"Will you become my Happiness?"

The café was quiet that evening, its usual hum softened by the faint patter of rain on the windows. She sat across from me, her fingers tracing the edge of her coffee mug, lost in a thought she didn’t care to share. I didn’t press her. I rarely did. There was something about the way Aria guarded her silences that felt sacred. But tonight, something stirred in me—a restless need to fill that quiet.

I had known her for years. She was the friend who made bad days bearable, the kind of person who remembered small details—like how I hated olives but loved the briny smell of them. She wasn’t the loudest in the room, but somehow, she always held my focus.

Tonight, though, she seemed further away than usual. Her gaze kept slipping past me, out to the rain-slick street where headlights blurred like distant stars. I followed her gaze but saw nothing that deserved such attention.

“Aria,” I said, and she turned to me, startled, as if I’d interrupted a fragile dream.

“Hmm?” Her lips curled into a small smile, polite but distant.

I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but the words felt too heavy. Instead, I asked something safer. “Do you remember when we used to sit on the library steps after class?”

She laughed softly, a sound that warmed the dim corners of the room. “Of course. You’d always have some ridiculous theory about life—like how every book on those shelves held a secret code to the universe.”

“And you’d roll your eyes at me.”

“Because you were insufferable,” she teased, her eyes brightening.

I smiled, but my chest tightened. Moments like this—when her guard dropped and she let me see the warmth behind her wit—always made me ache a little. They were too fleeting, slipping through my fingers like sand.

As the rain softened outside, I leaned back in my chair, studying her. Aria. The girl who had always been there, like a constant star in my ever-shifting sky.

“You make me happy,” I said suddenly, the words escaping before I could measure their weight.

Her hand froze mid-air, and she set the mug down carefully. “What?”

“You make me happy,” I repeated, my voice quieter now. “Will you become my happiness?”

She stared at me, her expression unreadable. For a moment, I felt the pull of panic, the kind that comes from stepping too far onto a ledge. But then, her lips curved into a small, soft smile—one that didn’t immediately reveal the answer I was hoping for.

“You always say things like this, don’t you?” she murmured, her voice so quiet I had to lean forward to hear.

“Only when I mean them.”

Her eyes lingered on me, heavy with something I couldn’t quite name. She reached out, her fingers brushing the edge of my hand before pulling back. “It’s a big thing to ask someone,” she said finally, her words careful, as though afraid they might shatter something between us.

“I know.”

The silence stretched between us again, but it didn’t feel empty. It felt like waiting—like the moment between inhaling and exhaling, when the world holds its breath.

Finally, she spoke, her gaze dropping to the table. “Maybe,” she said, almost to herself. “Maybe happiness doesn’t work like that. Maybe it’s not something one person can give another.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t. I just sat there, watching her, trying to hold onto the fleeting warmth of her presence.

She looked up at me again, and this time, her smile was bittersweet. “But I want to try,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

The rain stopped outside, but the world inside the café shifted in a way that felt irreversible.

We sat there, fingers entwined, as the waitress brought the check and the hum of the café returned. Nothing grand had changed, yet everything felt different. And for the first time in years, the quiet between us wasn’t something to fill—it was something to savor.