I didn't expect to find him sitting alone in a bookstore café, thumbing through a worn paperback of Siddhartha. He looked older than he had from a distance—tired in a way that sleep can't fix. The kind of tired that comes from holding regret too long.
It was nearly empty inside. No one at the counter. No music playing. Just the soft hum of the street outside and the occasional turning of pages.
I could've walked away. I almost did.
But something in me said: You've watched too long from afar. It's time to step in.
So I approached him. Not like a stranger. Not like someone who had tracked him across weeks. Just a man looking to share a table.
"Mind if I sit?"
He looked up, blinking like he'd been underwater. Then he nodded.
We sat in silence for a while.
I let it stay that way.
Eventually, I asked, "Is it a good book?"
He smiled faintly. "I've read it before. Sometimes I come back to the ones I didn't understand the first time."
That felt like a confession.
We talked, slowly. Not about Mira. Not yet. About books. About coffee. About the city. I told him I write sometimes, mostly small pieces, observations. He said that made sense.
"You look like someone who listens more than he speaks," he said.
I didn't know whether to take it as a compliment or a warning.
---
After a while, I asked him about the bench in the park.
His eyes flickered.
"You've been there?"
I nodded. "I noticed the carving. The word: still."
He didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, "That was me. After she stopped returning my calls. I didn't know what else to say, so I left something behind."
His voice cracked—not loudly, just enough to let the truth slip out.
"I loved her," he said. "But I didn't know how to love her while she was breaking. I thought giving space was what she needed."
"And now?" I asked.
"Now I think I gave her too much of it. And not enough of me."
He looked at his hands, resting on the table like they held the past.
"I kept thinking I'd reach out. Fix it. But time has a way of convincing you that silence is safer."
There was so much sorrow in him. But not bitterness. Just the ache of someone who learned too late what presence really means.
---
I left the café with more than a story.
I left with a responsibility.
Because this wasn't fiction anymore. This wasn't some passing couple on a street corner. Rohan wasn't a silhouette—I had heard his voice, his regret, his hope barely breathing.
And I knew now: his story wasn't done.
It was waiting for Mira.