Radhika Sehgal
1
The window of the Konkan railway train was half-open, letting in gusts of salted wind that tangled Ankita’s hair and stung her tired eyes. She didn’t care. She had left her sleek Bangalore apartment with the bed unmade, the inbox unread, and a message to her agency that she was “on a sabbatical for mental health.” It wasn’t entirely untrue, though she didn’t owe anyone more than that. Her body still felt wired with city static—thumb twitching toward a phone that now lay dead and buried in her canvas bag. Gokarna was a dot on a map she had barely considered until the moment her breath caught in a boardroom presentation and she’d walked out mid-sentence, past her colleagues’ stunned silence and her boss’s shallow rage. There was something unhinged about the way she smiled at the cab driver who took her to the station, as if running was the only sane option left. Now, hours into the journey, watching coconut trees blur into flashes of green and sea, she began to feel a heaviness in her limbs—not exhaustion, but the slow uncoiling of something deep inside. Ankita didn’t know what she was running toward. Only that she couldn’t keep being who she was.
She arrived in Gokarna at dusk, the sky bruised orange and lavender. A rickety auto ride took her down dirt roads to the eco-resort she had impulsively booked: six wooden cottages nestled on a hill just above Kudle Beach, surrounded by palm groves and the sharp scent of lemongrass. The staff spoke minimally. The receptionist, a gentle-faced woman in her twenties, handed her a brass key with a driftwood tag and said, “There’s no Wi-Fi in the rooms. Signal’s weak here. You’ll sleep better.” Ankita didn’t reply, just nodded and walked barefoot down a stone path lit by lanterns. Her cottage was plain and beautiful—a single bed draped in mosquito netting, a small desk, woven mats, and a balcony facing the sea. No TV, no minibar, no mirrors. For dinner, she ordered ginger-lemon soup and millets, but barely ate. The silence around her was thick, uncomfortable. It pressed against her chest like a question. She sat on the balcony wrapped in a shawl, listening to the waves crashing below, wondering how long it would take to feel human again. When the lights cut out briefly during a power fluctuation, she didn’t flinch. For once, the darkness felt more honest than the fluorescent world she had left behind.
That night, sleep came reluctantly—like a lover she had once betrayed. Ankita twisted under the sheets, her body too alert, mind too noisy. Memories flickered: her ex, Rahul, shouting in their apartment over some imagined betrayal; the glossy pitch meeting where she had faked confidence while her ideas were picked apart by men who couldn’t spell nuance; the email from her therapist she had left unread. Around 3 a.m., she finally drifted into a half-sleep filled with soundless dreams—faces with no names, doors that wouldn’t close. At dawn, the birds woke her. The sheets were damp with sweat and salt. She stepped outside, barefoot, into the cool sand. Kudle Beach stretched before her like something ancient and alive, the horizon pulsing with orange fire. In that quiet, empty moment, Ankita whispered a vow—to say nothing, expect nothing, to simply be for a while. And then, as the tide rolled in, she walked into the waves until her dress clung to her thighs and her heart began to beat in rhythm with the sea.
2
The morning sun had climbed higher when Ankita stepped onto the beach again, this time with a sketchbook in hand and no real intention except to watch. The tide had receded slightly, revealing slippery rocks dotted with moss and tiny crabs darting sideways in panic. She found a dry patch of sand near a leaning coconut tree and sat down, drawing aimlessly—curves of waves, outlines of unfamiliar leaves, the silhouette of a boat rocking in the distance. Her hand moved slowly, uncertain at first, but steadying as muscle memory returned. It had been almost a year since she’d drawn for herself, and not for some half-baked branding campaign or pitch mockup. As she looked up to sketch the shoreline, her pencil froze. A man had emerged from behind the rocks, barefoot and bare-chested, with dripping hair and a net slung over his shoulder. He looked like he belonged to the sea—dark skin glistening with salt, lean muscles carved by something more real than gyms, and a gaze that didn’t flinch when it met hers. She felt a jolt—not desire exactly, but alertness, as if the air had thickened around him. He looked at her for a beat too long, then walked past without a word, disappearing up the slope that led into the palms. Her fingers, still holding the pencil, felt suddenly warm.
Later that day, still unsettled by the brief encounter, Ankita wandered toward the village edge, lured by the smell of frying banana chips and the chatter of schoolchildren in Kannada. The village was simple—one main road with temples, hand-painted signs for coconut oil and Ayurvedic massage, and a tea shack where a few foreign backpackers sat scrolling their phones with resigned frustration at the slow signal. She stepped in and ordered ginger chai. And there he was again—sitting cross-legged on a wooden bench, his back toward her, sketching something in a small notebook. He wore a loose linen shirt now, still damp near the shoulders, and a black thread with a small shark tooth hanging around his neck. As she sat across the room, pretending not to notice him, the tea vendor called out, “Nivaan bhai, your kelp parcel is ready.” The man looked up, nodded with a smile, and turned his gaze to her for a fraction of a second—this time with a flicker of recognition. She looked away instinctively, irritated at herself for feeling caught. When she finally dared to glance back, he was gone. On her way out, she noticed he had left the notebook behind on the bench. She reached out, fingers hovering, but didn’t touch it. Some part of her already knew: Nivaan wasn’t the kind of man who left things behind by accident.
That evening, the sky over Gokarna turned the color of pomegranate flesh. Ankita walked the curve of the beach again, her feet sinking into the cool sand, the surf licking her ankles. She felt calmer now, grounded in her body in a way that surprised her. She spotted Nivaan one more time before the day ended—this time waist-deep in the sea, tossing something from his hand into the waves. A ritual? A release? She stood watching, arms folded, trying to understand the quiet logic of him. When he returned to shore, he didn’t walk toward her, but their eyes met once more. This time, he nodded. A simple nod, as if to say, “I see you.” She didn’t nod back, not yet. But as she walked away, she felt it—a current pulling softly at something inside her, something long dormant. That night, in her cottage, she lit a candle and sketched him from memory: the curve of his shoulders, the calm in his eyes, the sea wrapped around his body like a second skin. She titled it in a whisper before sleep came—The Man by the Rocks.
3
The days began to fold into each other like tides—soft, unhurried, rhythmic. Ankita started waking with the sunrise, her body adjusting to a slower pulse that didn’t belong to alarms or deadlines. She walked barefoot through the forest path to the beach every morning, sketchbook tucked under her arm, stopping sometimes to watch the waves smash against black rocks like something ancient and unresolved. One morning, while she was tracing the lines of a sea almond leaf, a shadow fell across her page. She looked up, and Nivaan stood there, holding out a slice of watermelon. No greeting. No introduction. Just fruit and silence. She took it with a quiet “thanks,” surprised at how naturally she accepted the moment. He sat beside her without asking, watching the sea without looking at her, and said finally, “You draw the way the tide breathes. Not fast. Just real.” She felt herself flush—not with flattery, but with a strange sense of being known. Over the next few days, their meetings became a pattern neither acknowledged—encounters by the water, quiet lunches at the same shack, small talk about coral and wind currents, and sometimes long stretches where they said nothing at all. Yet in the silence, Ankita felt her body responding to something elemental in him, something clean and raw, like the salt that crusted her skin by dusk.
It was during a late afternoon monsoon drift that everything changed. The sky had turned an almost electric grey, heavy with the promise of rain. Ankita had walked farther than usual, past the fishing boats and into the curve of Half Moon Beach where the tourists rarely came. She found Nivaan there, waist-deep in water, eyes closed, arms stretched slightly outward as if letting the ocean read his pulse. She watched him silently for minutes before turning to leave, but he called out—his voice low, steady, certain: “Stay.” So she stayed. He came to shore slowly, water pouring off him in shimmering trails, and stood before her with eyes full of something unreadable. “You want to know what it feels like to let go?” he asked, almost as a whisper. She didn’t answer with words. He stepped closer, slowly, giving her space to retreat. She didn’t. Instead, she lifted her hand to his chest, felt his heartbeat under wet skin, and whispered, “I don’t know how.” His mouth found hers like a tide claiming lost shore. Their kiss was deep, not hungry but searching, and it lit something in her that she had long buried—want, unshackled and honest. They didn’t go back to the cottage. Not yet. They found a flat rock under a natural canopy of palms, and there, with the ocean humming around them and thunder cracking somewhere above, he touched her like a prayer. Not a possession. Not a performance. Just touch—fingers learning her like coastline, breath syncing with hers, each movement a surrender.
When they finally did make it back, it was dusk and their bodies were damp with both rain and sweat. In his wooden cottage, lit only by two oil lamps, he led her to the bed without fanfare. There was no tearing of clothes, no urgent frenzy. Just eyes locked, and a quiet reverence to every motion. He made her lie still at first, just breathing with him, their foreheads touching. “It’s not about control,” he murmured. “It’s about trust. Your body remembers how to feel—you just forgot to listen.” And she did listen. To the way his hand moved like water along her hips. To the pauses between their moans. To the deep, slow rhythm that felt more like healing than sex. He kissed her shoulders as if memorizing each freckle, and she cried—softly, suddenly—when he whispered her name like a vow. They didn’t sleep much that night. They didn’t need to. Outside, the rain began to fall. Inside, something deeper had broken open—salt and fire and breath, wrapped in sheets that smelled of sea and something new. Ankita lay with her head on his chest, and for the first time in years, didn’t think about tomorrow.
4
The morning after felt unreal—like waking up inside a dream too tender to survive daylight. The rain had passed, leaving the earth drenched and fragrant, and sunlight filtered in through the cracks in the wooden shutters, striping their skin in gold. Ankita stirred slowly, her body sore in unexpected places but deeply rested, as if her bones had exhaled. Nivaan was already awake, seated on the floor by the low table, slicing mangoes with a pocketknife. He looked up and offered her a piece without speaking, and she took it, the juice sticky on her lips, his gaze lingering just a second too long. They didn’t talk much that morning—no pillow talk, no declarations. Just silence that felt whole rather than empty. She stepped outside his cottage wearing one of his linen shirts, barefoot, the ocean breeze tangling her hair. Everything felt brighter, louder—the colors of the hibiscus, the sound of crows, the way her skin still tingled with memory. But beneath the peace, something unfamiliar stirred in her chest. Not regret. Not exactly fear. But a nervous flicker that came from having experienced something too intimate, too real. She wasn’t used to being known without earning it. She wasn’t used to being touched like she mattered.
Later that afternoon, they went walking through the forest trails behind the beach, where banyan roots curled into the soil like secrets and the air buzzed with monsoon insects. Nivaan walked ahead, pointing out wild herbs and explaining how the crabs burrowed deeper before storms. Ankita listened, half present, half consumed by the way his back moved under his cotton shirt, how he seemed to belong here—rooted, grounded, impossible to shake. When they paused near a stream, he turned and said, “You think too much when you’re naked.” She laughed, embarrassed, but he continued, “You’re always half somewhere else. Even last night. Your body was here. Your breath wasn’t.” His words landed like stones in still water—not cruel, just true. Ankita didn’t reply. She had spent so long crafting her persona—competent, witty, sharp—that she didn’t know how to simply feel without analyzing. “I don’t know how to just be,” she admitted softly. “I’ve never done this without expectation, without…outcomes.” He took her hand gently, guided it to his chest, and said, “Then start here. No rules. Just feel.” The simplicity of it undid her. That evening, in the quiet of his cottage, she let him touch her again, this time with her eyes open, her hands unclenched, her breath unhurried. And something shifted—she didn’t perform. She received. Her moans were softer, less choreographed. Her climax was slow, rippling, not explosive—but it left her trembling, wide-eyed, as if she’d found a new language of pleasure that had always lived in her, waiting.
That night, they lay on the floor under a thin cotton sheet, limbs tangled, listening to distant waves. Nivaan told her stories of sea turtles, of a deep-water dive that almost went wrong, of nights he’d slept on fishing boats under stars. She told him of her childhood—her mother’s glass bangles, her father’s old camera, the time she painted her school wall and got punished. They laughed, fingers tracing patterns on each other’s skin. Yet Ankita felt the faint echo of panic inside her, an old ghost whispering that this was too much, too soon, too dangerous. But when he kissed her belly, slow and reverent, she didn’t pull away. She let the moment hold her. In his presence, she didn’t feel small. She didn’t feel like she had to earn desire. She simply existed—salt on her skin, fire in her breath, the ocean still inside her. And in that existence, she found the first fragments of something she had forgotten she needed—not love, not security, but freedom. Freedom from herself.
5
The sea had turned gentler the next morning, its surface mirroring the cloudless blue above, and Nivaan suggested they go diving. Ankita hesitated. The idea thrilled and terrified her. She had never been underwater like that, never trusted anything enough to let go of ground beneath her feet. But she nodded anyway, drawn by something in his voice—a quiet certainty that made fear feel almost irrelevant. They walked along the shore to a small wooden shack tucked between rocks, where Nivaan stored his diving gear. He handed her a wetsuit, helped her into it with careful fingers, and showed her the basic signs for breathe, stop, okay. “The ocean doesn’t like force,” he said, tightening the strap on her mask. “You have to listen. Let it hold you, not fight you.” Her pulse raced. He kissed her forehead before they stepped into the water, and it calmed her just enough. The first few meters were easy, then the world shifted—sound vanished, and pressure hugged her ears. Panic surged. Her breath quickened inside the mouthpiece. Nivaan was beside her, eyes locked with hers, his hand gripping hers gently. He gave her the sign: Breathe. Look. Feel. Ankita closed her eyes, focused on the sound of her breath echoing through the regulator, and when she opened them again, she was floating—suspended in blue, surrounded by glimmering fish and waving coral.
The descent became easier after that. Ankita followed Nivaan like a shadow, watching the way he moved—fluid, quiet, respectful, as if the sea were a cathedral and he its priest. He pointed to a school of silver needlefish darting past, then to a bright orange nudibranch crawling slowly along a rock. Everything seemed magnified, slower, deeper. Time ceased to matter. For the first time in weeks, her mind was still. Her body, freed from the grip of gravity and city tension, felt light and true. When they surfaced nearly forty minutes later, Ankita was breathless, not from exertion but wonder. She laughed out loud, water dripping from her lashes, and Nivaan grinned, pulling off his mask. “How was it?” he asked, and she responded not with words but by launching herself into his arms, pressing her lips to his in a kiss full of salt and gratitude. They sat together on the rocks, eating tender coconut and letting the sun dry them, and she leaned against him, her body humming with a quiet pride. “I didn’t think I could do that,” she whispered. “You didn’t have to think,” he said. “You just had to trust the water—and yourself.”
That night, they didn’t make love with urgency but with something deeper, quieter. Ankita lay still at first, letting him undress her with soft patience, their kisses unhurried. He asked her to close her eyes and feel his hands without anticipation. “Let your body speak,” he murmured. He moved over her like the current—sometimes gentle, sometimes intense, but always tuned to her breath. She felt each stroke as if it were layered in meaning, like the ocean’s whispers she had heard earlier in the dive. When she came, it was not a single peak but a rising and falling wave—slow, expanding, emotional. She cried again afterward—not from pain or sadness, but from release, as if her body had let go of years of silent holding. Nivaan held her close, his fingers tracing lines along her spine. “You don’t have to keep proving yourself,” he said quietly into the dark. “Not to me. Not to anyone.” And for the first time in her adult life, Ankita believed it. She lay awake listening to the sea, her chest rising slowly, no longer waiting for the next demand, the next apology, the next finish line. She had floated. She had let go. And now, she was learning how to live.
6
The monsoon had softened its grip for a few days, and the air in Gokarna was warm and thick with hibiscus scent, the kind that clings to your skin like memory. Ankita spent her mornings alone now, often at the far end of Om Beach where the tide carved strange patterns in the sand, each one vanishing before she could finish sketching it. She liked the impermanence, the way the earth was always erasing and rewriting itself. Nivaan gave her space without retreating—he still appeared beside her with fruit or questions about her drawings, but he never pried, never insisted. One morning, she wandered into his cottage when he wasn’t there, drawn by curiosity more than intent. It smelled of sandalwood and sea salt, with open windows letting in wind and gull cries. On a low shelf near the desk, she found a worn leather notebook wedged between marine charts and small glass vials of collected sand. She opened it without thinking, and what she found wasn’t science—it was poetry. Fragments of thought scrawled in tiny script: The ocean doesn’t ask you to be whole, it asks you to be true. Doodles of sea creatures, meditative sketches of tide pools, and her name—Ankita, eyes like questions I can’t unask—appeared in a page margin. Her breath caught in her throat. She closed the notebook and sat down hard on the floor, heart thudding. It felt like discovering an altar he never meant her to find.
When he returned, dripping from another swim, he didn’t seem surprised to see her there. He glanced at the shelf, then at her face. “You found it,” he said simply. “I didn’t mean to intrude,” she began, but he shook his head. “That notebook is like driftwood. It floats wherever it needs to.” He sat beside her on the floor, their knees touching, and said, “I write so I don’t forget how I feel. I’ve lost too much to silence.” She looked at him then—not as the man who had touched her body like ocean-song, but as someone carrying private shipwrecks. “Have you ever been in love?” she asked quietly. He nodded. “Twice. One left. One died.” The weight of his words settled between them like fog. Ankita didn’t press. Instead, she reached for the pencil resting on the notebook and wrote beneath his last line: And I’ve spent too long pretending I’m unbreakable. He didn’t reply, but the way his hand found hers told her everything. That evening, they cooked together—improvised lentils, roasted coconut, and rice steamed in banana leaves. They danced barefoot afterward, no music, just the beat of their laughter and the rain tapping on the roof like a soft drum.
Later, in the hush of candlelight, Nivaan asked her what she feared most. Ankita lay back on the mat, her hair fanned out, staring at the wooden ceiling. “Losing myself again,” she said after a long pause. “Becoming a version of me that fits someone else’s idea of ‘worthy’.” He kissed her wrist, the inside of her elbow, the slope of her shoulder. “Then let’s not label this,” he whispered. “Let it be tide, not tether.” Their lovemaking that night was quieter than usual—less fire, more breath. He traced words on her skin with his tongue, as if carving mantras only she could understand. When she climaxed, it felt like reading her own body for the first time. No script, no urgency. Just sensation layered with truth. Afterward, they lay tangled together, and she whispered, “I think I’m changing.” Nivaan smiled, his thumb brushing her lips. “You’re remembering.” That night, before sleep, she reopened his notebook and added another line in her uneven handwriting: Some people come to you like storms. You came to me like tide—persistent, patient, and impossible to resist. She placed it back on the shelf without saying a word. And outside, the ocean breathed in agreement.
7
The days began to blur into a slow rhythm of mornings in the water, afternoons beneath neem trees, and nights wrapped in sweat-soaked sheets and the scent of each other. Ankita found herself smiling without reason, drawing for hours without deadlines, tasting food more slowly. Yet even in paradise, the outside world finds a way to seep in. One muggy afternoon, while sipping lime water at the resort café, she turned her phone on—for no particular reason, just a flicker of habit—and the screen exploded with notifications. Emails. Missed calls. A message from her boss: “The Bengaluru campaign fell apart. If you’re still interested, I can get you back as Creative Director. Decision time.” Her breath stalled. She stared at the message for a long time, the cold rush of her old life creeping into her throat. It was everything she had once wanted—title, recognition, control. She shut the phone off again, but the damage was done. The spell broke. That night, she didn’t sleep beside Nivaan. She said she was tired, but really, she was scared. Of what? Of losing this strange peace. Of choosing it. Of becoming someone too soft for a world she had clawed so hard to survive.
The next morning, she found Nivaan by the shore, stringing pieces of broken glass and shell into what looked like wind chimes. He looked up, smiled, and said, “You left early.” She sat beside him, staring at the frothy waves. “I got a job offer,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “It’s what I used to dream about.” He didn’t flinch. Just nodded and replied, “Do you still dream about it?” Ankita didn’t answer. Her throat was tight. “Why aren’t you asking me to stay?” she snapped, more harshly than she intended. Nivaan’s expression didn’t change. “Because that’s not what this is,” he said quietly. “This… us… it’s not a cage. You have to want to be here for the right reason.” His calmness enraged her. “But why not fight for me?” she asked, voice cracking. He turned to her then, eyes dark and unwavering. “The sea doesn’t fight for the shore, Ankita. It comes. It leaves. It returns. That’s how it loves.” The silence that followed felt like distance. She stood, sand clinging to her skin, and walked away without looking back. That night, she lay awake in her cottage, the sea outside suddenly sounding too loud, like a truth she wasn’t ready to hear. She had come here to find herself. Why did leaving feel like another kind of loss?
The next day, the rain returned—violent, sudden, shaking windows and drowning the beach in white sheets. Ankita watched it from her balcony, wrapped in a blanket, wondering if Gokarna had only ever been a pause, a soft intermission before the return to ambition. Her chest ached. Not from heartbreak, but from confusion. She missed Nivaan’s steadiness, his silence that wasn’t empty, his hands that taught her to listen to her own skin. She walked to his cottage in the rain, heart pounding, but he wasn’t there. Just the sound of water dripping from the eaves, his notebook gone from the shelf, the mat rolled up. For a wild moment, she feared he had disappeared entirely, like something the sea had claimed back. That night, lightning carved the sky open again and again. She sat on the floor, sketching his face from memory, again and again, as if repetition could anchor her. Each drawing was slightly different. Each one incomplete. When sleep finally took her, it was restless, filled with half-formed dreams of saltwater and stormlight, and of a man with eyes that didn’t ask her to stay—but made her want to.
8
The days after the storm were unusually still, as though nature itself held its breath. The sky above Gokarna turned a velvet blue, clouds curled like whispers at the edge of the horizon, and the ocean resumed its rhythm with gentler swells. Ankita sat cross-legged on the beach with Nivaan’s old flannel shirt draped over her shoulders, her toes burrowed into the warm sand. Nivaan stood ankle-deep in the waves, examining a barnacle-covered wooden plank that had washed ashore, likely from some distant wreck. She watched him in silence, studying the curve of his back, the way his hands moved with careful attention. It struck her again how different he was—his life, his needs, his way of seeing the world. She had come to this place to flee noise, but she hadn’t expected to fall for the quiet. When he finally turned to her, lifting a hand in a lazy wave, it was as if he tugged a string tied directly to her ribcage. She walked toward him, heart drumming, unsure of what she was ready to say but knowing she had to speak.
He listened without interrupting as she told him about Mumbai—not just the job or the ex, but the creeping emptiness she’d been too scared to name. “I kept thinking if I did more, achieved more, loved harder—I’d feel full. But the more I poured into everything, the more hollow I got,” she confessed, eyes locked on the sand. Nivaan crouched beside her, rinsing a seashell in the tide before pressing it into her palm. “Maybe you weren’t meant to be full all the time,” he said. “Maybe you’re meant to move, to flow. Like this.” He gestured to the sea behind them. His words weren’t polished, but they struck her deep. And when he touched her next—fingertips grazing the nape of her neck—it wasn’t urgent or claiming. It was an invitation. She followed his lead into the hut that smelled of salt and wood and skin. There was no performance between them, no masks. Only breath and bodies, movement like the moon pulling waves. Ankita had never felt so seen. As his mouth trailed over her shoulder and his voice murmured encouragement in her ear, she realized she didn’t want to run anymore. Not from this. Not from him.
Later, wrapped in a sheet as the wind played with the candle flames, Ankita asked, “What would this be if I stayed?” The question tasted dangerous, even in its gentleness. Nivaan didn’t answer right away. He kissed the back of her hand, thoughtful. “Something slow,” he finally said. “Something without a map.” She nodded, strangely comforted. The ocean outside pulsed like a heartbeat, and in that rhythm, she felt something settle in her—a decision she wasn’t fully ready to name but already carried in her bones. That night, as she lay in the crook of Nivaan’s arm, listening to his breath sync with the sea, she imagined a life not built on ambition, but on tides, driftwood, sea-glass mornings. A life where salt stayed on her skin, and love didn’t demand control—it asked only for presence.
9
The next morning, the sky bloomed with the softest hues of lilac and peach, and the ocean shimmered like liquid metal beneath the rising sun. Ankita sat on the porch of Nivaan’s hut, a warm mug of black coffee in her hand, watching as he tended to his fishing net a few feet away. There was a stillness between them that didn’t feel awkward—it felt like a shared breath. She had spent the night wrapped in his warmth, their bodies whispering truths they hadn’t yet spoken aloud. But now, in the daylight, the realities she had left behind began to reassemble themselves in her mind like scattered papers finding order. She hadn’t called her parents in days. She hadn’t replied to work emails. And yet, none of it felt urgent—not like the way her heart beat when Nivaan touched her, or the quiet joy of waking up to the scent of sea and skin. But avoidance was a short-lived refuge, and something in her—perhaps a remnant of the Ankita who had always planned five steps ahead—knew she had to confront the inevitable.
When Nivaan noticed her silence, he joined her on the porch, drying his hands on a cloth. “You’re thinking about leaving,” he said softly, not accusing, not hurt. Just stating what he saw. She nodded slowly, her eyes not leaving the horizon. “I have responsibilities,” she murmured, unsure whether she was trying to convince him or herself. He reached out and touched the side of her face, brushing a stray hair from her cheek. “You don’t need to explain, Ankita. This was never about holding you here.” She swallowed the lump rising in her throat. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered. “I didn’t come here looking for anything, but… I found something. Or someone. And now I don’t know how to leave it behind.” Nivaan smiled, a sad, tender curve of his lips. “Maybe you don’t have to leave it behind. Maybe you carry it with you. Like a wind-tied letter you read when the noise gets too loud again.” And then he stood, disappearing into the hut, returning moments later with a small folded piece of paper. “What’s this?” she asked, eyes narrowed. “A letter,” he said. “From me. But you can’t open it yet. Not until you feel lost again.”
That night, Ankita packed her bag. There was no dramatic farewell, no promises sealed with desperate kisses. They spent the evening walking the shore hand in hand, stealing glances in the orange afterglow of sunset. When they returned to the hut, he cooked her fish and rice, and they ate in silence, their eyes saying all that needed to be said. Later, in bed, she asked, “If I come back, will you still be here?” He pulled her close, forehead resting against hers. “I’ll always be here,” he said. “Whether I’m standing on this sand or not.” Ankita wept without noise, her tears wetting the hollow of his neck. She didn’t sleep much that night—just held him tighter, memorizing the weight of him, the rhythm of his breath, the scent of the sea caught in his hair. And before dawn, with the tide low and the world still dreaming, she walked away from the hut, from Nivaan, from the moment that had become everything. She didn’t look back. But the letter—creased and quiet—remained nestled in her bag, waiting for the day her world would go silent again, and she’d need to remember the sound of the tide in his voice.
10
The storm had passed, both outside and within. The morning sun seeped through the bamboo slats of the cottage, tracing golden lines across Ankita’s bare back as she stirred in the sheets. Nivaan’s hand lay across her waist, heavy with peace. The scent of salt and sand lingered on their skin, their bodies curled into each other like driftwood washed to shore and finally finding a resting place. Ankita blinked at the ceiling fan above, unmoving as always, but this time it didn’t bother her. She didn’t check her phone. She didn’t want to know what the world beyond this cove expected of her. She only wanted to hear the sea whisper again. Nivaan pulled her closer, lips against her shoulder. “Stay another day,” he murmured, his voice still husky from sleep. She smiled faintly, her fingers tracing lazy circles on his chest. “What if I stayed forever?” she asked, half-joking, half-aching. He looked at her, searching, not with fear or longing, but something deeper—acceptance, and that rare thing that makes no demands: love.
They spent that day like water—flowing, touching everything with gentle ease. No plans, no goals. Just laughter over coconut pancakes at the shack down the beach, her toes curled in warm sand while he talked about coral reefs and intertidal zones. They walked to the tide pools where hermit crabs danced under sunlight, and she listened as he pointed out sea lettuce and starfish, like they were poems written in algae. Later, in the shallow surf, she let the waves push her back into his arms again and again. She laughed, drenched and unguarded, and he watched her with reverence—as if her joy was the rarest organism he’d studied. That night, they built a fire outside the cottage. No one else was around. They didn’t need wine or music. Just each other, and the slow burn of something ancient flickering between them. They undressed slowly, reverently, the flames casting flickers on their bodies. He kissed every part of her like a shoreline rediscovered, and when they made love, it was no longer escape—it was a return. Her body moved in sync with his, the rhythm more oceanic than erotic, deeper than hunger. It was healing. It was a rite.
Morning came with the distant call of fishermen and the scent of the sea wrapped in jasmine. Ankita stood at the edge of the water, a linen wrap around her waist, wind in her hair. Nivaan joined her, fingers lacing with hers. “You’ll go back?” he asked. She nodded slowly. “Yes. But not the same.” The tide had shifted something in her. She wasn’t running anymore. She was choosing. She kissed him, not as goodbye, but as promise. He didn’t ask her to stay. He didn’t have to. As she walked back up the beach to pack, she felt the sand cling to her skin—salted, marked, alive. Gokarna had given her more than escape; it had returned her to herself. She didn’t know where this thing with Nivaan would lead. But she knew what they had wasn’t temporary. Some tides don’t recede. Some imprints stay, soft and invisible, like salt on the skin.
End
