Getting her attached to me

I closed the door on the fourth evening and didn’t turn the monitor on.

Samyukta was already in the chair beside the desk, nineteen, hair down, the top button of her blouse undone the way she’d started leaving it. She looked up when the lock clicked, but she didn’t flinch the way she used to.

“I’m going to make this simple,” I said. “You can keep the internship exactly as it is—sitting here, no real tasks, no one else allowed to talk to you, leaving only when I say—or you can take what I’m offering.”

Her hands tightened in her lap. “What are you offering?”

“A paid role the day this ends. Actual salary. Your own desk on the floor above. A reference with my name on it that will open doors your current one never will. And I delete every video and every picture. They don’t exist anymore.” I let the quiet stretch. “What you’re losing if you say no is the only reason you took this job. The line on your resume. The money your mother asks about every night. The chance to tell your sister she can stay in school. You want to go home and explain you were let go in the first month because you couldn’t follow simple instructions?”

Samyukta’s eyes filled. She stared at the edge of the desk. “That’s not fair.”

“It’s accurate.” I kept my voice even. “One date. Tonight. Dinner. You come, you sit across from me, you talk. After that you decide. If you still want to walk, you walk. No videos. No late nights. Clean break. Your mother never has to know how close it got.”

She was silent long enough that I heard the elevator at the end of the hall. Then, barely above a whisper: “Okay.”

I picked a place with booths and low light so she wouldn’t feel watched. Samyukta arrived in the same short skirt and a softer blouse, hair still loose. She slid into the seat across from me and kept her bag on her lap like she might need it. I ordered for both of us. She picked at the bread.

“Your mother called on the way here?” I asked.

She nodded. “She wanted to know if they’d started paying me. I said soon.”

“You won’t have to keep saying soon.”

The food came. I told her about the time the junior analysts mixed up two client decks and spent an entire meeting presenting the wrong numbers. She smiled before she could stop herself, then looked startled by the sound. I kept going—small, harmless stories about bad coffee and worse printers. By the time the plates were half empty she was answering in full sentences. Her shoulders had dropped. She laughed once, short and real, when I described the intern who replied-all to the entire company. The sound made her cover her mouth. She glanced at me like she was checking whether it was allowed.

“You can laugh,” I said. “No one’s keeping score tonight.”

Samyukta lowered her hand. “I forgot what that felt like. At home it’s just… bills. My sister’s fees. My dad not answering. I sit in my room and listen to my mom on the phone with the school.”

“You don’t have to solve any of that between now and dessert.”

She looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. We walked after. The street was cool. She stayed close enough that her arm brushed mine. When I took her hand she didn’t pull away. Her fingers were cold. I talked about nothing—traffic, the ridiculous price of the wine—until she started talking about the fight she’d had with her sister that morning. I listened. When she went quiet I squeezed once.

“You don’t have to fix it tonight.”

Samyukta looked up. Nineteen. Eyes still carrying the redness from earlier in the week, but softer. “I don’t want to go back tomorrow and just sit in that chair with nothing to do.”

“Then don’t.”

She texted before she even reached her building. A single line: Thank you for not making it weird. I answered. She sent another. By morning she was at the outer desk early, two coffees in her hands. She set one on mine without asking and sat in the chair beside me like it was already hers.

The messages kept coming. A picture of her sister’s half-finished homework. A voice note at midnight saying she couldn’t sleep because the apartment was too loud. I answered every one. Sometimes I only wrote Come in early. She always did. She started fixing her hair in the bathroom mirror before she knocked, leaving the buttons the way I’d shown her. She stopped crossing her arms when she sat. One afternoon she cried about the fees again, voice cracking. I let her. When she finished she leaned into my side and stayed. Not seconds. Minutes. Samyukta’s head on my shoulder, fingers curled in my sleeve, breathing slow against my collar.

“I don’t want to go back to no one talking to me,” she said.

“Then stay where people do.”

She lifted her head. Eyes wet, but the panic was thinner. “If I keep doing what you want, the job is real? The money gets there before the term starts?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. Leaned in. Her mouth brushed my jaw, quick and nervous, then she pulled back. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

I didn’t push. I kept my arm around her until the shaking eased. She began staying until the cleaning crew arrived. Some nights she didn’t move first. She would sit with her knee against mine, talking about nothing, laughing at the small things, forgetting, for whole stretches of time, the phone that waited at home.

A week later I closed the door and left the monitor dark.

Samyukta was already turned toward me, one hand resting on my wrist like it had learned the shape.

“I’m not going to show you anything,” I said. “The screen stays off. I want you here after everyone leaves. No pictures unless you ask for them. No videos. Just this. I’ll move the money tonight so your sister’s term is covered. The internship becomes the job on paper tomorrow. And you stop pretending you don’t already know what I’m asking.”

Her fingers tightened. Her breathing changed—slower than the old panic, but not steady. She looked at our hands, then at my mouth, then down again.

“I’m still scared,” she said. “I still hear them sometimes. When it’s quiet.”

“I know.”

“If I say yes… you won’t make me watch again? You won’t lock the door unless I say it’s okay?”

“No.”

She was quiet. An elevator dinged somewhere down the hall and faded. Samyukta shifted closer until her thigh pressed fully against mine. She was warm. Still shaking, but the shake didn’t make her pull away.

“My sister starts in three weeks,” she said. “If it isn’t there she loses the spot.”

“It will be there before you get home.”

Her eyes filled. She blinked hard, then lifted my hand and pressed her mouth to the center of my palm. Light. Almost nothing. When she spoke, the words were barely sound.

“Okay.”

She didn’t look at me. She kept her lips against my skin and her other hand fisted in my sleeve, nineteen and attached and still carrying every flinch from the locked door and the dark screen, agreeing because the alternative was an empty chair and a mother who would cry for the wrong reasons. Samyukta stayed where she was. She didn’t ask if she could leave. She just held on, breathing against my palm, waiting.

I didn’t ask her in the office again.

I waited until she was already close—knee against mine, head on my shoulder, the day’s worry about her sister finally quiet. Samyukta had been like that for almost an hour, nineteen, fingers curled in my sleeve, breathing slow.

“I booked a room,” I said. “Not far. You don’t have to decide now. But if you want the money moved tonight and the contract signed in the morning, that’s where it happens.”

She went still. Not the old full-body flinch. Just a tightening I could feel through her hand.

“Tonight?”

“Only if you come. I’ll send the address. You can turn around in the lobby if you change your mind. No one will know you were there.”

Samyukta lifted her head. Her eyes were red at the edges but clear. “And if I don’t?”

“Then we stay like this. You keep sitting here. Your mother keeps asking. Your sister’s term starts in three weeks with nothing paid.” I kept my voice low. “I’m not locking the door. I’m not putting anything on the screen. I’m just telling you what you already said yes to.”

She looked at our hands. Her thumb moved once across my wrist, nervous. “I’m still scared. I keep thinking I’ll get there and it’ll feel like the videos.”

“It won’t. You’ll have your phone. You’ll have the door. If you say stop, we stop. But the offer doesn’t stay open forever. Your sister’s school doesn’t wait.”

She was quiet long enough that I heard the cleaning cart pass in the hall. Then she nodded, small.

“Send it.”

I did. She stared at the message on her screen, then stood. She fixed her hair in the dark reflection of the window, buttoned one button, left the other open. At the door she paused.

“If I come and I can’t… you’ll still help her?”

“Come first,” I said. “Then we’ll see.”

She left.

Forty minutes later she texted from the lobby: I’m here. I went down. Samyukta was standing near the elevators, bag on her shoulder, arms crossed tight over her chest. Nineteen. Hair down. Eyes too wide. She saw me and her shoulders dropped a fraction, like the fear had somewhere to land.

“You came,” I said.

She nodded. Her voice was thin. “I almost turned around twice. But I kept thinking about my sister. And… I didn’t want to go home yet.”

I held the elevator. She stepped in beside me. Close. Still shaking. Still there. The doors closed. She didn’t reach for the button to open them again.