We didn't text much after that first day.
A few messages, yes—exchanging book titles, sending memes about people crying over fiction—but not the kind of texts that filled your phone. It was strange because I was used to that kind of interaction, always rapid-fire, always present. But with Rhea, it was different.
Her silence wasn't absence. It was a presence all its own.
The second time we met, it was her idea.
There was a small book-reading event she was attending—"not the TED-Talk kind," she promised in her message. "More like old souls gathering to whisper poetry into the city's cracks."
That line stuck with me and I dressed like a normal guy , so that no one could recognise me.
I arrived at a tucked-away venue in Shoreditch, a converted warehouse-turned-library with candles lined along the walls and folding chairs mismatched but charming. And there she was—sitting cross-legged on a faded maroon couch, completely immersed in a conversation with a little girl who couldn't be older than seven. The child clutched a notebook, her eyes glowing.
Rhea noticed me and waved without interrupting the conversation.
I stood there watching, trying not to smile too much like an idiot. I had spoken on stages, to rooms full of investors and thinkers and digital visionaries, but I suddenly felt out of place in this room full of dreamers and metaphors.
But on that day I told her about my identity and she was shocked by knowing that any millionaire could be so simple
Because of my startup, because of my past, or because she saw something I hadn't yet figured out she gave me the name -'Story boy' —I never asked. I was too afraid the answer might unravel the spell.
We sat beside each other as a poet in her 70s read about heartbreak from the 1960s. Everyone else listened with reverence. Rhea, though, closed her eyes. I could hear her breathing shift with the rhythm of the words, her fingers slightly moving like she was playing invisible piano keys with the syllables.
And I?
I looked at her more than I listened to the poetry.
After the reading, we wandered aimlessly under the city lights. The rain had come back—gentle, misty—and we both let it soak our jackets.
"Do you believe in soul connections?" she asked.
I paused. "I used to. Then I started making my website and I become so alone that I forgot to mimic emotion."
"That sounds sad."
"It is, kind of. But I'm still building the one that gets it right."
She smiled. "Maybe the writer needs to express his feelings before other people do."
I told her,"I am tech man I am not writer". She replied,"It was your idea only to create a platform where people can express their feelings and you are a human only and if you don't have the writing emotions then the thought of making that kind of website shouldn't come to your mind."
We stopped at a bench near the river. A saxophone player was setting up nearby. Rhea unwrapped a chocolate bar and split it in half without asking, like we'd done it a hundred times before.
"What are you thinking?" I asked.
She looked out at the Thames, letting her legs swing a little beneath the bench like a child.
"That this city never lets anyone feel like they've truly arrived. But maybe that's okay. Maybe home isn't a place—it's a moment."
That night, as I sat in my flat—wet clothes discarded, laptop open, plans for the next investor meeting blinking on my to-do list—I couldn't stop thinking about her. She hadn't asked a single question about my success. No "how much do you earn" or "what car do you drive" or even "where do you see yourself in upcoming five years."
Rhea asked questions like, "What book did you pretend to love or to feel included?" or "What memory do you go back to when you're scared?"
She wasn't interested in versions of me that could be Googled.
She wanted the chapters I had never written down in my mind or I never thought in that way.
That terrified me.
But it also thrilled me.
---
In the days that followed, we kept meeting. Quiet cafes. Park benches. A charity flea market where she got excited over vintage bookmarks. She once brought me a copy of The Little Prince and asked me to underline only the line that felt closest to my heart. I did.
She read it back out loud. Smiled. Said nothing.
One night, after a long walk where we both confessed things we'd never said aloud—my childhood in Kolkata, her estranged mother in Brighton—we ended up standing on a bridge with a view of the city glowing like a constellation of forgotten stories.
Neither of us moved.
She stepped closer. Her hand brushed mine—not accidentally. Purposefully. Slowly. I didn't pull away.
Rhea looked up at me.
"Do you ever feel like two people are just… sentences waiting to collide in the same paragraph?"
I laughed softly, heart thudding. "What does that make us?"
She leaned her head against my shoulder. "Maybe a chapter neither of us knew we needed."
I didn't kiss her that night.
And she didn't ask me to.
But something changed.
Not just in how I saw her.
In how I saw myself.
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