cannot bring myself to do it again after that night. Not after knowing how quickly something can be put into a glass without you knowing." She shrugged, and it was a smaller shrug than her usual ones. "Maybe it will pass eventually. Maybe it will not. For now, the mango juice is fine."

A short silence settled over the table.

Then Khushi reached over and, without a word, wrapped both arms around Meera’s shoulders and held on.

"Thank God for sending a man there that night," Khushi said into her shoulder. "And don’t you worry. There is no way you did something wrong. Do not blame yourself for any of it."

Only Riya felt odd because similar incident she heard about it from certain someone.

A security guard. Marine Drive. An alley. Three months ago.

"What was his name?" Riya asked.

The question came out naturally.

Meera looked up.

She thought for a moment as if trying hard to recall and said "Alex," she said.

"His name was Alex."