Chapter 3: Doodles and Doubts
344 Words
One day after school, Kabir forgot his water bottle and returned to the empty art room to grab it.
He found Arjun’s sketchbook left behind.
He hesitated. Then curiosity — or something deeper — took over.
He flipped it open.
Page after page of drawings — of eyes, hands, expressions. His expressions. His hands.
Him.
Each one captured something only someone who looked closely would notice — the slight droop in his left eyelid when tired, the way he touched his chin when thinking.
Then he turned the page and found a poem, written in Arjun’s tight, slanted handwriting.
> “You make the silence inside me feel like music.”
“But if you heard the song, would you still stay?”
Kabir closed the book. Slowly. Carefully.
He stood there in the empty room, hands shaking.
The next day, it rained.
Heavy, loud, merciless rain — the kind that soaks through your soul.
Kabir waited at the gate, wondering if Arjun had already left. But then he saw him — standing alone under a tree, soaked to the bone, broken umbrella beside him.
He rushed over.
“You i***t,” Kabir said, holding out his umbrella. “You’ll get sick.”
Arjun looked at him like a stranger.
“You don’t have to pretend anymore,” he whispered.
Kabir’s heart dropped. “What?”
“I know you saw the sketchbook.”
Kabir didn’t lie.
Arjun shook his head, voice cracking. “You don’t have to protect me, Kabir. I’m used to being alone.”
Kabir stepped forward. “You’re not alone. You’ve never been alone.”
“Then why did you run to someone else?” Arjun asked. “Why do you keep pretending?”
Kabir looked up at the dark, stormy sky. Then at Arjun.
“Because I’m scared,” he said.
“Of me?”
“Of how much I want to be yours.”
Silence.
Rain.
Breathing.
They didn’t kiss. Didn’t say ‘I love you.’
But something deeper passed between them — something that didn’t need words.
- Writer
