The room smelled faintly of ink and old stories.
Aarav sat in a circle of nine strangers at the community writing group. The chairs wobbled slightly, the fan clicked overhead, and someone had scribbled You are not your pain in red marker on the whiteboard.
He wasn't sure what had brought him back here. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was Riya's eyes when she handed him the invitation.
Or maybe… maybe it was the way Anaya had started humming to herself again when she washed dishes. Like something inside her had started to breathe again. He wanted to know how that felt.
He hadn't written anything in almost two years.
Not since the night of the accident. Not since he lost his brother and the part of himself that believed in survival.
"Would anyone like to share today?" the facilitator asked.
Silence stretched.
Then someone raised a hand — an old man with trembling fingers and a voice like gravel. He read a poem about losing his wife to dementia. Every word cracked. Not polished, not pretty. Just real.
Aarav listened.
Then a woman with burn scars down her neck read a piece about learning to look at mirrors again. Her voice didn't shake. Her eyes didn't blink.
Aarav listened harder.
He didn't share. Not yet.
But something shifted. Something loosened.
When the session ended, he walked out with a blank page in his pocket and the first sentence already forming in his mind:
"The night my brother died, I stopped breathing — not in the lungs, but in the place where meaning lives."
Back home, Anaya was sitting on the floor, peeling boiled potatoes like they'd wronged her.
"You're late," she said without looking up.
"There was a reading circle," he replied.
She glanced at him. "You read something?"
"No."
She nodded, not pressing.
But later, while they ate, she asked quietly, "Did it feel strange?"
"It felt… honest."
She smiled. "That's terrifying, isn't it?"
He nodded.
"You'll go again?"
"I think so."
She didn't say more. But she touched his wrist gently before clearing the plates — a brief, grounding gesture. Like a thank you she couldn't find the words for.
The next day, Aarav returned to the group.
He still didn't read aloud.
But he wrote.
A paragraph. Then a page. Then two.
He didn't realize how many stories were still inside him. About his brother. About growing up in a house where crying was weakness. About the silence after the funeral — thick, polite, unbearable.
Every word felt like pushing through mud. But once it started, he couldn't stop.
And with each word, his posture changed. His breath deepened. His voice—when he practiced in his room—stopped trembling.
Anaya noticed.
"You're different," she said one night while brushing her hair by the window.
"How?"
"You're... lighter."
He looked at her. "Maybe I let go of something."
She smiled, but her eyes stayed sad. "I wish I could let go."
He sat beside her. "You don't have to yet."
She turned to him. "What if I never can?"
"Then I'll wait."
"For how long?"
He didn't answer. He just sat closer, their shoulders barely touching.
One night, it rained again. Not heavily. Just enough to keep the city awake.
Aarav couldn't sleep. Memories always came back louder when it rained.
He stepped out onto the balcony, the railing damp and rusted under his palms.
Anaya joined him minutes later, wrapping a shawl around her arms.
They didn't speak for a long time.
Then she said, "He used to laugh when I cried."
Aarav turned to her, startled.
"My ex," she continued, voice hollow. "He said I cried too much. That I was too sensitive. That I should be 'grateful' someone like him stayed."
Aarav's fists clenched around the railing.
"I believed him," she whispered. "I thought I was lucky."
"You weren't."
"I know," she said. Then paused. "But sometimes, I miss him. Not him — the version I invented in my head. The one who held my hand in the cinema. The one who made me chai during my period cramps."
"That's not strange," Aarav said gently.
"It feels like betrayal."
"It's called memory."
She looked at him, eyes glassy. "Do you still miss your brother?"
"Every damn day."
"And?"
"And I still get angry at him. For dying. For leaving. For not wearing his seatbelt. For making me the only son left."
She said nothing.
Then she reached for his hand. Held it tight.
Not gently. Not softly.
Desperately.
When Aarav read his piece aloud for the first time at the writing group, Riya was there.
She didn't speak. Just listened.
When he finished, there was a pause. Then quiet clapping.
Riya hugged him afterward. "I'm proud of you."
He nodded. But his eyes searched for someone else.
That evening, when he came home, Anaya was curled on the floor, sketching again.
He sat beside her without speaking.
She passed him the sketchbook.
It was a drawing of two figures — seated back-to-back under a leaking roof, surrounded by books, tea cups, a broken watch, a half-bloomed rose.
It was them.
It was their life.
And at the center of the page, in tiny cursive, she had written:
"Sometimes, love is just staying. Even when it rains."