Aarya Malik
The Message
The rain hadn’t stopped since dusk. It fell like memory—persistent, soft, and impossible to ignore.
Marine Drive, usually buzzing with honking taxis and lovers escaping deadlines, lay blurred under a monsoon haze. The Arabian Sea raged in the distance, waves crashing against stone with the kind of wild certainty Aarav had never known in his own heart.
He stood alone near the last curve of the promenade, where the streetlamp flickered every few seconds. His phone vibrated once. It wasn’t her.
He stared at the message he had already sent.
Come to Marine Drive. Now. Please.
It wasn’t poetic. Not dramatic. But it was everything he had managed to say after two years of conversations filled with almosts.
Aarav was not the kind to text someone in the middle of a thunderstorm. But loving Meher had changed him in quiet, irreversible ways. She had walked into his life on a Tuesday morning at their ad agency in Lower Parel, smelling faintly of petrichor and paint thinner. A visual designer with a passion for hand lettering and chaos.
He was a copywriter. Structure was his god. Silence, his first language.
But Meher… she had always danced in the rain. Literally and otherwise.
He had watched her laugh in the office corridor when she slipped on a wet floor. He had walked her home under one broken umbrella after a pitch meeting, hands brushing, hearts colliding in silence. He had told himself that being close to her was enough. That maybe words would only ruin what they had—this unspoken, fragile something.
Until today.
Today, he needed to know. Needed to hear something louder than silence. Or softer than doubt.
And then, in the distance, she appeared.
Soaked, breathless, with a dupatta clinging to her arms and strands of hair stuck to her forehead. Meher.
She slowed her steps when she saw him. There was confusion in her gaze, but not annoyance.
“You okay?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself.
He nodded. Then shook his head.
“I didn’t know how else to ask you to come. I didn’t know how else to say it.”
She tilted her head slightly, eyes narrowing as if she were trying to read not his face, but the spaces between his words.
“Say what?”
Aarav looked out at the sea. Took a breath.
“I think I’ve been in love with you since the day you sketched that sad cloud on my coffee mug. But I didn’t say anything because… I didn’t want to risk losing the only thing that made sense.”
Meher blinked. The rain dripped from her eyelashes.
Then, without a word, she stepped forward and took his hand.
“I thought you’d never say it,” she whispered.
The rain fell harder, but neither of them moved.
A City Between Us
The rain had softened into a steady drizzle, as if the sky itself was catching its breath.
They stood beneath the flickering streetlamp, their fingers intertwined—tentatively, like the first chords of a half-remembered song. Neither of them spoke for a while. Mumbai continued to rush around them: honking rickshaws, couples ducking into roadside stalls, the scent of wet earth mingling with sea salt.
Meher looked down at their joined hands. Her thumb brushed against his, barely a movement, but it sent a quiet ache through Aarav’s chest.
“This city,” she said at last, “teaches you how to wait. For cabs. For rain to stop. For the right words.”
Aarav smiled faintly. “I waited so long, I thought maybe the moment had passed.”
Meher turned to him, her expression unreadable. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
He hesitated. “Because I thought I’d ruin everything. You were… are my favorite part of the day. And if I said it wrong, if you didn’t feel the same—” He stopped. “I couldn’t bear to become someone you used to talk to.”
She was quiet. The only sound was the splash of waves hitting the rocks below.
“I used to rehearse telling you too,” she said finally, her voice a whisper. “On the train. In front of my bathroom mirror. I once even wrote it down on a tissue and kept it in my wallet.”
He looked at her, surprised. “You never seemed unsure.”
“That’s how I survive,” she shrugged. “I wear certainty like a scarf. But inside, I was always wondering—do you linger after meetings because you want to, or just because you’re polite? Did you notice when I wore the earrings you said you liked, or was I just another face at the agency?”
“I noticed everything, Meher.”
The words came out before he could stop them. Raw. Undeniable.
She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that trembled at the edges. “So what happens now?”
Aarav looked toward the city. A taxi splashed past. The traffic light ahead blinked red, then green, as if even the signals weren’t sure what to do next.
“We figure it out,” he said. “Slowly. In our own way.”
They began walking along the curve of Marine Drive. Their pace matched—not hurried, not hesitant. The city around them didn’t pause to witness what was blooming between them, but maybe that was the point.
Some love stories didn’t need fireworks. Some just needed rain, and the courage to finally speak.
“Want to split a vada pav?” she asked, nudging him with her elbow.
“In the rain?” Aarav teased.
“Especially in the rain,” she said, grinning now.
And for the first time in a long while, the storm in his chest quieted. Not because the rain had stopped, but because she had stayed.
The Language of Silence
The next day at the agency, the rain followed them in—on umbrellas, muddy shoes, dripping files, and damp coffee sleeves.
But something else had followed them, too. A shift.
Aarav arrived first. He always did. The office was still stretching itself awake—ACs humming reluctantly, security guards sipping tea, the receptionist yawning behind her monitor. He placed his bag beside his desk, opened his laptop, and stared blankly at the welcome screen.
He hadn’t told anyone what happened last night. He didn’t need to.
Because it wasn’t a secret.
It was a beginning.
A few desks away, Meher entered with a braid loosely pinned to one side and raindrops still clinging to her eyelashes. She waved to a colleague, rolled her eyes at the slow Wi-Fi, and then looked at him—just once. Not a long gaze. Not dramatic. Just long enough to say, I remember last night too.
He smiled. She didn’t smile back. She winked instead.
All morning, they played their usual game of glances and silences. But now, the silence had changed. It was no longer filled with questions. It was filled with memory.
During a meeting, she passed him a sticky note beneath the table:
“You think the rain’s coming back?”
He replied with one word: “Always.”
It was how they’d always communicated—through shared headphones, unfinished sentences, inside jokes about absurd brand taglines. But now, each pause meant more. Like a language only they understood.
After lunch, as the skies grew darker again, Aarav found her sketching something on her tablet. He stood behind her, watching. It was a couple under an umbrella, backs turned to the viewer, walking down a street that looked suspiciously like Marine Drive.
He didn’t say anything.
She looked up. “Too obvious?”
“No,” he said softly. “It’s perfect.”
Later that afternoon, during a brainstorming session about monsoon-themed ads, their boss Rajiv—a stout man with a permanent scowl—complained about how rain always meant “emotional overkill.”
“People think the rain is romantic,” he grunted, “but all I see is mud and cancelled shoots.”
Meher snorted.
“Maybe because you’ve never stood in the rain with the right person,” she said, eyes still fixed on her screen.
Aarav didn’t look at her. He didn’t need to.
The office buzzed on. Campaigns were pitched, layouts approved, clients annoyed and then pacified. By the time evening came, the clouds had begun to gather again, brooding low over the city.
She appeared at his desk with two cups of coffee. His was unsweetened, just how he liked it. Hers had extra milk and cinnamon. She didn’t say anything. She just placed the cup beside him, sat on the edge of his desk, and took a long sip from her own.
“Will you walk me to the station again?” she asked casually, as if they hadn’t done this dozens of times before.
He nodded. “Of course.”
They didn’t talk much on the walk. They didn’t need to. The rain returned, softer this time, like an old friend joining the silence between them.
At the foot of the station stairs, she turned to him.
“We’re not rushing this, right?”
He shook his head. “We’re not rushing anything.”
She smiled, half a smile, the kind that lingered even after she disappeared into the crowd.
And as the train pulled away, Aarav stood there for a moment longer, letting the rain find him once again.
The Hesitation Between Heartbeats
The week unfolded with the kind of unpredictability only Mumbai and matters of the heart were capable of.
On Wednesday, the rain stayed away, and so did Meher. Sick, she said over text. “Just a cold. Don’t miss me too much.” He replied with a sticker of a sad-looking coffee cup. She responded with a voice note that sounded like she was trying to laugh through a sore throat.
On Thursday, she was back, bundled in a soft green shawl, nose slightly red, eyes bright with mischief.
“You survived without me?” she asked.
“Barely,” Aarav replied, handing her a ginger candy he’d bought on the way.
But something had shifted again, and he couldn’t name it. Not fear. Not distance. Just a quiet ripple under the surface.
That evening, they didn’t walk together.
“I promised my mom I’d come home early,” she said. “She gets paranoid when I cough.”
He nodded. Smiled. Watched her walk away.
He didn’t know why it stung.
On Friday, it rained again, but not enough to be dramatic. Just enough to make the windows foggy and the roads slippery. In the cafeteria, Meher was seated with Ayan—the new client servicing guy who always talked like he was in the middle of a TED Talk. Aarav wasn’t the jealous type. At least he told himself that.
But when he saw Ayan lean in and whisper something that made her laugh—really laugh, with her head thrown back—it felt like someone had opened a window in his chest and let the rain in.
She caught him watching and waved. He waved back. But that invisible thread between them felt looser somehow.
That night, he walked home alone.
The streets were quieter than usual. The pavement shimmered under yellow halogen lights. He thought of the first time he’d realized he loved her. It wasn’t a grand moment. Just a quiet morning when she was struggling to open a stuck jar in the office pantry, muttering under her breath. He had stepped in to help. She’d smiled like he was her personal superhero.
He had wanted to kiss her then.
But hadn’t.
Because real life was not a film. And he wasn’t the kind of man who knew how to leap.
That hesitation still lived inside him. Even now, after everything that had been said under the rain.
He reached his building and paused. There was a message from her waiting on his phone.
“Sorry for today. Felt off. Hope you’re okay.”
He stared at it for a long time before typing:
“It’s okay. We all have off days.”
But just before hitting send, he deleted it. Then wrote:
“I missed you today.”
He didn’t wait for her reply.
Sometimes, silence between heartbeats was louder than the noise of the city.
Before the Storm Breaks
Saturday arrived cloaked in thick, grey skies. The kind that promised more than just rain—they hinted at revelations.
Aarav didn’t see Meher all morning. The office was quieter than usual, many had opted to work from home. But he came in, hoping. Always hoping.
He tried to focus on the pitch presentation due Monday. The screen glared back, slides half-written, but his mind was full—of umbrellas, of green shawls, of almost-smiles across corridors.
At noon, she finally walked in.
She didn’t look at him right away. Her hair was wet. She hadn’t even tried to dry it. She dropped her bag with a thud and sat down with an exhale that seemed heavier than just the day’s commute.
Aarav stood, unsure, then approached her with hesitant steps.
“You okay?”
Meher nodded slowly. Then shook her head. “Not really.”
He waited.
She looked up at him, eyes searching. “Do you ever feel like something’s slipping before you even had a chance to hold it properly?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice low. “I feel that every time I think about us.”
There. It was out again. Raw. Uneasy. True.
She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, they looked like clouds about to break.
“I think I’m scared,” she whispered.
He sat beside her on the edge of her desk. “Of what?”
“That this won’t last. That what we are… it’s just a season. Like the rain.”
The words struck deeper than he expected.
He took a breath. “What if it is? Some rains flood everything. But some—some stay quietly in the earth. They come back. They don’t leave.”
Silence stretched between them.
Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
“I wrote this before our first campaign went live. I never showed it to anyone. I don’t even know why I’m giving it to you now.”
He opened it. A hand-drawn sketch of two people sitting under a broken bus stop roof, their legs just barely touching. The sky above was cracking open. The caption underneath read:
“Some people don’t need shelter. Just company.”
Aarav looked at her, heart full.
“Is this your way of saying you want to stay?”
She smiled—slow, sad, honest.
“It’s my way of saying I don’t want to run anymore.”
Outside, the storm finally began. Rain slammed against the glass panes. Thunder echoed through the narrow lanes of the city. Inside the office, only the emergency lights flickered, the power momentarily lost.
In that half-lit space, between chaos and calm, he reached for her hand.
And this time, she didn’t hesitate.
After the Rain
By Monday, the rain had calmed.
Puddles still mirrored fragments of Mumbai—blurred neon signs, the tips of umbrellas, schoolchildren hopping from one dry patch to another—but the storm had passed. The sky above Marine Drive was a quiet silver, heavy but no longer threatening.
Aarav arrived at work early again. This time, he didn’t open his laptop. He simply stood by the office window and watched the city dry itself out like someone trying to shake off a long, wistful dream.
He thought of Saturday. Of that sketch. Of the electricity that had flickered above them as their fingers had found each other again—not in desperation, but in recognition.
And then Sunday, the in-between day.
They hadn’t met. But they had spoken.
She had called. No texts, no emojis. Just her voice, husky and unsure.
“I don’t know what label to give this,” she had said.
“You don’t need to,” he replied. “Let it be what it is.”
“A slow beginning?”
He smiled. “The best kind.”
That morning, as he returned to his desk, he found something waiting: a note on blue paper folded like a paper boat. Her handwriting danced across it:
“See you by the sea. 6 PM.”
No name. No signature. But he knew.
The hours passed slower than they had any right to. He went through meetings like a ghost in a well-cut shirt. Nodded when expected. Smiled on cue. But beneath the surface, something tugged at him like the tide.
At 5:59 PM, he stood once more at Marine Drive.
She was already there. Wearing a mustard yellow raincoat, sipping cutting chai from a glass too small for her fingers.
“You’re early,” she said.
“You’re predictable,” he replied.
They both laughed.
For a while, they didn’t speak. Just sat on the edge of the world, where the city stopped and the ocean began. The wind played with her hair. He thought about how strange it was—that the girl who once felt like a maybe now sat beside him like a certainty.
She turned to him. “Do you think this is love?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he watched a group of college students chasing each other with soaked sneakers, shrieking as waves sprayed their backs.
Then, softly, he said, “I think it’s whatever we needed it to be that night. And I think now, it’s what we both want it to become.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder.
“I’m glad it rained,” she whispered.
“So am I,” he said.
And as the city’s lights shimmered on the water and the sky bruised into evening, they sat there—two people no longer waiting, no longer wondering—simply becoming.
Not all love stories begin with declarations.
Some begin with a message, a walk, and the sound of rain.
END
