By now, it had become routine again.
Shared study sessions. Inside jokes over textbooks. Midnight texts about messed-up timetables. Rishi had returned to himself — or at least, the version of him that laughed a little more when Vinna was around.
But something had changed, quietly.
The way his eyes lingered a second longer when she spoke.
The way her smile came more freely in his presence.
The comfortable pauses between them — like silence was just another language they shared now.
Neither of them had said anything. Not out loud.
But it was there.
One Tuesday evening, they sat on the floor of Vinna's room, surrounded by coloured pens, mock test papers, and chai cups that had already gone cold.
Rishi was explaining a question from the physics section when Vinna got distracted. Not by the question. By him.
He was scribbling something in her rough notebook — a messy diagram of a pendulum — completely focused. His brows furrowed, lips slightly parted, and that familiar pencil behind his ear.
She didn't say anything. Just watched.
And then he paused. Looked up.
"What?" he asked, noticing her stare.
"Nothing," she said, blinking fast. "Just thinking."
"About?"
She shrugged. "How you explain things. It's... calming."
He smiled, almost shyly. "Glad you think so."
She took the notebook from him, flipping through the pages casually. Notes, equations, scribbles, diagrams...
And then she found it.
On one of the last pages — in the margin, written sideways in Rishi's unmistakable handwriting:
"If she knew how much she mattered to me, she'd never doubt herself again."
She froze.
The air between them changed — stilled, thickened.
He noticed the shift.
"What did you—"
She turned the notebook toward him silently. His eyes widened when he saw the page.
"Oh," he said. Then softer, "I didn't mean for you to see that."
Vinna's heart was pounding. Not from panic. From something else.
Warmth. Fear. Hope.
"You wrote this about me?" she asked, voice low.
He hesitated. Then nodded. "Yeah."
The room felt smaller. Brighter. Quieter.
And then—Vinna smiled. A small, unsure, glowing smile.
"I thought I was the only one feeling this."
He exhaled, like he'd been holding his breath for weeks. "You weren't."
They didn't hug. Didn't kiss. Didn't do anything overly dramatic.
Just sat there, side by side, hearts pounding in sync — two aspirants who had slowly, steadily fallen into something real, right in the middle of academic chaos.
Love — the kind that grows between late-night texts and half-erased formulas.
Supporting an author gives you wings!!😉
Write a comment ...