04 - The Day I Chose Him

"Loving you wasn’t a choice I made. It was a truth that found me. But staying… that was the decision I made every day—even when you tried to push me away." – Meera

Meera's POV - It feels like yesterday, how I confessed my love and how he choked on his!

It had rained the night before.

Not the gentle kind. The angry, thrashing kind. The kind that feels like the sky is trying to scrub itself clean of some deep sorrow.

And in the morning, the world felt hushed. Like it, too, was recovering from a long, sleepless night.

I hadn’t planned on saying anything that day.

But love doesn’t really ask for permission, does it?

It started with a note.

A stupid, crumpled thing I’d folded and unfolded a hundred times. The words were short. Careful. Practiced.

"Meet me after class. Rooftop."

That rooftop had become our place.

Where words dared to breathe.

Where we sat side by side, pretending not to feel the gravity pulling us closer.

When he read it, he didn’t look at me. Just stuffed it into his pocket and walked out.

For the rest of the day, I couldn't breathe.

When he finally came, the sky was beginning to bruise with twilight.

His shirt was stained with grease—probably from the garage—and his hair was still damp from the rain.

He looked tired. Beautiful. Unreachable.

He leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “What’s this about?”

I blinked.

God, I had rehearsed this. So many times. In front of mirrors, in my hostel room, even to the cracked ceiling of the girls’ washroom.

But now? My mouth felt like cotton.

“I— I need to say something,” I started, my voice a little too high, a little too unsure.

He nodded once. Waiting.

I took a breath so deep it hurt.

“I like you, Aryan.”

He didn’t move.

So I pushed through, heart pounding.

“Not like a friend. Not like someone who helps with notes or drinks tea on the stairs with me. I like you like… I think about you all the time. I look for you in every room. And when you're quiet, I feel it louder than noise. You make me feel... full. Seen. Alive.”

Nothing.

Not a flicker of emotion on that beautiful, stone-carved face.

And then he said it.

The words I had feared the most.

“Don’t.”

Just that. One word.

I blinked. “What?”

“Don’t feel that for me,” he said quietly, looking at the sky now, like I wasn’t even worth the eye contact. “I’m not someone you can love, Meera.”

My throat clenched. “Why?”

He laughed under his breath. But it wasn’t joy. It was bitterness, raw and sharp. “Because I can’t give you anything. I have no future, no money, no name. I’m not the guy who buys flowers and writes poetry. I’m the guy who walks home hungry and prays his sister doesn’t get sick because he can’t afford another hospital bill.”

I took a step forward. “I don’t care about any of that.”

“You should.” His voice cracked. “Because one day you’ll wake up and realise you gave your heart to someone who couldn’t even hold it right.”

“I’ll take the risk,” I whispered.

He shook his head, turning away from me. “Don’t love me, Meera. It’ll ruin you.”

But it didn’t.

His rejections came like rain—cold, unrelenting—but I stood there, soaked in hope, waiting for a sun I knew would come.

Days passed.

He avoided me. Wouldn’t meet my eyes. Would sit on different benches. Leave class early. But I stayed. Every time.

And I made sure he saw me.

Because I wasn’t going anywhere.

Then one evening, as I sat on the rooftop alone—our rooftop—I heard footsteps.

I turned.

He was standing there. Shirt wrinkled. Hands trembling. Eyes red.

And then he did something that shattered me.

He fell to his knees.

“Meera…”

I knelt too. “Aryan—?”

“I tried,” he choked out. “I tried to stay away. To unfeel all of this. But I can’t. I think about you all the time. I hear your voice in every silence. I imagine you in every version of my future… and then I remember I don’t have the right to any of it.”

“You do,” I said, my hands on his face. “You do.”

“I don’t have anything to give you.”

“You have everything I’ve ever wanted,” I whispered.

And then—for the first time—he kissed me.

Not like in the movies. Not perfect.

It was clumsy. Shaky. Full of breath and fear and something so unfiltered it felt sacred.

His lips tasted like rain and restraint. Like someone who had starved for love and finally dared to taste it.

And I knew then...

That love doesn’t wait for permission.

It just arrives. And stays. And fights. And forgives.

That was the day Aryan Kapoor stopped running.

And I—