The White and Red Sweater

She had this sweater. White with red stripes. A little faded at the sleeves, like it had been washed too many times in too many hostels.

She wore it almost every day during winter, even when it wasn’t that cold. She said it “balanced her.” Her exact words. "It makes me feel like my body has a shape. Without it, I feel like I’m floating."

The first time she said that, I just nodded. Later that night, it made me want to cry. Not for her. For how much I wanted to be that sweater. We weren’t dating. At least not in the way people define it. We shared a table in the library. Shared earbuds during walks. Shared silences that weren’t uncomfortable.

We never said what this was. But I remember the first time she leaned her head on my shoulder. It was during a late evening lecture neither of us needed to attend, and she fell asleep for six whole minutes. I didn’t move. Six minutes. That’s all it took for me to realise, this girl has no idea how much room she’s taken up inside me. One night, she called. Said she couldn’t sleep. Her roommate had gone home, and the hostel lights were off, and the silence was “too big.”

So I walked. Across campus. No jacket. No plan. Just… a need to show up. She was waiting near the canteen. Hair tied up messily. That white and red sweater. Hugging a teddy bear the size of a laptop bag. We didn’t talk for the first ten minutes. Just sat on that cold stone bench like we were waiting for a bus that never came.

“I used to sleep with this teddy,” she finally said. “Even now, when no one’s watching. It smells like my old house. Like cabinets and naphthalene and maa.”

I nodded. “I have a blanket like that. Smells like Diwali in my old room.”

She looked at me, suddenly soft. “See? That’s what I mean. You get it.”

And then, without warning, she asked, “You ever get that feeling? That if someone even slightly touched you right now, you'd just... fall apart?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Every time I’m near you.”

She smiled. Looked away. I don’t know what came over me, but I turned to her and said, 

“You are more favourite to me than my favourite song.”

She looked back sharply, like the sentence had slapped her awake. Not in a bad way. In the way you wake up from a dream that was almost too real.

“Which song?” she asked quietly.

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not about the song. It’s about how you make it irrelevant.”

She looked at me for a long time after that. Didn’t touch me. Didn’t cry. Just sat there, processing the kind of love that doesn’t demand anything, only offers.

I never tried to be her boyfriend. I tried to be the teddy she hugged when she couldn’t sleep. I tried to be the sweater she wore when the world made her forget what her body felt like. I tried to be the call she made when the silence got too big.

That’s all. That’s enough. Sometimes, love isn’t a confession. It’s a consistency.

It’s showing up at 2:17 a.m. because she said she couldn’t sleep. It’s knowing what brand of sanitary napkins she uses, even though she’s never said it out loud.

It’s deleting a reel before posting because you know she wouldn’t find it funny. It’s being her quiet space in a loud world.

People kept asking me why we never made it official. And I kept wanting to say, because love like this doesn’t need paper. Or status. Or Instagram.

It just needs a park bench. A faded sweater. A teddy bear. And a boy too soft to ask for love, but too honest to fake anything else.

She left eventually. Got placed in another city. Different time zone. New friends.I haven’t heard from her in months.

But I still keep that bench in my walks. Still plays that song, she never asked the name of. And some nights, when sleep doesn't come, I whisper:

"I hope someone looks at you and thinks, I want to be the sweater she wears when she can't sleep."