A conversation

We’d been seeing each other for over a year, always near the apartment lift. Mornings, mostly. Sometimes evenings. She lived on the fifth floor. I lived on the sixth. There were days when we stepped into the lift together, stood side by side, pressed our buttons, and waited out the silence. A nod if our eyes met. Occasionally, a polite half-smile. No words. Just the quiet rhythm of shared space, passed like background noise.

That morning, the lift wasn’t working. I’d already walked down two flights of stairs when I heard someone behind me. Turning around, I saw her climbing up, probably had forgotten something. She was slightly out of breath, carrying a tiffin bag and some papers that kept slipping from her grip. We both paused at the fourth-floor landing.

“The lift’s out again,” I said, not expecting a real reply.

She wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “Yeah. Third time this week.”

I waited. She didn’t go back up. Instead, she nodded toward the stairs. “Let’s go down, then. At least there’s company.”

We continued walking. Neither of us spoke for the first few steps. The stairwell was warm, the kind that always smelled faintly of cleaning liquid and damp concrete. At one point, she shifted the file under her arm and asked, “Where do you work?”

“Malviya Nagar. Finance firm. You?”

“Pitampura. I handle paperwork, mostly documentation for people. Applications, renewals, corrections. Government stuff.”

I smiled faintly. “So... lots of lines, frustrated clients, and people who forgot to bring something important?”

She laughed, a quiet, delayed sound. “Every day. And half the time, they blame me for things that went wrong before I even met them. But it’s okay. I like helping people who listen.”

We were now near the second floor. She paused to fix the strap of her bag, and her papers almost fell again. I instinctively reached out, but she steadied them before I had to.

“You live on the fifth floor, right?” I asked, casually.

She looked at me for a moment before replying. “Yeah. You remembered?”

I shrugged. “I’ve seen you press the button enough times.”

There was a pause. Not awkward, just full. Then she asked, “And you? Sixth?”

I nodded. “Just above you. Literally.”

She smiled. “We’ve been in the same lift this long, and this is the first real conversation.”

“Maybe the lift had to stop working for that to happen,” I said.

She didn’t respond directly. Just walked a little slower after that. When we reached the ground floor, she didn’t rush out. We stood near the gate, waiting for our rides. She checked her phone, then looked at me.

“So... what do you do when you’re not working?” she asked.

“Mostly nothing. I waste time, scroll mindlessly, and read sometimes. You?”

She tilted her head. “I write a bit. Nothing serious. Just thoughts, observations. You know, random stuff people never say out loud.”

I was about to ask more, but her cab pulled up.

She stepped forward, opened the door, and then paused. “This felt... strange, in a good way.”

I nodded. “Yeah. It did.”

As she got in, she looked back and said, “What kind of conversation was that, anyway?”

I smiled. “A needed one.”

That evening, when I returned home and stepped into the now-functional lift, I pressed the sixth floor. For a second, my finger hovered over the fifth. I didn’t press it. But I noticed I smiled when the lift crossed that floor.

We didn’t talk every day after that. But when we did, it never felt like the first time again.