It wasn't supposed to be a story. It started as a mess.
Just a few lines on the back of a chemistry worksheet. I wrote them during a break, head down, pretending to review formulas. But there were no formulas in my head—only her voice, her eyes, her vanishing shadow. The way she faded from memory not suddenly but gradually, like ink drying in slow motion.
I didn't plan to write it. It wrote itself.
A boy. A girl. A goodbye that didn't happen. A silence that followed them like a stray dog no one fed. They had names, sure, but not hers and not mine. Still, I knew exactly who they were.
I wrote after lights-out. In the tiny space under my blanket. Pen tip scraping recycled pages. Half of it was crossed out. The rest was barely readable. But the feeling was there—the ache of it.
When I finished it, I didn't feel relief.
I felt afraid.
I printed it on a stolen library card. Used a friend's laptop. Formatted it into something that looked like a story. Named it The One Who Forgot Me and submitted it to a local contest. No prize money. Just publication in a little digital magazine.
I didn't tell anyone.
The rejection came in two lines:
Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, your story does not align with the theme of hope and triumph this issue is centered on.
That made me laugh. Not the fun kind. The kind that stings your throat.
I had written about someone waving and not being seen.
About the quiet kind of love—the kind that doesn't beg to be returned. That just is. That stays, even when it shouldn't.
Apparently, that wasn't hopeful enough.
---
I stared at that rejection email for days. Not because I wanted to protest. But because a part of me thought maybe they were right.
Maybe stories are supposed to fix things.
Maybe no one wants to read something that leaves you right where it found you.
But I couldn't lie in fiction the way I lied in real life. I couldn't make the boy forget her. I couldn't make her come back. I couldn't make him okay overnight.
Because I wasn't.
And stories, I thought, should feel honest. Even if they don't sell.
---
I kept writing. Not for contests anymore. Just for me.
Not even full stories. Just moments. A touch that lingered. A laugh remembered. A phrase that felt too heavy for its size.
I wrote about parents who didn't know how to love quietly.
About boys who felt too much and said too little.
About people who waited in hallways, hoping to be looked at like they mattered.
No one wanted those stories. But they existed. I did too, inside them.
---
One night, I wrote:
There are two kinds of love stories.
One ends with someone saying, "I love you."
The other never says it aloud. But it's in every pause. Every almost.
I reread that line a hundred times.
That was the story I had written.
That was what it meant.
---
I emailed the rejected story to myself. Just to have it somewhere permanent. Somewhere no one could erase it.
I added a sentence at the end:
She never saw me. But I saw her. And maybe that was enough.
I pressed send. Then closed the tab.
Not everything we write has to be shared.
Some things just need to be said.
---
I thought about Niya that night. Not in a loud way. Not in the kind that made me curl into myself.
Just in passing.
The way you think of an old school desk—the way it creaked, the way it held you, the way you left it behind without realizing you wouldn't return.
I didn't write her name. I never did.
But I always knew who I was writing about.
---
I wrote again the next morning. Same pen. Same journal. Another scene where the boy doesn't get the girl.
But he doesn't fall apart.
He just walks home, alone, and notices how the light hits the empty pavement.
And that too becomes a story.
---
That day, I told Yuvaan about the rejection.
He shrugged. "Screw them. Write the next one."
I laughed. "You didn't even read it."
"Don't need to. I know what kind of stories you tell."
"Yeah? What kind is that?"
He sipped his chai slowly. Then looked at me.
"The ones people remember when they're quiet."
I didn't reply. Just stared at the steam curling up from his cup.
He always knew how to say things without making them heavy.
---
I went back to the story that night. Printed it again. This time, I put it in a folder. Labeled it with a single word: Almost.
Because that's what the story was.
An almost.
An almost-love. An almost-forever. An almost-happy ending.
And I realized: that was enough.
That was what made it real.
The stories no one wanted me to write were the ones I needed most.
Not to be understood.
But to understand myself.
And maybe, one day, someone else would read them and whisper:
"Same."
---
So I kept writing.