"Take Me Back"

The bell above the café door chimed, a sound that usually meant caffeine and a brief escape from the Mumbai rain. But today, that chime felt like a warning. I didn’t look up from my laptop. I was busy trying to find words for a story that wasn't mine, pretending that the dampness on my skin was just rain and not the cold sweat of anxiety. Then, the air changed. A scent drifted past my table—sandalwood and expensive rain-soaked wool. My heart didn't just skip a beat; it felt like it hit a wall. "One black coffee. To go," a voice said. It was deeper than I remembered, rougher around the edges, but it was his. Five years. I had spent one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five days convincing myself that if I ever heard that voice again, I would feel nothing. I was a liar. I kept my head down, staring at a blinking cursor on a blank screen. Don't look. If you don't look, he isn't real. He’s just a ghost. "Aria?" The ghost had spoken my name. I finally looked up. There stood Kabir. He looked like the world had tried to break him and failed, only making him harder, sharper. He wasn't the boy who used to steal my fries and promise me the stars. He was a man now—a man who looked at me like I was a car crash he couldn't turn away from. "Kabir," I whispered, the name tasting like copper and old regret. "You're still using that old laptop," he said, a faint, painful shadow of a smile touching his lips. "And you still haven't finished that chapter." "I stopped writing chapters the day you left, Kabir. I only write epilogues now." The silence between us wasn't empty; it was heavy with everything we hadn't said five years ago. Outside, the rain turned into a storm, locking us together in a small room where the only exit was through the truth.