The plane hummed beneath Reyhaan’s feet—a low vibration folding into the background like a second heartbeat. Above him, the cabin lights were dimmed to a soft glow, somewhere between dream and disorientation. The kind of quiet only midair could hold—stale coffee in paper cups, filtered air, the gentle press of altitude against his eardrums.

His foot tapped the floor. Once. Then again.

He tried to still it, leaned back, let his head rest against the cool leather. But his fingers betrayed him—hovering near his armrest, twitching toward the phone he couldn’t use, checking a screen that would not change.

Somewhere—perhaps not even half a continent away—Aria was descending too.

12:15 PM. Her arrival time.

Same as his.

Of all the coincidences in the world, this had to be the one the universe clung to. Not a day earlier. Not even an hour. The exact minute.

She hadn’t said anything about it. Just a forwarded itinerary. No question. No plan.

Still, he’d memorized it.

Reyhaan exhaled, slow and useless, and pressed the call button.

The flight attendant arrived with that weightless poise only they had. “Yes, sir?”

Reyhaan tilted his head, spoke softly. “Are we… still on time? Or… maybe a little early?”

She blinked at him, then smiled. “Everything is exactly on schedule, sir.”

“Right,” he murmured. “Of course.” He gave a polite nod and leaned back, letting his head drop against the cushion with a faint thud.

A soft rustle to his right—a magazine slipped off a sleeping face and fluttered into a lap.

“You’re acting like you’re meeting someone under a train station clock,” Lucian murmured, stretching with a groan. His voice was still thick with sleep. “You’ve got this whole black-and-white movie energy. Casablanca at cruising altitude.”

Reyhaan didn’t look at him. “You read too much of Jay’s poetry.”

Lucian gestured with both hands. “And you’ve checked the time twelve times in the past ten minutes.”

From across the aisle, Jay’s head lolled to the side. One eye opened. “Are we talking about Reyhaan’s international longing again?”

“Go back to sleep,” Reyhaan muttered, though the corners of his mouth betrayed him.

Lucian leaned in, conspiratorial now. “We don’t need the full backstory. We know enough to bet on this ending in a reunion hug at Arrivals.”

Reyhaan gave a tired, sideways glance. “I’m pretending I didn’t hear that.”

“But he didn’t deny it,” Jay added, eyes already closing.

Reyhaan pressed a knuckle to his temple and smiled, small and private. The noise between them faded again, settling into the steady hush of the cabin. He let it.

Somewhere beneath the chatter and engine hum, a thought looped quietly in him.

It had been a month.

A month since he and Aria had spoken properly. The kind of conversation that meandered past midnight, full of small hesitations and unspoken threads. That rhythm between them—of understanding, of simply being—had thinned. Not broken, just stretched. Like they both kept reaching but never quite found the same space. Maybe they didn’t know what to say anymore. Or maybe they did, but not how to begin.

There were photos sometimes. Messages in the group chat with Maya and Kian. But the longer calls never happened. Time zones, poor signals, work, sheer tiredness—there was always something.

And still, he waited for every small moment that did come. Her sleepy voice over audio. A voice note about the weather. The way she still said okay, like it meant I’m here.

Maybe she waited too.

There were things he wanted to tell her. Not everything. Not all at once. But the small hesitations he’d begun to try again. The quiet, careful rehearsals in his home studio. The progress in his vocal therapy. The praise from his new therapist, who said he’d started listening to his breath better. The project he was slowly shaping—the one he wasn’t ready to name yet.

He wasn’t sure why it mattered that she knew. Only that it did.

The studio at home was a mess. Cables everywhere. Half a soundscape project sprawled across his desk. He wanted to tell her about that, too. The beginnings. The faltering restarts.

And maybe—if it came up, if the moment allowed—he could admit the quietest truth of all. The one his mother had gently nudged into the light a few months back.

A feeling that had stayed with him since.

His gaze turned to the window. Clouds drifted past like soft cotton hills, calm and unhurried. The sky looked exactly like it had before any of this began—as if nothing had changed.

But everything had.

And in less than an hour, he would see her again.

Maybe I’ll tell her.

Maybe I’ll know how.

His eyes closed; breath held somewhere just behind his ribs. And for a second—just one—he let himself remember:

It was just past 6:30 when Reyhaan stepped back into the quiet of the house, shoes in hand. The hallway lights were off—just the soft blue spill of early morning filtering through the tall windows. He had barely made it to the base of the stairs when a familiar voice called out from behind.

“Reyhaan.”

His mother’s voice carried a tone that was both soft and curious. Suspicious, even.

He paused, hand still resting on the banister, then turned around with a half-smile already forming. “Good morning,” he said, casually, like it was perfectly normal to be roaming the house barefoot at dawn.

His mother stood in the middle of the living room, her shawl wrapped loosely over her shoulders, a half-empty cup of black tea in hand. Her expression wasn’t accusing, not quite—just curious, soft-edged, and a little too knowing for Reyhaan’s comfort.

She tilted her head slightly, then glanced toward the door he'd just come through. “Did you just drop Aria back at her hostel?”

Reyhaan blinked, his face a careful neutral. “Aria? Why would she be here this early?” He gave a small shrug, even threw in a yawn. “I was out for a walk. Couldn’t sleep.”

His mother took a slow sip of tea. “Mm-hmm.” Then she turned, walking calmly toward the kitchen. “Next time, try sneaking in after I go back to sleep. Your timing was terrible. I was getting water when the door opened.”

He opened his mouth, found no immediate defense, and then shut it. He followed her into the kitchen like a child trying not to look guilty.

“I didn’t think anyone would be awake.”

“You all think that.” Her voice was dry with amusement as she opened the fridge and took out a bundle of coriander and a half-cut pumpkin. “You’re lucky I didn’t have my glasses on.”

Reyhaan leaned against the counter, arms folded, watching her begin to prep breakfast. “Okay. For the record—she missed her curfew. None of us really noticed until it was too late. I offered because… it just felt like the right thing to do. Didn’t really think it through.”

She glanced at him sideways. “You could’ve asked Ayaan to swap rooms.”

He exhaled. “You know Ayaan loves his sleep schedule. Besides, it wasn’t… like that.”

“So she stayed in your room?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “There weren’t other options. And it didn’t feel right to take the offer back once I made it.”

His mother didn’t say anything immediately. The sound of the knife hitting the chopping board took over the silence for a beat or two.

“Is she the one who gave you those ginger candies last winter?”

A small, surprised laugh escaped him. “Yeah.”

Another pause, then, as she reached for the spice tin, “And the one who brought you back from Haarlem for the ENT appointment?”

Reyhaan hesitated for a beat, his hand still on the edge of the counter. The quiet between them stretched just long enough for something deeper to surface. A moment he hadn’t planned on naming aloud. He hadn’t talked much about that day—about how the panic had built up silently in his chest, how he couldn’t string a proper sentence when the doctor asked him simple questions. How Aria had seen straight through it.

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. That was her.”

His mother didn’t press, but something in her stillness made him speak again.

“I didn’t… I couldn’t explain anything properly that day,” he said, voice low. “I didn’t even know what I was trying to say half the time. But she just—understood. Took over without making it a big deal. Even waited while I sat outside after, just… breathing.”

She didn’t interrupt. Just stirred the pot gently.

He smiled to himself. “She knew exactly what I needed. And didn’t make it feel like pity.”

His mother turned slightly toward him, ladle in hand, expression softer than before. “You’ve been calmer these past few months. Since that day. Happier.”

He looked down, quietly surprised by the truth of it.

“I saw you on a video call with her the next day,” she continued, almost absently. “You were smiling. Really smiling. It’s been a while since you looked that at peace.”

There was something about hearing it aloud—from her, of all people—that made his chest ache in the gentlest way. That small, strange warmth that had been settling inside him since last night swelled a little.

His mother turned back to the stove, then asked it like one might ask about the weather: “Do you like her?”

His head snapped up, the question so straightforward it nearly disarmed him.

“I mean—yeah, of course I like her,” he said, then caught himself, stumbling, “I mean, as a friend. Definitely.”

His mother raised an eyebrow without looking at him. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

Reyhaan opened his mouth. Closed it.

A long silence passed between them. The smell of cumin and coriander wafted up from the pan. Somewhere in the neighborhood, birds began to call to each other—soft, tentative notes of morning.

He thought of the way Aria had paused before saying yes to staying over, the way she curled her hands into the sleeves of his hoodie when it got too cold in the early morning, the quiet rhythm of their conversation the night before, the promise they made without raising their voices.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

He thought of how her presence didn’t demand anything from him—but still made space for everything he was. Not just the comfort, but the clarity she brought with her. That rare kind of ease that stayed even when she wasn’t there.

“I think I do,” he said at last, voice quiet. “Like her. More than I’ve let myself admit.”

His mother didn’t smile, didn’t tease. She just placed a lid on the pan and said, with a touch of something almost like relief, “Good.”

He nodded, not quite at her, but to the realization itself.

Something had shifted. Not just last night, but here too—in the kitchen, in the light, in the way his mother didn’t need him to explain and still understood. A moment lifted, finally.

The plane shifted, dipping just enough for the soft jolt to pull Reyhaan back into the present.

A gentle chime sounded. The seatbelt sign lit up. Outside the oval window, cloudbanks thinned, sunlight slicing through in golden streaks.

He blinked once, twice, grounding himself in the airless calm of the cabin. A faint clink of cutlery reached him from somewhere down the aisle. Lucian was still beside him, earbuds half in, humming off-key with more confidence than tune. It made Reyhaan almost smile.

Almost.

He glanced at his watch.

12:03 PM.

Twelve minutes.

Twelve minutes until they touched down.

Twelve minutes until she did too—flying in from India, somewhere just above the same skies, or perhaps already banking over rooftops. Close enough that their paths were no longer parallel.

He adjusted his seatbelt.

She’d texted him last night just before boarding—something about a window seat, about missing the weird hush of Dutch skies. No emojis. Just her rhythm. Unspoken, but easy to read now.

He exhaled through his nose and looked down at his hands.

He remembered the sound of her laugh the last time they’d spoken. Not the careful laugh she gave professors or strangers. The other one—unguarded, escaping before she could soften it. The one that made something loosen in his chest.

He remembered the way she tapped her ring against ceramic mugs when thinking, the quiet rhythm of it like punctuation to her pauses. It had stayed with him—one of those barely-there things that lingered long after silence returned.

She’d called last week just to ask which café had the better oat milk. He hadn’t answered directly. Just sent her a blurry photo of that crooked corner café with bad signage and good lighting, the one she liked. Her reply had been three dots and an “of course it is.”

She always read between the silences.

Reyhaan wanted to tell her about the fog lifting—about how, for the first time in months, the edges of his days didn’t feel so blurred. About how he wasn’t as angry at his voice, or his body, or the stillness. Not all the time, anyway.

He wanted to say thank you. And maybe sorry, too. But also that he missed her—more than he’d meant to.

The plane tilted gently into descent. Below them, the land stretched open—flat, familiar, bathed in the tentative light of an early afternoon.

He didn’t know how the next hour would unfold.

What she would say. What he would find in her expression when they locked eyes again.

But for the first time in weeks, he wasn’t afraid of the not-knowing.