I dove across the bed for my phone, which was on charge. Putting in the pin to unlock it, I opened the gallery. I sighed; there were some decent photos. Quickly, I picked two from earlier in the evening and carefully edited them to ensure nobody could guess how much I’d actually had to drink. I made sure to add the hashtags agreed upon with Burn Promotions. Immediately the PR manager responded. I cursed. They were watching my account, and I was late in posting. Quickly, I added a few more photos to my story, making sure to gush about how much I appreciated being allowed to work with the company. Hearts filled my screen, and my follower count grew quickly. I smiled, thinking that I had adequately saved something that could easily have turned bad.

‘Everything okay?’ Kavya interrupted my thoughts.

‘All fine,’ I said, locking my phone. ‘What are we going to wear today? We’ll need to make a good lasting impression on our final day.’ Kavya eyed me again, and then probably figuring out that she wasn’t going to get anything else out of me about the previous night, she opened her travel case.

‘I was thinking of this red dress,’ she said, holding up the loose-fitting cotton red and white dress I’d packed in for her earlier in the week. I nodded in approval, and asked her to bring my case over. Opening it, I found a white cotton long-sleeve button-up shirt and handed it to her. ‘You can wear this with it; leave it unbuttoned though, and I’ll help you roll the sleeves.’ For myself, I pulled out a pair of white high-waisted shorts with grey elephants printed on them, and an oversized grey shirt that I had modified into a front-tying crop top. I chose a pair of large gold-framed sunglasses to go with the outfit.

Kavya headed to the bathroom to get ready and a message pinged through on my phone. I unlocked it.

‘Hi bestie, you disappeared last night. Feeling all right? L.’

I groaned out loud and typed a quick, polite response before locking my phone and throwing it on the bed.

‘Everything all right?’ Kavya was standing at the bathroom door, toothbrush in hand.

‘Fine. Gaurav’s new girlfriend thinks we are BFFs all of a sudden,’ I said and smiled, trying to downplay my annoyance with myself.