It wasn't planned, like most of the best moments between them.
Raka had mentioned he'd never read anything by her favorite author, and Nayla had stopped walking mid-sentence, eyes wide with disbelief. "Wait," she said, "you've never read The Paper Garden?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Should I have?"
She gasped, the dramatic kind she usually reserved for sarcasm. "It's not just a book. It's the book."
Raka laughed. "You sound personally offended."
"I am," she said, then added, "Come over tomorrow. I'll lend you my copy."
And just like that, he was standing in her apartment the next evening, shoes neatly placed by the door, holding a cup of jasmine tea she'd made for him.
"You always serve tea like it's a ritual," he said, settling into her floor pillow.
"It kind of is," she replied, handing him the paperback. It was visibly worn creases on the spine, highlighted passages, sticky tabs poking out from all sides.
He turned it over, reading the back. "What's it about?"
Nayla sat across from him, folding her legs under her. "It's about a woman who starts a garden from paper scraps after losing everything. It's quiet, a little sad, but… beautiful. It helped me when I was going through stuff."
He flipped it open, scanning the dedication page. There was something sacred about the way she watched him hold it, like she was handing over a piece of herself.
"You've underlined almost every other sentence," he teased.
"They're all important," she said.
He looked at her. "Why this book?"
She hesitated, then said, "Because it reminded me that beauty can come from broken things."
Raka's expression softened. "I like that."
He didn't start reading yet. Instead, he asked, "What were you going through?"
Nayla glanced at her bookshelf. "Loneliness," she admitted. "The kind that makes you feel like a shadow in your own life."
He didn't respond with a platitude. Didn't rush to fix it. He just nodded.
"That's why I love it," she added. "It doesn't pretend everything gets fixed. It just shows that life can still grow even from scraps."
Raka looked down at the book again.
"I want to read this slowly," he said. "So I can feel it the way you do."
She smiled, not big, not dramatic, but soft and real.
They didn't talk much after that. He started the first chapter. She watched him from behind her mug, and for once, didn't feel the need to fill the silence.
That night, she walked him to the door.
As he stepped out, he turned and said, "Thank you for sharing that with me."
"You're welcome."
"I don't think it's just a book anymore."
She tilted her head. "What is it, then?"
He gave her that grin again, the one with all the feeling behind it.
"A map," he said. "To understand you."
And Nayla, standing in the doorway of her quiet apartment, realized maybe she had just let him read more than one story tonight.