A Letter She Never Read"

I met Aisha on a rainy afternoon, the kind where the sky looks like it's mourning something. I was sitting at a small bookstore café, sipping cold coffee, flipping through pages I wasn’t reading — until she walked in, dripping with rain and purpose.

She asked if she could share my table.
I nodded.
She smiled. That was the beginning.

We became friends first — late-night calls, endless texts, shared playlists, and walks that stretched until midnight. I fell in love with her slowly, the way pages in a book turn with the breeze. I memorized her laugh like lyrics and her silence like poetry.

But I never told her.
Because she loved someone else.

His name was Zayan. Confident, charming, everything I wasn’t. And she was so happy — at least she looked like it. I listened to her stories about him, helped her choose gifts, even wiped her tears when he made her cry.

She once said, “You’re the kind of person people come home to, but I’m still out looking for the storm.”

I was her home, but she loved the storm.


---

Three years passed. She moved away. We drifted apart.

Then one day, I heard Zayan left her. No goodbyes, no explanations. She stopped posting, stopped replying, stopped being Aisha.

So, I wrote her a letter. A real, ink-on-paper letter — because some words deserve to be held, not just read.

> "Aisha,
I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’ve loved you for a very long time.
Not the loud kind, but the steady, quiet love that waits patiently in the corner while you dance with someone else.
I never told you because your happiness was always more important than my feelings.
But maybe, just maybe, if you’re reading this now —
You’re ready to come home."



I never posted that letter. I kept it hidden inside my favorite book — the one she gave me — and life moved on.


---

One winter evening, two years later, I walked into the same bookstore cafe

And she was there.

Older, quieter. Alone.

She looked at me, smiled softly, and said,
“I never read the letter. But I felt it.”

I smiled too. Because sometimes, love doesn’t need words — just timing.

And this time, she wasn’t looking for a storm.
She was looking for home.