The rain left the campus smelling like wet stone and jasmine. Conversations that afternoon had a softer edge to them, as if the world were adjusting to something new and fragile. Meera moved through it all with her shoulders tight, replaying the courtyard scene in a loop that left her raw.
She didn't know what to do with the admission she hadn't meant to make. It had slipped out — an accidental, ashamed thing — and now it sat between them like a smudged photograph. Saying maybe I am had felt like tearing open a bruise. It hurt, but it was also an odd relief. Truth, however messy, was still truth.
At lunch, Priya waited with two steaming cups and a face that mixed curiosity with motherly worry. "Alright," she said without preamble, pushing a cup at Meera. "Spill. Did you and Malhotra have some soulmate rain moment or what?"
Meera let out something that might have been a laugh. "No. There was rain. And an argument. And then I said something I shouldn't have." She watched the steam curl up from her cup as if it might answer for her.
Priya's thumb nudged Meera's wrist. "Which part — the I hate you part or the maybe I am part?" Her tone was half teasing, half urgent.
"All of it," Meera admitted. "I don't know. I feel like I'm losing my sense of what I want versus what he decides for me." She swallowed. "And the worst part? I keep wanting him around."
Priya's expression softened with that small, pitying kindness friends reserve for one another. "You're allowed to be confused," she said finally. "This is messy. But we can be messy together." She squeezed Meera's hand before the moment turned too fragile.
Later, Meera retreated to the photography lab because motion steadied her. She put on soft music and let her fingers move over prints, trying to find the patience to edit. The hands that had once felt confident now felt uncertain, as if they were learning to operate in someone else's skin.
Her phone buzzed twice but she left it face down. She wanted to keep this afternoon free of his calibrating pulse. For once, she wanted to be the one to set the rhythm.
When she finally did glance, the messages were simple and precise:
Aarav: You looked different today.
Aarav: Are you alright?
She exhaled. She could have written back a sharp line, a refusal — but instead she typed: I'm fine. Even as she hit send, she wondered whether fine meant she was okay or simply that she would survive this day.
By evening the campus hummed with the news that Meera and Aarav had been seen together in the rain — and not curtly arguing like usual, but standing too close, shoes wet, voices low. Rumors moved fast; by the time she walked across the quad, strangers' gazes traced the outline of her shoulders like they were reading a headline.
She kept her head down. The attention had an invasive quality now, as if everyone carried tiny cameras in their minds, capturing her likeness for later judgment or gossip. Once you were visible, the world made stories to fit that visibility.
A knock at her dorm door was quick and certain. She opened it on reflex, expecting Priya or a stray classmate or the delivery boy with cold samosas. Instead, Aarav stood there, an umbrella in hand despite the clear sky, his coat hung across one arm as if he'd stepped out from some exacting blueprint.
"Can I come in?" he asked.
She hesitated. The part of her that wanted distance said no. The part that felt threadbare and tired and secretly thankful for the warmth of his presence — that part didn't argue. She stepped aside.
He didn't barge in. He moved like water finding a channel, as if he belonged in the room simply by right of existing. He set his umbrella in the stand and, after a careful survey of her small space, sat on the edge of her desk with a cautious grace.
"I didn't like how you looked today," he said after a long moment. "Like someone holding her breath for too long."
She wanted to tell him that she had been. That the breath had been for both his presence and his absence. Instead she wrapped her arms around herself and said nothing.
He watched her for a while, the quiet in the room deep enough to be a presence. When he spoke again, his voice was softer than she'd ever heard it. "You pushed me away yesterday. You ignored my message. You looked like you were trying to leave."
"You wanted me to leave?" Her words were brittle. "Is that the requirement now? Test me by seeing if I run?"
"No." He shook his head, the motion almost shy. "I wanted to know if you would. To learn what you would do on your own." His gaze was direct. "But when you didn't run, I felt… relieved. And jealous. And afraid. All at once."
Relief. Jealousy. Fear. The list sounded like the ingredients of something combustible. Meera's chest tightened at his admission, at the small human cracks she heard beneath his composed voice.
"You won't be able to be independent if you never get practice," she said, trying for a taut humor that dissolved. "And you won't be able to control everything by being omnipresent."
"You're right." He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. "Sometimes I do too much. Sometimes I forget that protection isn't permission."
The words were a small, dangerous gift. She loved and hated that he admitted a fault without collapsing into drama. It didn't make the past disappear; it only reframed it. A man who could name his failings and still insist on doing them was scarier than one who never admitted them at all.
"Why do you stay?" she asked suddenly, needing to claw at that thread of answer. "If your presence is this… heavy, why not walk away like everyone else?"
He considered her as if testing the authenticity of the question. "Because walking away would be easier," he said softly. "And I'm not taking the easy way." He exhaled. "Because you are the mess I cannot ignore. Because I keep thinking if I make the world better for you, maybe you'll choose to stay in it rather than run from me."
She pictured the Freedom folder — gone — the studio at midnight — interrupted. His words circled like a net around the memory. "Making the world better for me isn't yours to dictate, Aarav."
He nodded. "I know. I know that. But I keep trying."
There was a rawness in his admission that thinned her resistance, not because she agreed with his methods, but because it made him painfully human. The sight of humanity in him — so carefully concealed until now — tugged at something that stubbornly refused to remain only anger.
They sat in that room while the evening sun drained from the window, the lights of the campus pressing a muted glow through the curtains. It felt like a pause borrowed from a different life. For a sliver of time their interactions were not a chess game but two people who suffered under the same complicated truth.
When he left, he did so quietly, closing the door in a move that felt like an apology and an order. Meera leaned against it as if it might hold her upright.
As she prepared for bed, her phone buzzed once more.
Aarav: Sleep. Tomorrow I'll help with your exhibit prep. I'll be there. Don't be late.
She stared at it. The words were practical, a plan folded into care. He continued to shape her world whether she consented or not — and yet, the invite to work together tugged at her stubbornness like a promise.
Meera turned the phone face down. She didn't know whether to be furious or oddly comforted. The rooms felt smaller each night, and yet in their smallness someone else's steps were the most familiar sound.
Outside, the world kept listening. The walls, the trees, the river — all seemed to record every small surrender and every tiny resistance. In the quiet between rain and footsteps, she wondered how many more of her choices would arrive already decided for her.
When sleep finally took her, it felt thin. The line between what she wanted and what she feared grew skinnier by the day.