Ishaan had loved Aarya for as long as he could remember. Not in the way poets wrote about grand confessions under the moonlight, nor in the way lovers carved their initials into tree trunks. His love was quiet—so quiet it never even reached her ears.
Aarya was sunlight personified—bright, untamed, impossible to grasp. She lived loudly, laughed freely, and loved recklessly. Ishaan watched her from the shadows, content with being the unnoticed constant in her life. He was always there—helping her find lost books in the library, bringing her coffee on exam nights, picking up the pieces of her heartbreaks without her ever realizing he was breaking a little each time too.
He never told her. Not when she cried on his shoulder about another boy who had left, not when she hugged him and called him “the best friend ever.” Not even when she once drunkenly joked, “Ishaan, if I don’t find someone by thirty, I’ll just marry you!” and laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.
Then, one day, she found him—the one. The one she didn’t cry over. The one she didn’t lose. The one who wasn’t Ishaan.
He stood in the crowd at her wedding, a tight smile on his face, clapping at all the right moments. No one noticed how pale he looked, how hard he was gripping the chair in front of him. And when she turned and caught his eye, smiling at him like she always did, like nothing had changed—he smiled back.
And that was it.
Ishaan left before the last dance. Walked away before she could say goodbye.
Years later, when Aarya found an old letter tucked inside the pages of a book he had gifted her, her hands trembled. It was addressed to her. It was never sent.
"Aarya, I have loved you since the beginning, and I will love you till the end. But you were never mine to love. Be happy."
Tears blurred her vision as she clutched the letter to her chest. By then, it was too late. Ishaan was long gone, just like his love—never spoken, never heard, never returned.
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