Sunday mornings had their own kind of hush, one that settled in corners of the bookstore like a favorite blanket. Aria wasn’t here for her part-time shift today. She was here for herself. For silence. For stories.

She moved slowly through the fiction aisle, one finger trailing the spines as if to greet them. The morning light, slanting through the tall windows, pooled golden over the wooden floor. The store was mostly empty, quiet enough for thoughts to echo.

Her thoughts, however, had drifted more than once that morning, tugged back to the week just gone by. They’d done it. The project, the presentation, the whole exhausting, exhilarating process. Not just the work, but how it had felt. Easy. Collaborative. Like some invisible thread had tightened between the three of them. Between her, Maya, and Reyhaan. Even Kian had become part of their rhythm, in his own laid-back way.

Like a friendship built not from effort, but from ease. She’d felt it before Reyhaan joined them, but with him, something about the dynamic had shifted—not in magnitude, just in texture.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, Aria realized she hadn’t felt this... part of something in a long while.

She had known friendships before. Some fast, some easy, some only in name. Good ones that flickered out with time, with change, with growing apart. There had been no fallout. Just time passing, calls becoming fewer, texts thinning out to nothing. Everyone got busy. Everyone had something else.

She didn’t resent the silence, but she couldn’t deny the ache it sometimes left behind. Whenever someone did reach out, the conversation drifted inevitably toward what she was doing, what they were doing. Deadlines. Projects. Office stories. And no one ever judged her for not having those things—but she judged herself.

She had felt, more than once, like everyone else had boarded a train she’d missed. That she was standing still on the platform, watching them all move on.

It wasn’t just the friendships, though.

She remembered her last presentation in design school—how her professors, well-meaning but firm, had told her she lacked direction. That her work had feeling, but no focus. That she needed to figure out what she wanted to say.

She hadn’t had an answer.

For a while after that, she stopped trying altogether. Just… existed. Let days blur into one another, her thoughts looping on repeat. The weight sat quiet and invisible, but it was always there.

Until books had found her again. Or maybe she had found them. And reading had turned into breathing. Into surviving. Into discovering something for a second time—stories, voices, people who existed only on paper but felt more present than anything else, felt more familiar than the people who used to text her.

One night, somewhere between the pages of a novel that had seen her more clearly than any person had, she realized she didn’t want to disappear. She wanted to tell stories. Not through design anymore—but in the way she saw them. With words. With images. With emotion.

And the rest unraveled quietly into motion.

She applied for scholarships outside India. All over. To meet new people, to see new cultures, to be truly independent. She hadn’t told her parents until she was accepted. She didn’t want them to worry or feel pressured about money. She wanted to prove—to them, to herself—that she could handle it. And when her father had opened the letter, she'd held her breath. But he'd listened.

All that now felt like a lifetime ago. But sometimes, on quiet Sundays like this, the memory settled around her like a scarf pulled too tight.

Aria blinked, realizing she’d stopped moving. Aisle between shelves. Thought half-finished. She startled slightly as a hand waved gently in front of her face.

“Earth to Aria?”

Reyhaan stood a few feet away, one brow raised and a familiar crooked grin tugging at his mouth. He wore a black hoodie layered under a grey jacket, jeans, and a soft beanie pulled low enough that a few waves peeked out. In one hand, he held a vinyl record. The other was tucked in his coat pocket.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice mildly amused. “You were mid-shelf existential crisis when I walked in.”

She blinked again. It took a second to re-enter the room. Her brain was still caught between pages and past.

But there he was. Not just speaking—watching. Like he actually noticed her drift, like she wasn’t invisible the way she used to feel when she got quiet.

Aria gave him an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. Was just... zoning.”

“Looked intense,” he said, stepping closer. “That shelf owes you money or something?”

“Only emotional debt,” she deadpanned. “What are you doing here?”

He held up the record—some obscure jazz cover, bold red type across deep black. “Looking for bribes. My brother’s been dragging his feet getting to work on time. Thought I’d tempt him with vintage Miles Davis.”

“And you thought this bookstore would have jazz albums?”

He shrugged. “Honestly? I just wanted an excuse to wander in.”

That made her laugh—soft, unexpected. “You could’ve just said you liked the smell of books.”

“Too easy,” he replied, then glanced up at the shelf above her head. “You were reaching for something?”

She followed his gaze. “Yeah, that one. But it’s okay, I—”

Reyhaan reached up and pulled the book down effortlessly, handing it to her without comment.

Their fingers brushed—just lightly, but something about the contact felt… tuned in.

“Thanks,” Aria murmured, but her fingers curled tighter around the book than necessary. It was silly, the way her heart still noticed how he fit into spaces—softly, like he didn’t demand room but always made it warmer.

They wandered toward the music section—rows of curated nostalgia. The rack was a miniature world: from the Beatles to BTS, jazz to indie, Kishore Kumar to Billie Eilish. And right in the middle, tucked modestly between a Taylor Swift deluxe and a John Coltrane reissue—VYRE.

Reyhaan glanced at the cover art, his expression unreadable. “Still weird seeing our name in public, on shelves next to actual legends.”

She looked at him curiously. “You are one, to some.”

He didn’t respond, only smiled faintly as he browsed through the cases. She watched him for a moment—how his fingers moved gently, how his brows dipped slightly when he read, how he tilted his head to listen when music filtered in faintly from the café speaker. The way he felt sound more than heard it. She tucked that away, quietly.

He eventually set a few aside, one of them an old jazz compilation.

“Your brother into jazz?”

“He’s not. But if I wrap it in enough guilt and nostalgia, he might pretend.”

She laughed at the idea. They found a quiet corner near a reading nook—cushions scattered beneath an arched lamp—and sat with the comfort of people who no longer needed to fill every silence.

“I didn’t know you were this into old music,” she said, watching him study the album sleeve.

“Grew up with it. Mom always played Lata Mangeshkar on Sunday mornings while cooking. Dad preferred Kishore Kumar. At some point, it just became… mine too.”

“I never saw you talk about it online,” she mused.

“Yeah.” Reyhaan gave a small nod. “People love turning opinions into headlines. Especially when you’re not just some guy on the internet. I’d rather let the songs be mine.”

Aria understood that more than she expected. “Makes sense. I don’t like asking people personal stuff either. If they want to tell me, they will.”

“Exactly,” he said, glancing at her. “I like that about you.”

Her ears warmed, but she didn’t look away.

“Did you hear about the basketball tournament next week?” she asked, resting the book on her lap.

He blinked. “No. I only remember someone mentioning a three-day fest later this month.”

“You were there,” she said, smirking. “It was in the department group chat. During that boring lecture.”

“Oh,” he said with a half-laugh, recalling. “That explains it. I might’ve tuned out halfway through.”

“Kian’s playing. If you don’t show up, Maya will drag you out of your house, willingly or not.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That sounds suspiciously personal.”

“It happened. Twice,” she confessed. “Dragged by the arm.”

“And yet,” he said, nudging her shoulder with his own, “you survived.”

“Barely.”

They both laughed, the sound soft but uncontained.

“What about the fest?” Reyhaan asked, turning toward her. “Got any plans?”

She shook her head. “Not really. I might just volunteer somewhere. Maybe help with the schedule or registration.”

“You should sell your cookies.”

She blinked. “What?”

He shrugged, suddenly more serious. “You should have a stall. Those little cookies, wrapped in see-through packets with bows on them? People would line up.”

She looked at him, surprised. “You’re saying that like you’d help.”

“I would,” he replied, like it was obvious. “Just don’t make me do the math part.”

“You’d be a good attraction at the stall,” she said before her filter could catch up.

His eyebrows arched slowly, and the smirk that followed was both amused and far too knowing. “Excuse me?”

Her stomach flipped. “I mean—you would draw people in! As a public figure! Not like—”

He held up a hand, mock-offended but grinning. “Just stating facts, right?”

Aria wanted to disappear into the shelves. But also? She didn’t mind being seen like this. Not by him.

“I hate you.”

Reyhaan’s grin widened. “No, you don’t.”

The moment passed, warm and easy.

They lingered, talking about small things—childhood books, snack cravings, favorite film scores. Nothing big. Everything honest.

And somewhere in the middle of it, between the laughter and the soft silences, Aria realized that talking to Reyhaan felt… grounding.

Not dramatic. Not heart-racing. But steady.

She used to shrink in moments like this—caught off guard, seen too closely. But with him, the exposure felt… safe. Like maybe she didn’t have to hide the soft parts.

Like finding the first sentence after a long block. Like perhaps she wouldn’t miss the train this time.

It wasn’t something either of them had named. But maybe that’s what made it feel like a good story—quiet at first, but impossible to forget.