A Silent Kind of Love

A Silent Kind of Love

By Lila Hart

When I first met Jules, I thought he didn’t like me.

He was quiet—painfully so. While others filled the room with laughter and noise, Jules sat in the corner of the university library with headphones on and eyes that never looked up unless necessary.

I was the opposite. Loud in my opinions, clumsy with emotions, always ready to fill awkward silences with too many words.

But fate has a strange way of placing opposites in each other’s orbit.

We were assigned as partners in a literature seminar. Our first meeting was awkward. I asked him about five different questions before realizing he was deaf.

I panicked—fumbling for my phone to type instead, cheeks burning, apologizing in a dozen ways that didn’t make it better.

But Jules just smiled, typed back:
"No worries. I read lips well. You talk a lot."

It was the first time someone said that without annoyance. He made it feel like a compliment.

From then on, we built a rhythm. Notes passed in notebooks, texts full of too many emojis, video calls where I exaggerated words and he patiently waited for me to slow down. I started learning sign language. Badly at first. My hands stuttered like my voice never had. But Jules always understood.

He never said “I love you” with words. He said it when he waited outside my class with hot tea on cold days. When he noticed I was anxious and signed breathe across the table. When he touched my wrist softly in crowded rooms to remind me he was there.

It was a silent kind of love.

Not performative. Not loud. Just steady. Present.

He never wrote me long messages or grand declarations. But he saw everything. Noticed the smallest shifts in my mood. The way my fingers curled when I was sad. The way I looked away when something hurt. He saw me in ways no one else did.

And I saw him.

The way his eyes lit up when he found a new word he liked in a book. The way his hands danced when he was excited. How he translated music through vibration, his palm against the speaker like he was listening with his skin.

I fell in love with all of it.

But I never told him. Not out loud. Not even signed.

Maybe I was afraid. That if I said it, it would demand something of him. That I’d break the gentle peace we had built.

Then, one autumn afternoon, as the leaves turned fire-orange and the air hinted at winter, he took me to a quiet rooftop garden. No one was around. Just us, a picnic, and the city breathing below.

He handed me a book of poetry. Inside, a note tucked between pages.

"You never needed to say it. I’ve always known. But I’m ready if you are."

My heart thudded.

I looked up. His hands moved slowly, deliberately.

"I love you," he signed.

"I always have."

Tears blurred everything.

I reached out, took his hands in mine, and signed back—messily, imperfectly, honestly—

"I love you too."

In that moment, silence wasn’t empty. It was full. Of meaning. Of years of unsaid feelings. Of truths finally held in the open.

We didn’t need words. We never did.

Love, I learned, isn’t always loud. It doesn’t have to shout, doesn’t need a stage or a song. Sometimes, it’s a hand held quietly under the table. A cup of tea. A smile across the room.

Sometimes, it’s the way someone remembers your favorite page number or waits for you to speak in your own time.

Sometimes, love is silent.

But it is never, ever small.