Aanya Rhodes
Part 1: First Rain
It started with the sound of rain. Not the polite kind that kissed rooftops and trickled down windowpanes, but the insistent, wild kind that arrived with thunder in its bones and an unspoken promise of upheaval. The kind of rain that didn’t ask before entering your life — it just came. Naina Joshi leaned against the polished wood of the café counter, her fingers curled around a half-empty ceramic mug, the cinnamon dust long settled. Outside, the street shimmered under the weight of the downpour. Mist swirled like secrets across the glass, blurring the Mussoorie hills into watercolour smudges. She didn’t mind the weather. She rarely did. If anything, the rain gave her café — Tales and Brews — a kind of quiet reverence. People came in softer during the monsoon, as though carrying stories too heavy to tell without the scent of wet earth and the comfort of warm coffee.
It was just after five when the door creaked open. The bell above it jingled, a polite interruption to the low hum of jazz playing on the speakers. She didn’t look up at first. Probably another tourist seeking shelter, maybe a honeymooning couple with umbrellas and dripping boots. But then — something shifted. The kind of shift that turns the air thick, like breath held too long. She looked up.
And the cup slipped from her hand.
It didn’t shatter, mercifully. Just landed with a thud against the edge of the counter, its contents sloshing dangerously close to the register. Naina stared, not at the mess, but at the man who had just walked in. He hadn’t changed much. Older, maybe. Sharper jawline. Broader shoulders. A certain wear in his eyes that hadn’t been there ten years ago. But the rest — the way he stood, like he didn’t quite belong to the space he occupied, the faint twitch in his left eyebrow when uncomfortable — all the same. Aarav Mehra. The name struck her ribcage like an old chord played wrong. She hadn’t said it out loud in a decade, but it lived in her silence all the same.
He blinked once, as if registering her fully only now. Then, softly — “Hi.”
She should’ve thrown him out. Or at least frozen. Or maybe stormed to the back and pretended he was just a monsoon mirage. But Naina did none of those things. She stepped forward, her fingers tightening around the now-warm handle of the cup, and said, in the steadiest voice she could muster, “Table for one?”
Aarav hesitated. The silence stretched. He glanced around the café, taking in the bookshelves, the raindrop-shaped pendant lights, the chalkboard menu where someone had drawn a heart beside the word Hazelnut. His eyes returned to her.
“Yeah. Just… a cappuccino. Please.”
She turned without another word, her heart hammering like the rain against the glass. Her hands remembered the motions even as her mind reeled. Spoon. Milk. Foam. Dust of cocoa. She refused to look at him. She focused on the machine, the hiss of steam, the swirl of white over brown. There were a thousand questions rising in her chest like birds startled from sleep, and not one of them she was ready to ask.
He took the corner table. The one under the framed map of Mussoorie, where the light hit just right in the evenings. She wondered if he remembered that. If he remembered anything at all.
Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. She served three other customers, took orders, refilled the biscotti jar. She didn’t walk over to his table. He didn’t call for her. But he hadn’t left either. And somehow that unnerved her more.
Finally, she wiped her hands and walked over, a fresh cup of black coffee in her palm. Not his usual. But neither were they.
“You want anything else?” she asked. Her voice was cool, impersonal. The voice she used for men who asked too many questions or tipped too little.
Aarav looked up. Their eyes met, and for a moment it was just like it used to be. No time. No noise. Just breath and memory.
He smiled, the corners of his mouth tentative. “I wasn’t sure if it was you.”
She tilted her head. “What gave it away? The name on the chalkboard? Or the fact that I nearly dropped the cup?”
He laughed — quietly, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed. “Bit of both.”
A pause.
“I didn’t know you lived here.”
“I didn’t. Not until six years ago.”
He nodded slowly. “It suits you. The place. The rain. The coffee.”
“You don’t get to say what suits me anymore, Aarav.”
That did it. His face fell slightly, though he covered it well. She didn’t flinch. She had rehearsed this moment too many times in her head — in between chopping carrots, wiping tables, rearranging bookshelves. The reunion that never happened. Except now, here it was. Real. Damp. Unfolding.
“I’m here for a week,” he said finally. “Sorting out some family property.”
She nodded. “This town does have a way of bringing people back.”
“I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“Well. I didn’t expect to see you again.”
Another silence. The kind that said too much, or not enough.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a damp notebook. Flipped to a page, then paused. “Do you still write?”
She blinked. The question landed softer than expected, but it stung. “Not like I used to.”
“I still have the poem you wrote on my birthday. The one about clocks and closed windows.”
She wasn’t sure what startled her more — the memory, or the fact that he still carried it.
Naina turned to leave.
“Your coffee’s on the house,” she said over her shoulder. “But only this cup.”
Behind her, she heard his voice, quieter than the rain.
“What about the second one?”
She didn’t answer.
Not yet.
Part 2: The Map on the Wall
The rain didn’t stop that night. It poured like something ancient being released, pounding the tin awning outside Tales and Brews with the persistence of a thousand unanswered letters. Naina watched the hills vanish behind veils of mist, the last of her customers long gone, chairs turned upside down on tables, mop drying in the corner. But her mind was still seated across from Aarav, at the table under the framed map.
That map. Yellowed edges, rivers drawn in ink, pine forests marked like secrets. It had hung there since the beginning. She remembered pinning it up with shaking fingers the week she’d opened, hoping some stranger might ask her where Gun Hill was or how far to walk to Landour Bazaar. No one ever did. Until today.
He had looked at the map like it told a story he still wanted to believe in. She remembered that look. The same one he used to give her in the university library, between pages of Murakami and black coffee sips. A look that said: You’re here. You’re real. And I don’t want to leave yet.
Naina wiped down the counter, slower than necessary. Her hands moved with practiced precision, but her thoughts wandered in unruly spirals. Why now? Why after all these years of silence? There had been no closure, no dramatic goodbye — just a sudden disappearance. A text that said nothing. A silence that explained everything.
She’d built a life around that silence. Learned to fill its cavities with routine — coffee orders, book club meetings, early-morning inventory runs. She had taught herself not to check her inbox for his name, not to flinch at the smell of his cologne when someone else wore it.
But tonight, every muscle ached with the weight of memories she thought she’d sealed behind locked doors.
Across town, Aarav sat in the musty guest room of his grandmother’s old bungalow. The walls were the same pale green they’d always been, cracked near the corners, still holding the scent of old camphor and forgotten summers. Rain bled through the shutters. He didn’t light the heater. Just sat by the window, notebook open, pen resting useless between his fingers.
He should’ve left the café the moment he saw her. Should’ve walked out, blamed the weather, told himself it wasn’t her. But he hadn’t. He’d stayed. Long enough to remember the shape of her voice. The way her wrist curved when she wiped the counter. The look she gave him — not angry, not warm, but something in between. Like unfinished music.
Aarav turned a page. A blank one. His handwriting had changed — tighter, smaller. Maybe he’d changed too. Delhi had taught him how to compartmentalize, how to keep emotion in file folders marked Later. But Naina was never a later. She was always now.
He ran his fingers through his hair. What was he even doing here? Trying to explain? Hoping to be forgiven? She had every right to shut that door in his face. And yet… she hadn’t.
The next morning, the sky held a thin sheen of sunlight. Water dripped from every surface, leaves gleaming like emeralds rinsed clean. Naina opened the café early. Something in her chest itched for distraction. She rearranged the window display — added a fresh stack of used poetry collections, placed a glass jar of wildflowers next to the French press samples. Then she noticed the table.
The corner one.
Empty.
She wasn’t expecting him. Of course she wasn’t. But still, she found herself polishing the surface with a little more care, brushing away crumbs no one had left.
The bell jingled at nine-forty.
It wasn’t Aarav.
Instead, it was the old man who came every Tuesday for lemon cake and stories about how he’d met Ruskin Bond once in 1973. He settled into his chair and asked if the café had finally started selling filter coffee. She smiled, made his usual order, and pretended she wasn’t watching the door between every order.
At ten-twenty, it opened again.
This time, it was him.
Wearing the same navy sweater, jeans cuffed just above his boots, a copy of Kafka on the Shore tucked under his arm. He looked tired, but not unsure. As if some quiet decision had been made between midnight and morning.
“Hi,” he said.
Naina didn’t reply immediately. She finished pouring syrup over a waffle, scribbled something on a receipt, then looked up.
“You’re back.”
He offered a soft shrug. “I forgot to ask yesterday. How’s the apple crumble here?”
“It’s mine,” she said. “So… depends who you ask.”
“I trust your version.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, smirking despite herself. “Table four,” she said, motioning.
He sat down without another word.
This time, she brought the coffee herself. And the crumble. And a napkin with a doodle of a teacup, drawn in her usual loopy lines.
“Still draw,” he observed.
“Sometimes.”
“Still stubborn.”
“Always.”
He laughed — quieter this time. Grateful.
They sat like that for a while. No confessions. Just coffee. The murmur of Norah Jones in the background. A town waking up around them.
Finally, Aarav cleared his throat.
“I wasn’t expecting you to talk to me yesterday,” he said.
“I wasn’t expecting you to show up.”
“I didn’t come to find you, Naina. I really didn’t. I didn’t even know you lived here.”
“I believe you.”
He paused. Looked down at the crumble. “But I’m glad I did.”
Something in her chest gave a warning lurch. She folded her arms, exhaled sharply.
“You don’t get to rewrite what happened, Aarav. You disappeared. You ghosted me before ghosting was even a word.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” His voice broke just slightly. “And I’ve carried that guilt every day. I just… I didn’t know how to come back.”
She didn’t speak.
He looked up, eyes steady. “I still don’t. But I’d like to stay long enough to learn.”
Naina studied him for a beat too long. Then reached forward, slid the napkin with the teacup closer to him.
“Lesson one,” she said quietly. “Crumbles are best with vanilla ice cream. But we don’t serve it before noon.”
He smiled. “Guess I’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
She didn’t say yes.
But she didn’t say no either.
Part 3: Things We Don’t Say
He came every morning that week.
Always just after ten, always carrying a book — sometimes unread, sometimes dog-eared beyond repair. Naina would pretend not to notice the precise moment he walked in, but something in her — maybe the echo of an old ache, maybe muscle memory — always made her glance up the second the bell chimed. And there he’d be. Sometimes damp from leftover drizzle, sometimes already halfway into a smile that looked too familiar. She hated how easily her body remembered things her mind had tried to forget.
They never talked about the past. Not yet. Conversations circled around safe things — weather patterns, the odd poetry of hill town road signs, which biscuit paired best with black coffee. Aarav never asked why she had chosen Mussoorie. She never asked why he had left without a goodbye. They sat at adjacent corners of the same memory, aware of each other’s presence, but too afraid to look directly at the part where it hurt.
Naina didn’t trust how easily routine was forming. How quickly he’d become part of the landscape again — his footsteps on the wooden floor, the way he stirred sugar even though she remembered he liked it bitter. She’d tell herself: it’s just a week. A temporary ghost visiting his grandmother’s house, drinking coffee and writing in old notebooks. But that didn’t explain why she found herself wiping down his table a second longer than necessary. Or why she stopped playing jazz on Thursday and switched to old Hindi instrumentals, because once, in another life, he’d said saxophones made him sad.
It was Saturday when he finally stayed past noon.
The café was half-full, mostly locals that day — the schoolteacher who read romance novels behind thick glasses, the German backpacker who drank turmeric lattes and journaled obsessively. Aarav was in his usual seat, but this time, he didn’t check his watch after the first hour. Instead, he looked out the window and watched two children chase a paper boat down the rain-slicked street.
Naina brought him another cup of coffee without being asked.
He blinked. “This one isn’t on the house, is it?”
“Nope.”
“Fair.”
She lingered by his table, arms crossed, pretending to scan the room.
“You always wanted to write a book,” she said, casually.
He looked up, caught off-guard but not unwilling. “Still do.”
“You started?”
He tapped his notebook. “Bits and pieces. Thoughts. Fragments.”
“That’s what you always called them. Fragments.”
“Because that’s how most things feel to me,” he said, then paused. “Especially now.”
She didn’t answer. Just nodded once and turned to leave.
But his voice stopped her.
“Do you ever think about it?” he asked.
She turned slowly. “About what?”
“Us.”
The word slipped out too easily. As if it hadn’t been buried under years of silence. As if it still meant something.
Naina walked back to the counter, poured herself a half cup of black coffee she wouldn’t finish, and leaned back against the fridge. The question sat between them like a half-forgotten tune. She could ignore it. Or worse, pretend not to understand.
But she didn’t.
“Sometimes,” she said. “Mostly when it rains.”
Aarav looked down at his hands.
“I thought about you every day for the first year,” he said quietly. “Then every other day. Then only on birthdays. And then… something would happen — a song, a smell, a street corner — and I’d think of you all over again.”
Naina exhaled slowly. “I don’t need the apology, Aarav.”
He looked up, startled.
“I mean it,” she continued. “It took me years, but I made peace with it. With what you did. Or didn’t do.”
“I didn’t know how to explain—”
“You didn’t try,” she said, sharper than she meant. “You made the choice for both of us. You walked out and left me with the silence.”
He was quiet.
“I was angry for a long time,” she said, softer now. “But then, anger fades. And what’s left is just… space. And you learn to fill it with other things.”
He nodded. “Like cafés and crumbles?”
She smiled. “Something like that.”
Another pause. Then — “You look happy here,” he said.
“I am. Most days.”
“And the other days?”
She shrugged. “I make stronger coffee.”
Aarav laughed. That same low, crooked laugh she hadn’t realized she missed until she heard it again.
“I wanted to write to you,” he said suddenly. “So many times. I even drafted emails. But I could never send them.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Cowardice?”
“Shame,” he said.
They looked at each other. Neither flinched.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked finally.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Try the middle.”
He smiled. “Always hated linear storytelling.”
She sipped her coffee. “Then you’ll love this part.”
That afternoon, Aarav stayed until closing.
The sky cleared, the mist lifted, and the town resumed its quiet rhythm. As she shut off the lights and flipped the sign to Closed, Naina glanced at him one last time.
“Same time tomorrow?”
He stood, slung his notebook under his arm. “Only if you’re serving the crumble again.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t push your luck.”
He opened the door, paused under the arch.
“Naina.”
She looked up.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not asking me to leave.”
Her voice was quiet. “You never really did.”
He walked away before the words could land too heavily.
That night, Naina lay in bed, the ceiling fan clicking in lazy rhythm above her. Outside, the rain had stopped, but the scent of it still clung to the curtains.
She reached for the book by her bedside — a battered copy of Neruda poems. Slipped between the pages was an old photograph. Two college kids on a staircase, sunlight caught between their joined hands. She hadn’t looked at it in years. But tonight, it didn’t ache. Not the way it used to.
She placed the photo back, turned off the light.
Some stories weren’t meant to be erased.
Some were just waiting for the second cup.
Part 4: The Distance Between Chairs
It was a Tuesday when he brought her lilies.
They weren’t store-bought, or artfully wrapped, or even particularly fresh — a little wilted at the edges, stems wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper. But they smelled of moss and sky, anded them to her, he did so with the quiet reverence of someone offering a memory.
“I found them near the ridge,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “Figured they belonged somewhere warm.”
She took them with one raised eyebrow and a barely concealed smile. “You always were bad at flowers.”
“Still trying.”
“Trying’s dangerous.”
“Trying,” he replied, “is all I’ve got.”
Naina didn’t answer. She placed the lilies in an old bottle by the counter, next to the tip jar. They leaned a little left, petals bruised from the journey. She liked them more for it.
The café felt different that day. Not because the music had changed or the scent of cinnamon had deepened — but because Aarav stayed through lunch again. He pulled a stool closer to the counter instead of retreating to his usual corner, their elbows only inches apart. They weren’t quite comfortable yet, but they were no longer afraid of closeness either.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he said, sipping slowly.
Naina considered. “I once dyed my hair blue. Regretted it in ten minutes.”
“I can’t picture that.”
“I didn’t take pictures,” she said. “That was the point.”
He nodded. “I learned how to cook dal three years ago.”
She blinked. “Miracles do happen.”
“I almost burnt the kitchen down.”
“There it is.”
He grinned, and she felt it — that flicker. That dangerous flicker of affection that lived in between banter and breathlessness. The part of love that arrived quietly, not through grand confessions, but through shared silences and the slow folding back of walls.
She hated how easy it was with him. Even now. Even after everything.
That evening, the café emptied early. Monsoon skies darkened faster in August. By six, the streets were already slick and empty. Aarav stayed back, offered to help close.
“You never liked sweeping,” she teased, tossing him a broom.
“I still don’t,” he said, catching it awkwardly. “But I owe you. For the crumble. And the company.”
They moved in near-sync — flipping chairs, wiping menus, locking sugar jars. The silence between them was the kind that didn’t ache anymore. Just pulsed gently, like background music in a familiar scene.
As she drew the shutters down, a gust of wind blew through, scattering a few napkins across the floor. Aarav bent to pick one up — it was a doodle of a moon in her unmistakable hand. He looked at it a moment too long before slipping it back onto the counter.
“You still draw dreams?” he asked.
Naina paused. “Only when I can’t sleep.”
“What keeps you up?”
She glanced at him, the question sitting heavy between them. “Old words. Unfinished endings.”
He nodded, understanding without asking more.
They stood on opposite sides of the same counter, two people tethered by what was once shared and what might still be possible.
Finally, he spoke.
“Do you want to come with me tomorrow?”
“To where?”
“The property. My grandmother’s place. I haven’t gone inside yet. Feels… strange alone.”
Naina hesitated.
It was one thing to serve coffee and let the past pass through her doors. It was another to step into his — into a space where their story had never unfolded, yet somehow lingered.
But then, she saw it — the rawness in his voice. Not a plea. Not manipulation. Just the simplicity of a man reaching for a hand, unsure if it would be taken.
“Okay,” she said.
He smiled. “I’ll pick you up at ten.”
That night, she lay awake listening to the storm. Not a violent one — just the kind that whispered down drainpipes and made windows murmur. She thought of the lilies on the counter, already drooping. Of how strange it was to remember someone both exactly and not at all. Aarav Mehra had been the boy who’d kissed her in stairwells and written her poems on tissues. He was now the man who sipped coffee slowly and watched her like she still mattered.
But people didn’t stay who they were.
Nor did love.
It changed. Like seasons. Like rivers.
She had learned that the hard way.
She only hoped this time, it changed into something she could survive.
The house was at the far edge of town, tucked behind a row of Deodar trees and crumbling stone walls. When she stepped through the gate the next morning, Naina felt the weight of a different life — one that didn’t belong to her, yet carried her name somehow.
“It’s old,” Aarav said unnecessarily.
“Like all the best things,” she replied.
They walked through the rooms slowly. Dust clung to windows like forgotten breath. Old trunks lay unopened. In the drawing room, a piano stood with one broken key. There were photographs — sepia-tinted, sun-blurred. A lifetime arranged in corners.
Aarav moved through it like a boy sifting through dreams. Naina followed, quieter, eyes skimming over things unsaid.
They reached the back verandah — where vines crept through railings and wind played with torn curtains. Aarav sat on a bench, patting the space beside him.
She hesitated, then joined him.
The hills stretched out before them, quiet, unassuming.
“My grandmother used to sit here every evening,” he said. “Said the wind knew all her secrets.”
“Did she tell you any?”
“She told me not to waste time pretending not to love someone.”
Naina looked at him.
Aarav didn’t look back. “I didn’t listen.”
A long pause.
“Why did you really leave?” she asked.
He didn’t answer right away.
Then, “My father died suddenly. Heart attack. I was in the middle of exams. Mom shut down. Bills piled up. I had to grow up overnight. I was scared. I thought… if I pulled you in, I’d ruin you too.”
“You didn’t get to choose for me.”
“I know. I know that now.”
She stared at her hands. “You broke me.”
“I broke me too,” he said. “Just… slower.”
The silence that followed wasn’t heavy. It was… real. Cleansing.
Naina stood.
“I have to go back,” she said.
He stood too. “Thanks for coming.”
She walked ahead. He followed.
The distance between their chairs still lingered — but it had shrunk.
Some truths, like lilies in storm jars, needed time to bloom.
Part 5: A Name for What This Is
By the fifth day, the rhythm was unmistakable.
Aarav came in just after the first batch of muffins was out of the oven, sometimes with a folded newspaper under one arm, sometimes with just the same blue notebook and the kind of silence that filled rooms rather than emptied them. Naina no longer pretended to be surprised. She’d leave a cup at table four before he even ordered. Black, no sugar, no questions. And he’d smile, not always with his lips, but always with his eyes — a smile that said I’m here again, and I’m glad you haven’t changed your mind.
The townspeople had begun to notice. They were a curious breed — Mussoorie had always been a place that welcomed strangers and remembered them long after they left. The woman from the antique shop had once asked Naina, “Is he the reason you started drawing again?” She’d shrugged. It wasn’t that simple. It never was.
Inside the café, the air had begun to shift. The background music seemed to soften around them. The smell of cinnamon felt warmer. Even the lilies, though visibly wilting, still stood tall in their bottle beside the register — like some quiet witness to everything neither of them dared say aloud.
That afternoon, after the lunch rush, Aarav didn’t go to his usual table. Instead, he leaned against the counter and tapped twice on the wood.
“I have a question,” he said.
She was wiping down the espresso machine. “If it’s about your crumble recipe, I’m not giving it up.”
He smiled. “Not that.”
He placed the notebook in front of her. The cover was weathered now, pages curling. “I’ve written something. Well, started something.”
She looked at him. “A story?”
He nodded. “Fragments.”
She opened the first page. The ink was dark and slanted — the same writing she remembered from love notes passed under desks. Only now, the words were slower, wiser. Less desperate to impress, more intent on telling the truth.
The first line read: Some people don’t leave. They just wait until you find them again.
Naina closed the notebook before the second sentence could land.
“I don’t know what this is, Aarav.”
He didn’t flinch. “Neither do I.”
“It’s not like before.”
“I know.”
“I’m not the same girl.”
He nodded again. “And I’m not asking you to be.”
She took a deep breath, then exhaled. “So what are you asking?”
There was a pause. A quiet one. The kind that stood still in doorways and waited to be named.
“I’m asking,” he said carefully, “if we can stop pretending we’re strangers.”
She didn’t speak.
“I know I hurt you,” he continued. “And I know time doesn’t just rewind. But what if—just what if—this time, we don’t look back?”
“And if we fall apart again?”
He smiled, not unkindly. “Then we do it knowing we tried.”
That night, Naina didn’t sleep. Not in the usual sense. She tossed. She paced. She stood by her window and watched fog roll over the hilltops like a question with no clear answer. Her phone blinked on the table, untouched. No unread messages. No missed calls. But something inside her buzzed like unfinished music.
She didn’t want to fall again. Didn’t want to rewrite a history that already ended once. But she also didn’t want to keep pretending the air didn’t shift every time he said her name like it still belonged to him.
She thought of the way he had said “fragments.” How he had written her into his pages, quietly, without demanding permission.
By morning, she hadn’t made a decision.
But she had set aside two cups instead of one.
When he walked in — ten-oh-six, a little breathless from the hill — he noticed immediately.
Two mugs on the counter. Steam rising from both.
“You expecting someone?” he asked.
She handed him one, then gestured to the chair beside hers.
“I figured… maybe today, we don’t sit across from each other.”
He smiled. Sat.
For a while, they said nothing.
Then she asked, “What’s the name of the story you’re writing?”
He hesitated. “I hadn’t picked one.”
“Well?”
He looked at her, then at the cup in his hands.
“How about… The Second Cup?”
She blinked.
“That’s a terrible title,” she said, half-laughing.
“I know,” he said, eyes not leaving hers. “But it’s ours.”
She stared at him. Her hands curled around her cup. And for the first time in a long time, the warmth wasn’t from the coffee.
It was from a word.
A possibility.
A name.
Part 6: Where the Light Falls
On Wednesday, they walked together.
It wasn’t planned. Naina had stepped out after closing the café, intending only to visit the local bookstore before it shut, when she saw Aarav standing outside with a brown paper bag in hand, waiting under the yellow wash of the streetlamp. He looked up, caught her gaze, and tilted his head like he used to when asking Permission? without words.
“Walk with me?” he said.
She should’ve said no. She had dishes in the sink. Emails to answer. A chapter of something half-written on her laptop. But his voice wasn’t a question. It was a thread — soft, frayed, familiar.
She nodded.
They walked in silence at first. Past the shuttered sweet shop, the flower vendor’s stall with only wilted marigolds left behind, the small post office where time had stopped somewhere in 1986. The air was cool, mist rising off the ground like memory. He offered her the paper bag. Inside were two earthen cups, still warm. Masala chai.
“Traded two muffins for these,” he said. “The tea guy likes you.”
“He likes my blueberry crumble more.”
“That too.”
They turned into the side lane that led to Gun Hill — the road lined with pine needles and echoes. There was something unspoken between them, but not heavy. Just… suspended.
“I forgot how quiet it gets here at night,” he said.
“You forget a lot when you leave.”
He didn’t answer.
They stopped near the rusted railing overlooking the valley. The hills rolled in shadow, lit only by scattered fireflies and the occasional house light in the far distance. The wind tugged gently at her scarf. He stood close but didn’t reach for her.
She took a sip of the tea. It burned, but she didn’t flinch.
“I used to picture this,” she said.
“What?”
“You coming back. Not like a fantasy. Just… in passing. While folding laundry or doing the accounts. Sometimes I’d see someone with your walk, and for half a second, my chest would tighten.”
He turned slightly, but she didn’t look at him.
“And then I’d remember,” she continued. “You weren’t the kind of story that returns. You were the kind that teaches you where not to touch again.”
Aarav didn’t speak.
Naina exhaled.
“But here you are.”
He set his cup down on the railing.
“I kept trying to forget you,” he said. “Every time I thought I had, your name would turn up in the strangest places — in a bookstore’s staff recommendation, in a poem about silence, in a stranger’s laugh that sounded like yours.”
She looked at him now.
“I came back,” he said, voice barely above the wind, “because forgetting never worked. And maybe remembering was the only thing left.”
She looked away. The wind picked up, carried their words somewhere only the mountains could keep.
The next day, Aarav showed up at the café with paint stains on his fingers.
“You break something?” she asked.
He held up a key. “I opened the studio room.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “The one upstairs?”
He nodded. “I was going through my grandmother’s things and found some of her old sketches. Thought I’d… try something.”
Naina handed him coffee without asking more. But something lingered in her chest — a pull. Aarav had been many things in her past: stubborn, brilliant, maddening. But he had never been idle. And now he was painting again. Or trying to. That mattered.
By evening, the café emptied early. Clouds gathered low. Rain hadn’t started yet, but the smell of it was everywhere. Earth soaked before the fall.
He waited by the door.
“Want to see?”
She should’ve declined. But she didn’t.
The studio was at the back of the bungalow — an old sunroom with stained-glass windows and spider webs that clung to the corners like forgotten dreams. He had cleaned most of it. Laid down newspaper, dragged an easel out of storage, opened the windows.
Naina stepped in slowly.
He had begun sketching a hillside — not perfectly, not even accurately, but with emotion. The strokes were unsure, but the light was right. The way it fell on the ridges. The way the clouds hovered.
He stood behind her, waiting.
“It’s not done,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“Be kind.”
She turned to him.
“You don’t know how much kindness I’ve had to unlearn.”
“I’m trying to earn it back.”
They stood close. Too close. And yet, neither of them moved.
She touched a corner of the painting. “You used to hate yellow.”
“I hated a lot of things.”
“And now?”
“I’m learning to see light again.”
She looked up.
And that’s when it happened.
Not the kiss. Not yet. But something softer. His hand reached out — slowly, not assuming, not urgent — and touched hers. Just the fingers. Just enough.
She let it stay.
Not forever.
Just for that moment.
And that was enough.
Later, when she returned home, the rain had started — gentle, even, like a steady heartbeat on the roof. She sat by her window with a book unopened on her lap and closed her eyes.
There was a name for what they were doing.
Not rebuilding.
Not rekindling.
But something else.
Something like beginning again — not from the start, but from where the light now fell.
Part 7: The Things That Stay
On Friday morning, the lilies were gone.
Naina noticed as she opened the café, bleary-eyed and barefoot, the hem of her kurti still damp from last night’s rain. She reached for the familiar glass bottle beside the counter and found it empty — not just of flowers, but of presence. As if something small and brave had surrendered quietly in the dark.
She didn’t replace them.
Some things weren’t meant to be replenished. Some things left only once.
Instead, she opened the windows wider, letting in the cool mist that trailed through town like a forgotten letter. The café smelled like cardamom and something gentler — hope, maybe. Or something that looked like it.
Aarav didn’t come that morning.
Not by ten. Not by ten-thirty.
She didn’t check the clock. Not obsessively. She had orders to prepare, a delivery that arrived late, a teenage assistant who spilled a whole tray of almond cookies. But still, the absence sat there — not loud, not rude. Just… visible.
By noon, she told herself she didn’t care.
By one, she stopped pretending.
And then — at two-thirty — the bell chimed.
He walked in slowly, his usual stride quieter, more uncertain.
“I’m late,” he said, by way of greeting.
She crossed her arms. “You don’t say.”
He held up a plastic folder — worn, off-white, bulging with papers. “I found this in one of the trunks.”
She didn’t reach for it.
“What is it?”
“Letters. From my grandmother. To people she never sent them to.”
Naina blinked. “You mean—”
“She used to write to her dead sister. To a childhood friend. Even to herself. Pages and pages.”
He opened the folder and handed her one — yellowed, ink faded in places. The handwriting was beautiful. Looping. Old-fashioned.
Dear Meena, you’d love how the mist looks today. It reminds me of your voice — soft, but never uncertain.
Naina read it slowly. It felt like trespassing, but also like listening in on something sacred.
“I thought maybe you’d want to read them,” he said. “Or… archive them. For the café.”
She looked up. “You want me to keep them?”
“She’d have liked that.”
Naina held the folder close.
“She wrote like someone waiting for someone who never came,” she said.
Aarav nodded. “I know that feeling.”
That evening, he stayed behind again. Helped her restock the sugar jars, carry the crates down to the pantry. They didn’t talk much. But the silence had shifted — no longer uncertain, but shared.
When they returned upstairs, Naina made coffee — not café style, but the way she made it at home. Milk heavy. Slightly oversweet. The kind that left an aftertaste.
He sipped, winced slightly.
“Still ruining perfectly good beans,” he murmured.
“Still drinking every drop.”
They sat by the window. Rain threatened again in the clouds, but hadn’t yet fallen.
“Do you think,” Aarav said after a while, “we’d have lasted if I hadn’t left?”
She didn’t look at him. Just wrapped both hands around her mug.
“Maybe,” she said. “But maybe we’d have broken differently.”
He nodded slowly.
“I used to think love was about timing,” he said. “Now I think it’s about showing up. Every day. Even late.”
She smiled — barely. “You’re learning.”
They didn’t kiss.
But that night, when he left, his hand brushed hers at the doorway — just slightly, just enough — and she didn’t move it away.
Later, she opened the folder again.
She read the letters aloud in the empty café, her voice barely above a whisper.
In one of them, his grandmother had written: Sometimes the heart keeps waiting, even after the train has passed. Not because it expects someone to return — but because it needs to know it was once filled.
Naina closed her eyes.
Some things didn’t need to return.
Some things just needed to stay — in memory, in pages, in the second cup left unfinished on the windowsill.
Part 8: A Room That Isn’t Closed
The house had grown quieter.
Not in the way of abandonment, but like a person listening intently. Aarav spent the better part of the weekend there, cleaning corners layered in ancestral dust, sorting through boxes of brittle documents, sepia photographs, and half-finished recipes scribbled in margins. The more he uncovered, the more he realised — people do not vanish. They simply disperse into the things they leave behind.
On Sunday morning, Naina came early. Not for the café — that would open late, she’d told her assistant — but for the studio.
“I brought coffee,” she said, holding up two flasks. “One sugared, one not. Your pick.”
“You remember.”
“I never forgot.”
He took the bitter one. They sipped quietly, standing near the painting — now more developed, the hillside gentler, the shadows braver. She pointed to a tiny stroke of blue in the sky.
“That wasn’t there before.”
“I added it last night. Something felt unfinished.”
She smiled. “You used to do that. In college. Add blue when you didn’t know what to say.”
“Still do.”
She touched the edge of the easel. “It’s beautiful.”
He looked at her. “So are you.”
Naina didn’t smile, but her breath caught — just slightly. And that was enough.
After coffee, they wandered through the rest of the house. Each room held its own mood — the drawing room still smelled faintly of old perfume and rosewood polish, the kitchen lined with brass containers Aarav didn’t dare open. Then they reached the back room. The one with the padlocked door.
He held the key now.
“I’ve never opened this one,” he said.
“Ever?”
He shook his head. “My mother used to call it ‘Ma’s Room.’ Said it was sacred. Off-limits.”
“Do you want to?”
He paused.
“I think I need to.”
The key turned slowly. The lock clicked with reluctance.
The door opened.
Inside, the room was small. Simple. A narrow bed, neatly made. A writing desk with two fountain pens. A shelf of books — mostly Tagore, some Neruda, one tattered copy of The Little Prince. The window was cracked open just enough to let in the whisper of trees.
But what held them both still was the wall above the desk.
A mural.
Painted by hand.
Tiny brushstrokes forming a tree — sprawling, imperfect, roots exposed. But instead of leaves, it bore words. Single ones. Quiet. Begin. Stay. Try. Forgive. Return.
“She made this,” Aarav said, almost to himself.
Naina touched one of the words — Stay.
“She was writing the story of herself,” she whispered.
They stood there a long time.
“She never remarried after Dadaji died,” Aarav said. “She used to tell me—‘I’d rather live with his memory than anyone else’s habits.’ I thought that was sad. But maybe it wasn’t.”
“Maybe it was enough.”
He nodded.
Then, slowly, he turned to her.
“Naina, what are we doing?”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I know what we’re not.”
“And what’s that?”
“We’re not pretending anymore.”
He took a step closer. “Do you want to try again?”
She looked at him fully now — no blinking, no walls. Just skin and truth.
“No,” she said, “I want something new.”
That startled him. Until she added—
“Something that remembers where we’ve been, but doesn’t get trapped in it. Something slow. Something that doesn’t need to be named too fast.”
He breathed out. “That sounds a lot like a yes.”
She tilted her head. “It sounds like a beginning.”
He smiled.
That evening, she didn’t go back to the café.
Instead, they sat on the verandah, her feet tucked beneath her, his arm resting behind her lightly, not possessive, not performative — just present. The hills unfolded in golden layers before them. A dog barked somewhere far. A bell rang. A curtain flapped in a distant window.
“I’m thinking of turning the house into something,” Aarav said. “Not a homestay. Not exactly. But maybe a retreat. A space for writing, painting, sitting still.”
She nodded. “Mussoorie needs more places where people are allowed to be quiet.”
“You could help me run it,” he said. Then added, quickly, “Only if you wanted to.”
“I have a café, remember?”
“We’ll trade muffins for manuscripts.”
She laughed. “You’re not as funny as you think.”
“But you’re still here,” he said, “which means I must be doing something right.”
She leaned back, eyes half closed.
For the first time in a very long time, she didn’t need to wonder what would happen next.
It was enough to sit beside him.
In a room that wasn’t closed.
Part 9: What Doesn’t Disappear
Rain came again that night. A soft, unhurried drizzle, not the kind that scattered people into doorways, but the kind that stitched itself gently into the sounds of the town — in the clink of spoons, in the scraping of chairs, in the hush of footsteps down cobbled lanes. Inside Tales and Brews, Naina watched the glass fog up with condensation, her fingers warm against the porcelain mug she hadn’t sipped from in ten minutes.
It had been a week. Maybe eight days. Time had softened. Lost its edges. They no longer counted by hours spent together, but by what returned in those hours — an old laugh, a remembered recipe, the comfort of unspoken ease.
Aarav had taken to spending his mornings in the studio, and his afternoons helping her sort the café’s storage room, where she kept things she couldn’t throw away — handwritten menus from the first year, a chipped sugar bowl she swore once brought luck, her old sketchbooks with more coffee stains than art.
They worked side by side, not always talking, but always aware.
“Do you ever miss it?” he’d asked once, holding up a faded flyer from her brief time in Mumbai — her corporate past she never spoke of.
“Only in the way you miss knowing exactly what your salary will be,” she’d replied. “Not the work. Not the girl I was then.”
“You’re happier now?”
She’d thought about it. Then said: “I’m fuller.”
On Monday morning, Naina found a small package on the café counter. Wrapped in old newspaper, a red thread tied around it. No note.
She knew it was from him.
Inside, a book: Love in the Time of Cholera. Tucked between the pages, a single card. On it, written in familiar, precise lettering:
For the second cup. Because sometimes, we find our way not despite the detour, but because of it.
She pressed the book to her chest and closed her eyes.
That evening, Aarav didn’t come.
She waited past sunset. Served two schoolteachers and a honeymooning couple, wiped every table twice. Kept glancing at the door.
When he finally arrived — just before closing — he looked different.
Not distant. But distracted. His shirt was slightly wet, like he’d walked too far in the rain.
“Hey,” she said, unsure.
He didn’t smile right away.
“I have to go to Delhi. Just for two days.”
Her body tensed before she could stop it. The word go struck her like a sharp wind against already-thin skin.
“Work?”
“No. Property stuff. Legal paperwork. I need to meet the lawyer in person.”
She nodded, slowly. “When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“And when are you back?”
“Thursday. I’ll be here Thursday evening. For dinner. If you’ll have me.”
She looked at him a long time.
“Only if you bring dessert.”
He grinned. “From that place near Lodhi?”
“Obviously.”
He stepped closer, took her hand across the counter. His thumb grazed her knuckles.
“I’ll come back, Naina.”
“You’d better.”
The next morning, she opened the café alone. As always. But the air felt different. Lopsided. Like one of the paintings had been taken off the wall and the space it left behind was louder than the canvas ever was.
She didn’t text him. She didn’t call.
But she made two cups of coffee and drank one slowly. Left the other by the corner table.
No one asked why.
Wednesday passed in a blur. Rain off and on. Deliveries delayed. Her assistant broke a teapot and cried like it was the end of the world. Naina patted her on the shoulder and said, “Some things break. That’s not always a tragedy.”
But even as she said it, she kept glancing at the sky.
Thursday morning came, bright and cold, and Naina told herself she wasn’t waiting. She rearranged the window display. She played an old Norah Jones record. She changed the tip jar label to Second Cup Fund.
By seven-thirty, there was no sign of him.
By eight, she began to close up.
Just as she reached for the light switch — the door opened.
He was soaked. Winded. Holding a white box in one hand and his heart in the other.
“You’re late,” she said.
He held up the box. “Best cheesecake in Delhi. Cost me a traffic fine and my dignity.”
She took it, laughing despite herself.
Then, softer: “You’re here.”
“I said I would be.”
“People say a lot of things.”
“I mean mine.”
She set the box on the counter.
“Come inside.”
Later, after cheesecake and coffee and one slow dance in the empty café to a scratched jazz record, they sat by the window in silence.
He looked at her. “What are we calling this?”
She tilted her head. “This?”
“Us. This… beginning again.”
She considered.
“Maybe we don’t name it yet. Maybe we just live it.”
He nodded.
And then, finally — finally — he kissed her.
Not like a promise. Not like an apology.
But like a cup lifted after too long left untouched.
Part 10: Where We Begin Again
The first snow arrived quietly.
Not in the dramatic flurry of postcards or cinema, but as a fine dusting over pine branches and rooftops — so light you almost doubted it. But by morning, Mussoorie wore winter like a secret she’d kept all year. The hills were gentler in white, the air crisp and slow. And in Tales and Brews, the windows steamed with breath and brewing warmth, cinnamon weaving through the cold like a memory still alive.
Aarav stood behind the counter, badly tying his apron while Naina arranged jars of cookies into straight, aesthetic rows. He looked up, pretending not to fumble. She watched him with the patient amusement of someone who’d stopped correcting because watching was better.
“You’re still terrible at bows,” she said.
“They come undone anyway,” he replied.
“Like us?”
He paused.
“No,” he said. “We tied differently.”
She didn’t answer — just reached across and fixed the knot in two swift pulls.
There were no declarations that morning. No momentous decisions. Only a shared rhythm — mugs poured, chairs wiped, names remembered — a kind of slow choreography stitched into their bones now. What had once been tentative had become routine. What had once been fragile had become… ordinary. And that was the magic of it.
Ordinary things stayed.
The studio room had changed.
No longer dusty and closed, it now housed two easels, a second-hand reading chair, and a lamp that flickered a little but warmed the whole space. His painting of the hillside hung above the desk, now signed — just his initials, and the word Begin in the lower right corner.
Naina came in most evenings with her notebook, sometimes writing, sometimes not. Sometimes they just sat — music low, fire crackling — a kind of stillness that asked for nothing more than presence.
Once, she read him a line she’d written in the margin of a menu.
Love doesn’t knock twice. But it waits outside until you decide to build a door.
He had smiled and said, “We didn’t build a door. We built a room.”
The townspeople adjusted quickly. No one asked too many questions. They just accepted that the man who once was a stranger now fetched flour bags and fixed the back shelf when it creaked. That Naina’s eyes lingered longer on the horizon when she locked up. That someone now sat beside her at the evening tea stall, drinking quietly and listening to the wind as if it said something worth staying for.
And the regulars — the retired teacher, the antique shop woman, the German backpacker who never actually left — they smiled knowingly when Aarav added a new section to the café wall: Letters Never Sent.
Old postcards, anonymous notes, pieces of paper slipped under doors — all pinned beside a wooden sign that read: Because sometimes, what’s unsaid deserves to be seen.
It became a thing.
Tourists left notes. Locals reread them. Some laughed. Some cried. All stayed longer than intended.
Just like him.
One evening in December, the town lit its winter lights.
Small paper lanterns dotted the streets. Music spilled from open windows. Laughter bounced off cobblestone. Naina closed early. Aarav waited outside with a scarf he claimed was too loud but wore anyway because she liked it.
“Want to walk?” he asked.
She looped her arm through his. “We always walk.”
“Tonight’s special.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
They passed the bookstore, the tea vendor, the church steps where teenagers whispered behind mittens. Then the bend near Gun Hill where the view opened up — the sky lavender, the valley below speckled with light like stars spilled upside-down.
He turned to her, nervous suddenly, like the boy from a decade ago who read her poems with shaking fingers.
“I want to stay,” he said.
She blinked. “You are staying.”
“No,” he said. “I want to stay… with you. For real. Not just in this café. Not just for winter.”
She didn’t speak.
“I don’t have a speech,” he added. “Just… this.”
He handed her a small slip of paper.
She unfolded it.
A receipt. From the first coffee he bought on the day he walked in.
On the back, he had written in ink: The second cup was never about coffee. It was always you.
She laughed, then pressed the paper to her lips.
“I never saved receipts,” she said.
“Good,” he replied. “You don’t need to save what you live inside.”
She reached up, touched his cheek.
“We’re going to make a mess of this,” she whispered.
He kissed her forehead. “I hope so.”
That night, back at the café, she brewed two cups. One sugar, one not. They sat at the corner table. No customers. No noise. Just two chairs, a love that had forgotten how to leave, and the smell of something slightly burnt but honest.
Snow began again.
This time, they watched it fall.
Together.
