A LOVE STORY

Rain tapped gently against the café window, painting a rhythmic melody only the lonely seemed to notice. Elena sat by the glass, hands wrapped around a warm cup of chai, her sketchpad open but untouched. She always came here on Thursdays — not for the coffee, not even for the ambiance — but because this was the place she’d once seen him.

He hadn’t spoken to her then. Just sat across the room, reading a book that looked older than time, with a navy-blue scarf wrapped around his neck and headphones covering his ears. She remembered him because his eyes were the kind that held worlds in them — a quiet storm that made her forget what she was thinking.

And then he was gone. Weeks passed. Months.

Until today.

“Elena?” a soft voice asked, pulling her out of her thoughts.

She looked up, startled. It was him — standing there, same blue scarf, holding two coffees.

“You probably don’t remember me,” he said, a little shy. “I sat here… once. A while ago. You dropped your pencil, and I picked it up.”

Her heart stuttered. Of course, she remembered. But her voice faltered.

“I remember,” she smiled, finally.

He handed her a cup. “I took a chance you’d be here. I hoped you would.”

They talked for hours — about art and old music, forgotten books and why neither of them liked pineapple on pizza. His name was Ayaan. He was a writer who never finished his stories. She was an artist who never shared her drawings.

“I think we’re both hiding,” she laughed.

“Maybe,” he said, “we just hadn’t found the right person to show them to.”

Thursdays became their day.

They'd meet at the café, sometimes in silence, other times in loud bursts of laughter. She sketched him once without telling him, and when he saw it, he stared at it for so long, she thought he hated it.

“This is the first time someone’s captured me,” he whispered. “Not just my face. Me.”

She felt the same about his words. He began to write again, and his stories had characters that felt like pieces of her — her laugh, her fears, her wild dreams.

One day, they walked under cherry blossoms, and he said, “If I wrote our story, it’d begin here.”

“But we’ve already begun,” she replied.

He smiled. “Then this is chapter two.”

But even love stories have storms.

Ayaan stopped showing up.

The texts became fewer, shorter. Then they stopped altogether.

Elena didn’t know what she had done wrong. She waited at the café, sketchpad in hand, rain tracing sorrow on the windows again. Days turned into weeks.

Then, a letter.

Handwritten, folded twice, smelling faintly of ink and jasmine.

Elena,

I’m sorry I disappeared. I didn’t want to tell you, but I should have.

I’ve been diagnosed with a rare neurological condition. It’s getting harder to write, to hold things, even to remember. I didn’t want you to watch me fade.

But that was selfish. Because the truth is — every story I’ve written since I met you has been about us. You’ve changed my world.

And if I have any strength left, I want to finish just one story.

Ours.

If you still want to write it with me… I’ll be at the café. Thursday.

— Ayaan

She read it twice, three times, tears staining the paper. Her hands trembled, but her heart was steady.

She went.

He was there — thinner, paler, but still Ayaan. Still the man with stars in his eyes.

“You came,” he said.

“I never left,” she replied.

They sat together, hands intertwined, letting silence speak. They didn’t need to fill every moment with words. They were two hearts — but now, one story.

Years passed.

Elena published her first illustrated novel, Two Hearts, One Story, filled with sketches and stories inspired by their love. Ayaan’s handwriting appeared throughout, sometimes shaky, always sincere.

He didn’t see the book hit shelves across the world. But he read the first copy, held it close, and whispered, “We did it.”

In every page, every stroke of pencil and line of prose, their love lived on.

Because some stories never end.

They just become part of the people who read them.