Chapter 18 - WHEN LOVE DOESN'T NEED A NAME
The rain had softened by the time they reached the café again. The streets glistened, puddles reflecting scattered neon lights, but neither of them spoke. Their silence wasn't heavy; it was fragile, like something newly born that needed care.
They sat at their table by the window, water dripping slowly from the edges of Aarav's umbrella. Meher set her camera down but didn't lift it. For once, she wanted no photographs, no captured moments-just this.
Aarav stirred his coffee absentmindedly. She watched the small circles in the cup, and then, without looking up, he said, almost like a confession, "I wasn't always this quiet."
Meher waited.
"My past..." he paused, searching for words, "...ended with silence. She left. No goodbye. Just absence. And after that, I think I forgot how to be loud."
Meher felt something shift in her chest. She could have asked his name, the story, the pain. But she didn't. Instead, she whispered, "I was never chosen. Not once. People liked the way I saw the world through my camera, but they never really saw me."
Aarav looked at her then. Really looked. Not at her lens, not at her smile-but at her.
There was no grand promise between them, no declarations of forever, no need to bind what already felt unshakable.
"Maybe we don't need to define this," Meher said softly.
Aarav's lips curved, the kind of smile that trembles on the edge of breaking. "Maybe we just need to be."
Outside, the last drops of rain slid down the glass. Inside, at the table by the window, they sat in their quiet way-two people who had been unloved in all the wrong places, now finding love in the spaces between words.
It didn't have a name.
It didn't need one.
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STILL , I WAIT
RomanceSTILL , I WAIT Genre: Pure Romance | Slow Burn | Emotional Intimacy | Realistic Love In a quiet café drenched in monsoon rains, two strangers meet without meaning to - Meher, a soft-spoken photographer who captures emotions she doesn't understand, a...
