What If I Tell You

It must have been raining that day, too. Or maybe I just remember it that way, the blur of headlights, the smell of wet earth mixing with coffee, the way sound softens when the world is soaked through.

Nisha was already inside when I arrived. Through the glass, I saw her scrolling through her phone, and for a moment, I just stood there in the rain, watching her exist without me. Three years in Mumbai, and I still measured time by how long it had been since I’d seen her smile begin at the corner of her mouth before spreading.

“Your coffee’s getting cold,” she said when I finally sat down. Not hello. I missed you. Just the quiet cruelty of how easily we’d learned to pretend.

“Black, no sugar?”

“Haan. You and your refined taste.” She said it like she was remembering something else entirely.

The café smelled of cardamom and old wood. Outside, an autorickshaw splashed through a puddle, and somewhere a Hindi song played, muffled and distant, Tum paas aaye, yun muskuraaye...

“Mumbai’s fine,” I said, though she hadn’t asked yet. “Same. You know.”

She did know. That was the problem. She knew about the promotion I didn’t celebrate, the apartment with too many quiet rooms, the way I still left her side of every restaurant booth empty even when she wasn’t there.

“I’m working on this old haveli in Shivajinagar,” she said, tracing circles on her cup. Eighteenth century, carved pillars, arches. You’d like it. The light comes through differently in the afternoon.”

I wanted to tell her I’d like anything she wanted to show me. I wanted to tell her I’d been carrying that night on the hostel terrace for eight years, the way she’d fallen asleep mid-sentence, her head against my shoulder, and how I’d stayed frozen for hours because moving meant it would end.

But I said, “Sounds beautiful.”

The rain grew heavier. Someone opened the door, and the sound rushed in, the wet breathing of Pune in July.

“I need to tell you something.” The words came out too sharply.

She looked up. “Okay.”

“There’s this woman. At work.” I watched my hands around the cup. “Priya. My parents think we should.”

“Get married?” Her voice had gone careful.

“Haan.”

Silence. In it, all the things we’d never said, three a.m. calls that ended just before meaning, birthday texts at 12:01, the way she cried on my shoulder about everyone except me.

“That’s… good, Manish. Really.” The smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You should be happy.”

“Should I?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Why didn’t we?” I asked quietly. “You and me. Why didn’t we ever?”

“Manish.”

“I’m not asking for anything,” I said. “I just need to know if it was only me. If I made it all up.”

“Don’t.”

“Please, Nisha. Did you ever… almost?”

She was quiet for a long time. Outside, the rain kept falling; that song still played; someone was frying pakoras in the kitchen, the smell of hot oil and possibility.

“Do you remember that night?” she said finally. “Second year. We were on the terrace until sunrise. You were talking about that Ladakh trip, and I was thinking.” She paused. “Take me with you. Take me everywhere. I was thinking about things I shouldn’t think about my best friend.”

Something in me loosened.

“But you never said anything,” she went on. “So I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe you just needed a friend. So I dated other people, called you every Sunday, took this job in Pune even though Delhi paid more because.” She looked at me. “Because you were here.”

“Nisha.”

“Why tell me this now? When there’s someone else?”

The lie sat between us, sharp and small. I could leave it there. Walk away clean.

“There’s no Priya.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I made her up. I needed to know. I couldn’t keep wondering. I couldn’t marry someone someday without knowing if you…” I stopped. “I’m sorry. It was wrong.”

“You lied to me.”

“Yes.”

“To make me feel what? Jealous?”

“To make you feel something.” My voice broke. “Anything other than this careful, friendly nothing.”

She was crying. Not the cinematic kind, just quiet tears running down her face while she sat very still.

“I hate you,” she said.

“I know.”

“I hate that you made me think.” Her breath hitched. “I hate that I tried to be happy for you when all I wanted was to tell you to stay. To tell you that I’ve loved you since that awful movie where I pretended to sleep just so you wouldn’t move your arm. That every guy after was me trying to forget how you make my chest hurt. That I’m tired, Manish. Tired of pretending you’re just my friend.”

The café had gone quiet, or maybe I’d stopped hearing anything but her.

“Then don’t,” I said. “Pretend.”

She didn’t move for a long moment. Then she stood up. For a second, I thought she’d leave. Instead, she came around the table, close enough that I could see the tears caught in her lashes.

“This doesn’t fix it,” she said. “You're lying.”

“I know.”

“I’m still angry.”

“Okay.”

“But if you ever.” Her voice cracked. “If you ever make me go through that again.”

I stood, took her face in my hands. “Never.”

When we kissed, it tasted of salt and coffee and eight years of wrong timing finding its way home. Outside, the rain kept falling. Inside, the song had changed to an old ghazal, something about waiting and love that arrives late but still arrives.

We broke apart. She was half-laughing, half-crying.

“My mother will say she told me so.”

“Mine’s probably already planned the engagement.”

“They knew?”

“Everyone knew, Nisha. The hostel, our friends, the chai-wala outside college.”

She leaned her forehead against mine. “Then we were the last to know.”

“Better late.”

“Don’t,” she whispered, pressing a finger to my lips. “Don’t make it tidy.”

So I didn’t. We just stood there while the rain blurred the city outside, and I didn’t promise forever or perfection. I only held her hand and thought of all the nights we’d lost, and the ones still ahead, unfinished, uncertain, ours.

When we finally stepped out, we shared her umbrella, walking slowly through streets that smelled of petrichor and frying samosas. She didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t know.

Maybe that was the point.

A rickshaw passed, splashing water that somehow missed us. The driver sang softly to his radio, an old love song about rain and time that moves too slowly until suddenly it doesn’t.

“Manish?”

“Haan?”

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you completely.”

“I know.”

But her fingers tightened around mine, and in the orange glow of streetlights reflected off wet pavement, she smiled, the real one, the one I’d been carrying for eight years.

We walked on through the rain, two people who’d loved each other in silence so long that speaking it aloud still felt fragile, something that needed darkness and falling water to survive.

Tomorrow, there would be questions, complications, the slow work of turning friendship into something more.

But tonight, there was just the rain, her hand in mine, and the quiet relief of finally, finally not pretending.

Tonight was enough.