03 - The Things I Never Said

“I didn’t stay away because I didn’t love her. I stayed away because I did. And people like me… don’t deserve people like her.” — Aryan

When I first saw her, she was fighting with a vending machine.

Her dupatta kept slipping off her shoulder, her bag was open, books spilling out, and she was furiously pressing the same button as it owed her an apology.

She looked like chaos in human form.

And I remember thinking…

She doesn’t belong here.

Not in this dusty hallway, not in this old college that smells like rust and cheap paint.

She belonged in soft-spoken poems. In libraries that echoed with quiet. In a world that never broke her the way this one breaks girls like her.

So I looked away.

Because that’s what I always did when something felt too beautiful to touch.

Meera.

The name came later. But the effect? Instant.

She was everything I wasn’t.

Polished. Bright-eyed. Confident.

She answered professors without stuttering. Sat in the first row. Walked like the world was hers.

And me? I was the boy who showed up with grease under his fingernails and a secondhand bag stitched too many times.

I didn’t want her to notice me. I prayed she wouldn’t.

But she did.

One day, she dropped a pen near my desk and bent to pick it up. Our eyes met—just for a second.

I looked away, instantly.

Because in that moment, something in me cracked.

Not like glass.

Like bone.

You know when you’ve been poor long enough, you start calculating the cost of everything? Even people.

And Meera...

She looked expensive in ways I couldn’t afford.

Not her clothes.

Her heart.

Still, she kept showing up. Asking questions. Sitting beside me. Smiling like I deserved it.

I tried to stay cold.

But God, she made it impossible.

I remember the day she brought me a cup of tea and sat beside me on the stairs. Just like that. No judgement. No pity. Just quiet.

“You always sit alone,” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s easier.”

She looked at me for a moment. “You know, you don’t have to act like the world’s already left you behind.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because the truth is...

It had.

My mother, Kamini, is my reason for breathing.

She worked as a maid in five houses just to pay my school fees. I still remember the blisters on her hands from scrubbing marble floors. She never complained. Never stopped smiling.

And Tanya… my little sister. My heart.

She used to wait for me at the gate every evening, waving her math homework at me like it was a trophy. “Bhaiya, dekho! I got 10 out of 10!”

They are my life.

And that life doesn’t come with room for love stories.

But Meera slipped in.

Every time she laughed at my sarcastic comments. Every time she waited for me after class. Every time she looked at me like I was worth more than I believed—I fell a little more.

One evening, we sat on the hostel terrace.

She asked me what I wanted from life.

I lied.

I said I wanted peace for my mother and a future for Tanya.

That part was true.

But what I didn’t say was—I wanted her too.

Her voice in my silence.

Her hand in mine.

Her stories to fill the gaps in my cracked walls.

But boys like me don’t get happy endings.

We get responsibility. Survival. Regret.

I watched her fall in love with me.

And I hated myself for letting her.

Because I knew… I couldn’t give her the life she deserved.

I couldn’t take her to cafes or gift her books or buy her roses.

I couldn’t even promise her tomorrow.

So I started building a distance.

Not because I didn’t love her.

But because I did.

Too much.

And love, when it comes from empty pockets and heavy shoulders, feels like theft.

But I remember every little thing.

How she fixed my collar before class.

How she called my mother "Aunty ji" with such tenderness that Ma cried after she left.

How Tanya would giggle, whispering to me, “Bhaiya, is she your girlfriend? She's so pretty!”

And I’d just smile, scared to say yes.

Because what if one day, she realized I was just a chapter...

and she was meant to be the whole damn book?

Yetsrerday when she left, She didn’t cry.

Didn’t scream.

Just looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time…

The weight in my chest feels too much to carry, I think of her.

Not the way she left.

But the way she smiled when I first called her name.

The way she leaned on my shoulder and said, “I feel safe here.”

Funny, isn’t it?

She felt safe in a heart that was already breaking.

Now I sit alone—on the same rooftop where we once planned a life we were both too afraid to chase.

She’s gone.

Not just from my sight. From everywhere.

And I’m still here.

Still holding onto a ghost.

Still hoping, like a fool, that maybe—just maybe—one day she’ll come back.

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