Silent Rivalries
1064 Words
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Rohan didn’t call me the next morning. I didn’t expect him to. Everyone had seen the photo. Everyone knew. At school, silence followed me like a second shadow. No one said anything, but they didn’t have to. Their eyes did the talking.
Beauty stood by my locker, arms folded, mouth tight. “They're already planning something. Your family. His family. They're going to tear you two apart.”
I stared at her. “They’ll have to try harder.”
She shook her head. “You’re not scared?”
“I am. But I love him more.”
She looked like she wanted to cry and scream at the same time. “Then you better hold on. Because this isn’t just school gossip anymore. This is war.”
That night, I snuck out again.
I found him waiting by the chapel. He looked tired. His jaw was clenched like he hadn’t slept.
“They’ve locked me in,” he said. “My father thinks he can suffocate it out of me.”
“And can he?”
“No.”
We didn’t say much after that. We didn’t need to. His hand found mine in the dark. I leaned my head against his shoulder. We just sat there. Quiet. Holding on.
But quiet never lasts.
By morning, my parents had blocked my number, removed my SIM, locked the house Wi-Fi. I wasn’t allowed out. No school. No calls. Just four walls and cold silence.
I wrote him letters I couldn’t send.
I stared at the ceiling and whispered his name.
I dreamed of his voice like it was music I’d forgotten how to hear.
Three days passed.
Then Beauty showed up at my window.
“Pack a bag,” she said. “You’ve got five minutes.”
I blinked. “What—”
“Don’t ask. Just go.”
We climbed out through the balcony, ran to her cousin’s car parked two blocks down. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t care.
He was there.
In a small apartment, dimly lit, smelling like old incense and rain. Rohan stood by the window. When he saw me, he didn’t speak. He just pulled me into his arms and held me like the world was ending.
“I missed you,” I whispered.
He buried his face in my hair. “Don’t leave again.”
“I won’t. Not if I can help it.”
Beauty left us there. Said she’d cover for me. Said she’d lie if she had to.
That night, Rohan and I lay on the floor, wrapped in one blanket, hearts pressed close. We didn’t do anything more than kiss. Just held each other. Just breathed.
“I want to run away,” he said.
“Where?”
“Anywhere. I don’t care. As long as it’s with you.”
My chest hurt with how much I wanted it too.
“But we can’t yet,” I said.
He nodded. “Not yet.”
“But soon.”
“Yes. Soon.”
We fell asleep like that. Side by side. Like a promise.
---
The next day, Beauty brought food, a burner phone, and two fake school IDs. She didn’t say where she got them. We didn’t ask. She was quiet, serious, not her usual sarcastic self. When she left, she looked back at us like she didn’t think we’d make it.
We did.
The apartment became ours. It was small. One room, thin walls, noisy neighbors. But it was a world. Our world.
We cooked instant noodles and danced to songs on a half-broken speaker. We kissed until our lips were sore. We argued about who loved the other more. We laughed at nothing. We cried without reason. We wrote poems on the wall in marker. We breathed.
But outside, the silence was growing.
We knew it couldn’t last.
Rohan’s cousin, Raj, showed up two weeks later.
“You’ve got five days,” he said. “They’re tracing her. Her family’s put money on it.”
“How much money?” I asked.
“Enough that strangers are asking questions.”
We packed that night.
Only what mattered. Clothes. The photo of us at the willow tree. My sketchbook. Rohan’s notebook with the song lyrics he never finished.
We took a train before dawn. South. Away from Delhi. Away from the names that owned us.
We didn’t talk much on the ride. We just held hands, stared out the window. I watched the cities change, watched the sky stretch wider, watched his reflection in the glass and thought: if this is wrong, I never want to be right.
We arrived in a small town by the sea. It smelled like salt and rain. The kind of place no one would think to look.
We found a cheap room above a florist’s shop. The owner didn’t ask questions.
At night, I sat on the rooftop, listening to the waves crash, thinking about home. My brother. Beauty. The look in my father’s eyes when I said I loved the enemy.
Rohan sat beside me.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “Just thinking.”
“About going back?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“About how far I’d go to stay with you.”
He took my hand, kissed it slow. “We’re already halfway to forever.”
---
Days turned into weeks.
He found a job at a repair shop. I helped the florist downstairs. We told people we were married. No one questioned it.
At night, we made dinner together. He learned how to braid my hair. I learned how to fix his shirts. We laughed more. Fought sometimes. Always made up before sleep.
It was simple.
It was beautiful.
It was real.
Until the letter came.
A plain envelope, slipped under the door.
No name. Just one sentence, handwritten in tight black ink:
“Come home before they make you regret staying gone.”
We stared at it for a long time.
He turned it over. Blank.
“No stamp,” he said. “Hand delivered.”
It meant someone knew.
Someone had found us.
Someone was warning us—or threatening us.
Either way, the clock was ticking again.
We packed in silence.
No tears this time.
Just fire.
Rohan grabbed his jacket. I grabbed my sketchbook.
We didn’t run.
We walked.
- Writer
