Rohan has survived twenty-two years of being single, a crowd of opinionated voices in his head, and every relative's delayed-train stare. Then the girl next door moves in, and her book lands at his feet.
"Did you know that among people aged eighteen to twenty-five, there's been an unsettling rise in the number who prefer to stay single?" said one of the voices in my head.
"Dude. For once, could you stop fabricating statistics just to sound convincing?" snapped the Teacher, the voice that compulsively checked grammar, logic, and facts. "The rise in single-person households is actually more pronounced among older age groups, and—"
"Guys, seriously," interrupted the Moral Compass. "It's unethical to manipulate facts just because the truth makes you uncomfortable."
"Will you all shut up?" demanded another voice. "We're here to discuss the important matter of finding this poor guy a girlfriend."
"I hate all of you," I muttered.
Unfortunately, I said it out loud.
A woman walking past glanced over. I pretended to cough.
Hello, dear reader. I'm Rohan. Twenty-two years old. Final-year college student. Part-time overthinker. Full-time victim of my own imagination.
And yes, I'm single. Painfully so.
Not the tragic, violin-in-the-rain kind of single. Just the ordinary kind. The kind where relatives look at you at family gatherings with the expression usually reserved for a delayed train. The kind where your friends introduce you by saying, "He's a really nice guy. He just hasn't met the right girl yet," as if you were a defective product waiting for the right customer.
I had survived this condition reasonably well for twenty-two years.
Then she moved in next door.
The neighbor girl arrived three weeks ago with two suitcases, a box of books, and a confidence I couldn't quite decipher. She wasn't loud. She didn't try to be the center of attention. She simply existed as though she had every right to take up space in the world.
Somehow, that was enough to destroy the peace inside my head.
Every evening, I stood on our balcony, pretending to scroll through my phone. I wasn't scrolling. I was waiting.
She would come out to water her plants, her hair tied up some days, falling loose over her shoulders on others. She'd talk to someone on the phone, laugh at something they said, and occasionally glance at the sky as though she had somewhere more interesting to be than wherever the rest of us were.
"She's out of your league," whispered the Realist.
"League is a social construct," argued the Philosopher.
"You don't even know her," said the Teacher.
Exactly, I replied silently.
"So go talk to her."
That was Courage. I didn't listen to it very often.
Then, one evening, she stepped up to the railing with a book. It slipped from her hand, bounced once off the ledge, and gravity, apparently determined to meddle in my personal life, sent it tumbling onto my balcony.
It landed at my feet.
For one second, the voices went silent. Then they all erupted at once.
"Well," said the Realist, "there's no escaping it now."
Written by Abhiram R
Author of Two States, One Heart. Writes about the quiet negotiations inside families.
Next From the Catalog
"Don't mess it up," warned the Teacher.
"Say something meaningful," advised the Philosopher.
"Just give her the book!" screamed Courage.
I picked it up and walked over. Those five steps felt longer than every exam I'd ever taken.
When I reached her, I held out the book.
"Hey."
That was it. No statistics. No rehearsed introduction. No clever joke. None of the ten imaginary conversations I'd already played out in my head.
She looked at the book, then at me, and smiled.
"Hey."
Then something strange happened. The voices disappeared. All of them. For the first time in years, my head was completely quiet.
I had no idea what to say next. She didn't seem to mind.
"Thanks," she said, taking the book.
"Yeah. Sure."
Silence again, but not an awkward one. The kind that doesn't need to be filled.
"I'm Maya, by the way."
"Rohan."
"I know."
My heart stumbled. "You know?"
She laughed. "Your mom shouts it across the building every morning. Something about eating breakfast before it gets cold."
"That's… fair."
"Also, you're the guy who spends twenty minutes every evening pretending to check his phone."
I looked down at the phone in my hand. Then back at her.
"Oh."
Somewhere deep in my brain, a single voice whispered, We're doomed.
I smiled. Maybe we were. But for once, I didn't mind.
Perfect words, it turns out, are never the point. The point is speaking anyway, when your mind hands you a hundred reasons to stay silent.
Falling for someone doesn't have to begin with fireworks, dramatic music, or a grand declaration. Sometimes it begins with a book landing at your feet, a simple hello, a smile, and the realization that the person you were too nervous to approach had been noticing you all along.
And being single? It was never a flaw, never something that needed fixing.
It was only the quiet pause before the story began.
0 Comments