Tuesday morning arrived wearing a gray sky and an attitude problem. The drizzle had been upgraded to "emotional rain," steady, dramatic, and just inconvenient enough to ruin every outfit and commute in Mumbai.

Radha reached the office ten minutes late, clutching a semi-collapsed umbrella that looked as if it had been through a war. Her bag was damp, her shoes were squeaky, and her espresso had given up trying to stay hot. She took a deep breath, shook the water from her hair, and told herself, "Today will cooperate."

Her Slack, however, disagreed. Forty-three unread messages blinked like tiny judgmental eyes. But one name stood out immediately.

Sameer K: morning, QA. survived round 2 of the monsoon apocalypse?
Radha N: barely. my umbrella gave up on me like a bad deployment.
Sameer K: may your umbrella... rest in peace.
Radha N: so, tonight then? same plan?
Sameer K: definitely. unless the BMC declares the city a waterpark again.

She smiled at the screen, that uninvited warmth creeping up again.

Priya appeared over her shoulder like an HR compliance ghost. "Second attempt?"

"Second attempt," Radha said, as casually as she could while subtly closing Slack.

Priya grinned wickedly. "I'm calling this The Coffee That Never Ships."

"Go away."

"Make it happen," Priya sing-songed, "or I'm putting it on the retro board right under 'Need better cross-team communication'."

"Priya!"

But Priya had already sauntered off to refill her mug, humming something suspiciously like a wedding march.

Meanwhile, two floors down, Sameer's morning wasn't going much smoother. His code had crashed twice, his team's stand-up had turned into a therapy session, and Dev was already on his third bad joke before 10 a.m.

"Big day?" Dev asked, smirking. "Heard your 'coffee sprint' got reopened."

Sameer didn't look up from his screen. "You people need to stop stalking my personal backlog."

Dev chuckled. "Can't help it, man. The whole office is invested. This is basically our version of will-they-won't-they but with bad Wi-Fi."

Sameer sighed, but the truth was, he didn't even mind anymore.

Because by 5 p.m., if the skies behaved and the code compiled, there'd be coffee. Real coffee.

Not over Slack. Not in Jira comments. Just them, two humans, one table, and maybe, finally, a conversation that didn't need emojis to feel alive.

Down in the dev pit, Sameer Kapoor was locked in a losing battle, not with the rain or bad code this time, but with Rohit, his ever-energetic project manager and destroyer of personal plans.

"Kapoor!" Rohit's voice boomed across the aisle like a system alert. "Client just moved up the integration review. Six p.m. India time. You'll lead the walkthrough, okay?"

Sameer froze mid-keystroke. "Uh... six p.m.?" he repeated, as if maybe saying it aloud would make it less tragic.

Rohit nodded cheerfully, blissfully unaware that he had just torpedoed a romantic milestone. "Yep. Non-negotiable. Just run through your module, cover the data sync part, and if Radha's available, rope her in for QA notes."

Sameer managed a tight smile. "Got it."

As Rohit walked off, humming like a man with no idea of the emotional carnage he'd caused, Dev slowly swiveled his chair around with the expression of someone watching a telenovela.

"You look," Dev said gravely, "like a man who just got rescheduled by fate."

Sameer sighed, rubbing his temples. "You have no idea."

Dev leaned closer, grinning. "There's still hope. You can meet her after."

"At nine p.m.? In Mumbai traffic?" Sameer shot back. "By then she'll have texted me, 'It's not you, it's Rohit.'"

Dev laughed. "Honestly, kind of romantic. Tragic love story, corporate villain, emotional rain. We've got all the ingredients for a Netflix limited series."

"Yeah," Sameer muttered, turning back to his screen, "starring me as the idiot who can't catch a break."

He glanced at the clock. 4:12 p.m. Still two hours to go, and already his hope was debugging itself.

By late afternoon, Radha was knee-deep in a bug verification spree, the kind where every "minor issue" felt like a personal vendetta from the universe. She'd already logged eight fixes, closed three tickets, and refilled her coffee twice. It was chaos as usual.

Except... Sameer had gone quiet.

No Slack updates. No Jira comments. Not even a single sarcastic emoji reaction to her latest commit note ("Fixed the unfixable"). It was eerily silent like the digital equivalent of a ghosting.

She told herself it didn't matter. He was probably busy. Heads down, coding. Or maybe Rohit had roped him into another client fire drill. Totally normal. Not worth thinking about.

At 5:45 p.m., her curiosity betrayed her professionalism.

Radha N: hey. you vanished. all good?

No reply.

Her cursor hovered over the Slack window for a full minute before she gave up and went back to testing. Then, at 6:02 p.m., Outlook delivered the punchline.

New Meeting: Integration Review – with Dev Team (Host: Rohit Kumar).

Radha blinked at her screen. "Oh no."

Priya looked up from across the desk, sipping her cold brew like an oracle who already knew the ending. "What happened?"

"Client call," Radha groaned. "Six to seven. Sameer's leading it."

Priya clucked her tongue sympathetically but her smirk gave her away. "And there it is. The Coffee That Never Ships, episode three."

Radha gave her a look sharp enough to cut glass. "You're enjoying this way too much."

Priya raised her cup in mock salute. "Immensely. It's the only rom-com this office produces on time."

Radha shook her head, trying to focus on her screen again. But her test cases blurred, and her mind was already wandering to a rain-soaked café table that might stay empty one more night.

The call was the kind of corporate slow death that could make anyone reconsider their career choices.

The client's Wi-Fi crashed twice, Rohit's mic decided to auto-mute every time he said something vaguely useful, and poor Sameer, looked like a man spiritually disintegrating while explaining the same API flow for the third time to a client who was very obviously browsing Amazon during the meeting.

Radha watched from her own screen, equal parts amused and sympathetic. His voice was calm, precise, painfully professional, the tone of a man who'd achieved Zen through sheer suffering. And yet, behind the composure, she could practically hear the silent scream.

By the time Rohit wrapped up with a weary, "Great work, everyone. Let's sync tomorrow," it was 7:18 p.m.

Sameer muted his mic, leaned back, and exhaled the sigh of a man who'd aged five years in one call.

Then his phone buzzed.

Radha N: you did great, by the way. saw you suffering in real time.

He couldn't help but grin, exhaustion momentarily forgotten.

Sameer K: oh, you watched? QA really is everywhere.
Radha N: someone had to make sure you didn't rage-quit mid-demo.
Sameer K: tempting, though. guess coffee's officially postponed again?
Radha N: yeah. we can reschedule. maybe next week.

He froze, staring at the phrase next week.
It felt too far away. Too uncertain.

Sameer K: don't. i'll make time tomorrow. promise.
Radha N: Sameer...
Sameer K: no, really. this time, it's happening.

Radha stared at her screen, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. There was something in his tone even through text that felt different. Not his usual teasing confidence, but something quiet and certain.

Outside, the rain had stopped at last, as if the city itself was waiting to see if he meant it.

Later that night, as Radha began shutting down her laptop, the office lights flickered in sync with the fading drizzle outside. Most of the building was already dark with that strange post-midnight quiet when even Slack seems to yawn.

She was about to close the app when she noticed his status light flicker from green to yellow... and then gray. But before it vanished completely, one last message appeared in her DMs.

Sameer K: truth? i've had a rough week. was looking forward to seeing you more than i thought i would.

The cursor blinked beside the message, like it was daring her to respond.

She didn't.
Not because she didn't want to but because words suddenly felt too fragile for what that sentence carried.

For a long moment, she just sat there, rereading it, letting the quiet honesty sink in. The city hummed faintly outside, thunder rumbling somewhere beyond the skyline.

And for the first time since this absurd, bug-ridden, rain-drenched story began, it didn't feel like banter anymore. Something had shifted subtly, irrevocably beneath the code reviews and sarcasm.

Radha smiled to herself, whispering into the empty room,
"Tomorrow, then."

The rain tapped lightly against the window, as if agreeing.