Chapter 32: chapter 32

Chapter 32 The call had ended hours ago, but the words still hung in Sourabh’s room like the scent of rain—faint, comforting, impossible to ignore.He sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor as if some hidden answer might be written in the scratches on the old tiles. His phone lay beside him, the screen dark, but it felt warm still, as if it remembered her voice too.They had spoken like old friends, like uncertain lovers, like two people trying to figure out where they stood when the ground beneath them had shifted. There had been no declarations. No demands. Just the hesitant promise of trying.Trying.That word echoed in his head like a song stuck on loop. It wasn’t certainty. It wasn’t resolution. But it was more than silence. More than the hollow waiting.He got up, unable to sit still any longer, and pulled open the drawer of his desk. At the very bottom, beneath sheets of old notes and inkless pens, he found the journal he hadn’t opened in months. A soft brown leather cover, corners frayed, pages yellowed with time and neglect.He flipped to a blank page, the spine crackling slightly from disuse. And then, almost without thinking, he began to write.> “Trying doesn’t sound like much. But after months of silence, it feels like a thunderclap. I don’t know if we’ll find what we lost. Or if we’re even the same people who kissed that rainy afternoon. But tonight, her voice felt real again. Like something I hadn’t imagined. Maybe that's enough. Maybe that’s how you start again.”He paused, tapping the pen gently against the page. Then, after a moment, he wrote one more line.> “Hope is quieter than I remembered. But it’s still here.”---The next morning came with a kind of clarity Sourabh hadn’t felt in weeks. Nothing about the day had changed—his classes still loomed, assignments still pressed, and the cafeteria food still tasted like cardboard—but something inside him had shifted.He sent her a message around noon.“Good morning. I hope today feels lighter for you. No pressure to reply quickly—I just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you.”He hit send before he could second-guess it. And that simple act—reaching out without expectation—felt like progress.---Across the city, in a sunlit apartment with mismatched curtains and the faint hum of a ceiling fan, Nitya sat cross-legged on her couch, staring at her own phone.Her heart skipped slightly when she saw the message. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t grand. But it felt like a door gently creaking open.She typed, paused, deleted. Then typed again.“Today does feel lighter. Thank you for that.”Send.She put the phone down and exhaled. The weight wasn’t gone, but it was shifting. Becoming something she could carry without collapsing.The day moved on. Meetings came and went. Calls. Deadlines. Deadlines missed.But sometime around evening, her phone lit up again.“I walked past a bookstore today and saw that poetry collection you once mentioned. I almost bought it. Then realized I don’t remember the name. You still have the title?”She smiled for the first time that day.“‘The Sun and Her Flowers.’ By Rupi Kaur. You really listened?”“Always.”---Over the next few days, they fell into a rhythm. Not quite daily, not yet predictable, but steady. Messages that turned into late-night calls. Songs sent with no context. Memes that made them laugh harder than expected.They didn’t talk about the past. Not yet. They stayed in the now.It was safer that way.One evening, after a call that lingered long after midnight, Sourabh found himself walking aimlessly through the college grounds, the campus quiet under a sleepy moon.He looked up at the sky and wondered—not for the first time—what she was doing at that exact moment. Was she also staring at the stars? Was she thinking of him too?He picked up his phone, thumb hovering, then typed:“If we ever meet again… what’s the first thing you’d say to me?”She didn’t reply immediately. But ten minutes later, her message lit up the screen.“I’d say I’m sorry I didn’t say more when I should have. Then I’d ask if I can still hold your hand.”He stared at it for a long time.Then: “You can.”---They were nowhere near answers. They hadn’t solved the riddle of timing or distance or circumstance. But something had shifted. Probably they didn't know what was that.They were writing a new story.Not one that erased the old chapters—but one that dared to believe the story wasn’t finished.