The first time she said yes to him, it wasn’t romantic at all.
It was halfway through a sweltering October afternoon at a faded railway platform — the kind where even time felt tired. Mira had been waiting two hours already. The station’s loudspeaker crackled with unintelligible delays every few minutes.
She sat alone on a wooden bench, sleeves rolled up, hair pinned messily, flipping through a dog-eared copy of The Namesake. Sweat clung to her spine. She’d just sighed and closed the book when a man walked up holding two paper cups of chai.
He hesitated. Then asked, in a voice that matched the dull rhythm of the ceiling fan above, “Do you mind if I sit here?”
Mira looked up. The man had warm eyes, a camera bag, and the expression of someone too polite to intrude, but too tired to care anymore.
She nodded once. “Sure.”
He sat down, setting a cup beside her on the bench.
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s not mine.”
He grinned. “I know. But you looked like someone who needed it.”
She glanced at the cup, then at him. “That’s a weird thing to say to a stranger.”
“I didn’t mean it in a creepy way,” he said quickly. “Just… you look like you’ve been here a while. And it’s good chai.”
She picked up the cup and sniffed it. Masala-heavy. Slightly overboiled.
She took a sip anyway.
He exhaled in mock relief. “Great. Now I won’t feel guilty drinking mine alone.”
She smirked. “And you always carry extra cups for stranded women at railway stations?”
“No, just for the ones who read Jhumpa Lahiri with their eyebrows furrowed like the book personally offended them.”
Mira laughed, the sound surprising even her. “You were watching me?”
“I notice things,” he shrugged.
She tilted her head. “Photographer?”
He blinked. “How’d you guess?”
She pointed at his shoes. “There’s sand in your laces, dust on your bag, and you haven’t blinked since you sat down. People who shoot for a living always look like they’re trying to frame the world.”
He stared at her, impressed. “Okay. That was eerily accurate.”
“Writer,” she offered.
“Ah. So this is a story to you already?”
“Everything is. Until it isn’t.”
They sipped chai quietly after that. The platform around them was a blur of hawkers, honking trains, and announcements no one believed anymore.
Finally, he asked, “Do you believe in chance encounters?”
She turned to look at him, and for the first time in months, something in her chest shifted — not broken, just rearranged.
And she said, simply, “Yes.”
---
That was six months ago.
---
Mira wasn’t the kind of girl who said yes easily. Not after everything.
After the broken engagement. After losing her job when the bookstore shut down. After the year she spent learning how to breathe again without someone else holding her together.
But Vihaan had never asked her for anything grand.
He never tried to “fix” her.
He just… stayed.
They met again in Delhi. A walk. Then another.
Then coffee. Then conversations about why people always say "forever" when they don’t even know how to hold the moment they’re in.
He sent her photos sometimes. Of old houses. Strangers in love. Her — laughing, not realizing he had clicked.
She wrote to him. Long, winding emails filled with little pieces of her day.
He never replied to them with “ok” or “cool.”
He wrote back with poems. With details. With care.
They didn’t label it. They didn’t need to.
Until one day, he said:
> “I have a wedding in Mussoorie next month. Come with me?”
She blinked. “What would I even do there?”
> “Drink tea. Read books. Exist next to me.”
She laughed. “That’s it?”
> “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
And again, with a soft flutter in her chest, she said yes.
---
Mussoorie was mist and memory.
They stayed at a little cottage tucked between two cedar trees. It smelled like woodsmoke and old pages.
In the mornings, she watched him photograph the sky.
In the afternoons, he watched her scribble in a notebook she never let anyone else read.
One evening, it rained — the kind of sudden, unapologetic rain that made you feel like the world was rewriting itself.
They sat on the porch, legs tucked under a blanket, two mugs of hot chocolate warming their hands.
He turned to her, his eyes serious beneath the humor.
> “I think I love you, Mira.”
She exhaled.
The word “love” used to feel sharp to her. Too soon. Too fragile.
But not now.
Now, it felt like breath. Like gravity.
So she said nothing for a long moment. Then softly:
> “I think I do too.”
---
They kissed for the first time that night.
Not because they were drunk on wine or the magic of a hill station evening — but because it finally made sense.
---
And then, like most good things, it shifted.
One morning, weeks later, Vihaan stopped replying.
At first, she thought he was just busy. Shoots, travel, deadlines.
But then her messages turned into blue ticks with no answers.
He didn’t block her. He didn’t ghost her entirely.
He just… faded.
The silence was slow. Cruel in its own way.
She didn’t beg. Didn’t ask for closure.
But each day, she re-read his old messages like pulling at a scab that refused to heal.
She didn’t know what had happened.
Maybe he got scared.
Maybe someone from his past returned.
Maybe she was too much.
Or not enough.
All she knew was — the yes that had once bloomed in her chest now sat like a stone.
---
Months passed.
Mira got a job at a community library in Jaipur. A small place with cracked tiles and a reading tree outside. Children who smelled of ink and mischief.
She found herself again. Quietly. Not all at once.
She no longer searched for his face in crowds.
Not always, at least.
---
And then, one day, a parcel arrived.
No sender. No note.
Just a box — inside it, a photograph.
Of her.
Sitting under the reading tree, laughing. A pen tucked behind her ear. The light soft on her face.
And on the back of the photo, in familiar handwriting:
> “This is how I saw you when I thought I was breaking — and you reminded me how to stay.”
There were more photos. One from the train platform. One of her holding chai. One from Mussoorie — her asleep on the porch.
Each moment — preserved like proof that what they had was real.
And then, at the bottom of the box, a letter.
---
> Mira,
I left not because I stopped loving you, but because I didn’t know how to hold joy when I’d spent years only surviving.
You said yes to me, even when I didn’t deserve it.
And I walked away because I was afraid you’d realize that.
> But months passed. And the only thing worse than fear… was the absence of you.
> If there’s even a corner of your heart that still waits —
I’ll be at the station where we met.
10:40 AM. Sunday. Platform 2.
> Come only if you still want to say yes.
— V
---
Mira held the letter for hours. She didn’t cry.
She just sat with it. Breathed it in.
She wasn’t the same girl who waited on benches anymore. She had rebuilt herself — in quiet, in books, in the smell of library glue.
But part of her still remembered the boy who gave her chai without asking. Who saw her before she knew she still could be seen.
And that part of her — brave, forgiving, tired but open —
still wanted to say yes.
---
Sunday. 10:40 AM.
Platform 2.
Mira stepped onto the station, the old bench still waiting.
And he was there — Vihaan.
Camera slung over his shoulder. Hope in his eyes. Hands trembling just a little.
They stood in silence.
Then he whispered, like a question:
> “Is it too late for one more yes?”
She didn’t speak. She just walked up, leaned her head against his shoulder, and closed her eyes.
Some yeses… don’t need words.
