I Always Knew You'd Have A Blue Sofa

---

---

The water did not stop. In the middle of the market, something struck hard—a crack of metal, then a roar from a nearby shop. A man fell. The Ashok Stambh from a car’s grille lay beside him.

He ran. No breath left. He saw the car—the one that had followed his. He pulled at a sealed door. Nothing. His leg slammed into it. The metal did not move.

“Help me.”

An old man with a hammer. Glass shattered. The man looked inside. Bent over. Vomited.

A red flash. A driver’s head, cracked open.

He turned. His daughter stood there. Alive. He pulled her close. Then saw the blood—not hers. Someone else’s, soaked through her dress.

Behind her, an arm wrapped around her small body. Bone pushed through torn skin. He looked past the arm, past the blood, and saw the face. The mother. Her spine bent at an angle no body should hold. Her other arm still curled forward, as if reaching around something that was no longer there—a shell, a shield. The daughter had been inside that curve.

He lifted the girl out. She said nothing. She walked toward the mother’s body. Stopped. Tilted her head. She stared at the mother’s wide, open eyes. Then at the mother’s hand—fingers still stretched, still shaped to grip a child’s back. The daughter touched that hand. Traced a finger along the broken wrist. Her face was unreadable. No tears.

Lightning cracked across a blue sky. The girl smiled.

The father froze, his hands just inches away.

---

**Present Day**

“Sorry. We have bad news. In a most unfortunate manner, a woman has died. She used her last breath to shield her child.” The news anchor paused. “This rather shows the true meaning of love in this world. And also what it costs.”

“What are you even doing, Mysha?”

“Sorry.” I’d been so absorbed in the screen, I’d forgotten our food had arrived. The smell of garlic and butter hung in the air, suddenly cloying.

The café television flickered to a commercial break. I turned back to my plate, pushing a piece of pasta with my fork. Watching it slide through the sauce.

“You must… understand.” Priya was chewing, trying to speak and swallow at the same time. I fixed her with a look, and she hurriedly gulped.

“I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just pasta.”

“It’s now just a pasta.” She pointed her fork at me. “One day I’m going to order the entire menu on your tab, and you’re going to sit there and watch me eat every single thing. Including the desserts. Especially the desserts.”

“You hate desserts.”

“I’ll learn to love them. For revenge purposes.”

I laughed, shaking my head. The sound felt thin. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re deflecting.” She leaned forward, chin on her hand. “It’s our fourth year starting, right?”

“Definitely.”

“I mean, it’s been so long. Anyway, you’re going on a date tonight, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “Hmm.”

“All the best… or—” she paused, glancing toward the man at the café counter “—why don’t you try that guy? He’s hot. And handsome. And he’s been looking over here like he wants to comp your meal.”

I blushed, the heat climbing my neck, and turned toward the window. My reflection stared back, face half-lit. “You know my dad, don’t you?”

“Yeah, that industrious man who calls you every night at exactly nine o’clock like you’re still in boarding school.” She grinned. “I’m not saying marry the café guy. I’m saying—make Kabir sweat a little. Competition is healthy.”

“There is no competition. I don’t need to play games.”

“Of course you don’t.” She smirked. “You’re Mysha Khan,obviously.”

“That’s not—”

“It is. Own it. I do.” She took another bite, speaking through it. “I tell people I’m your friend and suddenly they offer me better seats. ”

“You’re exaggerating.”

I was laughing despite myself. She was the only person with whom I felt whole and open—someone I could punch, argue with, never feel strange around. But the feeling never lasted. It peeled away the moment she looked elsewhere.

I looked down at my plate. “I hope others see me that way, too.”

“Why are you sad?” she asked.

“Nothing. It’s just…” I hesitated. “Feeling that thing again. Like I’m performing. Like if I stop performing, people will realize I’m not actually whatever they think I am.”

Priya set her fork down. The clink against ceramic was sharp. “You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you’ve spent so long being the girl everyone wants that you forgot to ask what you want. That’s not a performance problem. That’s a you problem.” She paused. “Also, I have exclusive rights on you anyway.” She bared her teeth in a grin and took another huge bite.

I nodded, but the words didn’t quite reach the hollow space in my chest. They settled somewhere near it, polite and useless.

We both went outside. The evening was settling in, the sky softening into grey. My date could arrive any second. I was walking toward my apartment, keys already cold in my palm.

“So, you’re going to change?” Priya asked.

“Obviously. I’m not showing up in the same outfit I wore to lunch. What kind of girlfriend do you think I am?”

“The terrifying kind. Go. Impress him. Make him remember why he’s been around for three years.”

I waved her off, and she turned toward the metro. I watched her for a moment—the straight line of her back, the worn strap of her bag—before heading home. She didn’t look back.

---

Kabir arrived at eight, wearing the blue kurta I’d bought him for his birthday. He stood in the doorway, weight shifting from foot to foot. He looked tired. Not sleepy-tired. The kind of tired that accumulates over years.

“You’re early,” I said.

“You’re beautiful,” he replied.

The words were the same as always. The music behind them was gone. I felt the absence of it in my stomach.

I let it slide. We were three years in.

The café was warm and amber-lit. I’d been coming here since my first week in Delhi. Tonight, Kabir chose a different table. Near the back. Away from the windows. He sat with his back to the door.

A man near the ordering counter glanced over. Big shoulders, familiar face—the owner, who’d watched us grow up across these tables. I looked away, toward Kabir, toward the candle flickering between us. The wax was pooling unevenly on one side.

“Remember our first date?” I asked.

“The dhaba near campus.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You wore that green kurta and complained about the plastic chairs.”

“It was blue.”

“What?”

“The kurta. It was blue. You always say green.”

He blinked. “I could’ve sworn—”

“You couldn’t.” I smiled, but something in my chest tightened—a fist clenching around nothing. Three years, and he still remembered wrong. How many other things had he misremembered? How many times had I corrected him, gently, hoping he’d finally see?

“It’s fine,” I said. “Go on.”

He hesitated. “You observed loudly about the chairs, is my point.”

“I didn’t complain. I observed.”

“You observed loudly.”

We laughed. It felt almost normal. A replica of normal.

But Kabir wasn’t looking at me. He was tracing patterns in the condensation on his glass, leaving trails that vanished seconds later. The water gathered at the base, forming a small ring on the wood.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Kabir.”

He looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed, and the sight of it pinched something in my chest. “Do you ever feel like we’re just…?” He paused and hesitated a little “ Like we’re playing roles we learned a long time ago and never stopped to ask if they still fit?”

I set my wine glass down. The stem was cool against my fingers. “Where is this coming from?”

“Nowhere. Everywhere.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “Last week, you called me three times in one night because you had a nightmare. The week before, you wanted me to skip cricket practice to help you pick out curtains. Curtains, Mysha. For an apartment I don’t live in.”

“I wanted your opinion.”

“You wanted me to be there. Every moment. Every decision. And I try—God, I try—but I can’t be your whole world. I don’t know how to be someone’s whole world.”

The candle flickered. Ice melted in my glass. Outside, an auto rickshaw blared its horn and was gone. I held his hands—they were stiff, not curling back—and looked straight at him. He glanced down, sucking his lips, moving his head around.

“You know what I was thinking about today?” he said suddenly.

“What?”

“That news report. The woman in the car crash. The one who died protecting her kid.”

I stared at him. “You saw that?”

“Everyone saw it. They kept replaying it.” He shook his head. “She protected her child. Gave up her life without thinking. And I sat there watching and thought—that’s what love’s supposed to be, isn’t it? Selfless. Instinctive. And I don’t know if I have that in me.”

I knew where this was going. I could feel the shape of it in the air between us. My tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth.

“Kabir—”

“Mysha.” His voice cut through mine, quiet but firm. “We need to talk.”

I stopped.

“About what?”

He looked down. His hands went still. Too still.

“About us.”

I didn’t say anything. I’d learned, watching my father negotiate, that silence is a weapon. People rush to fill it.

But Kabir didn’t rush. He just sat there, fingers pressed against the table’s edge, and let the silence stretch until it became unbearable. He’d learned something too, over three years.

“I love you,” he said finally. “I’ve loved you for three years. But I can’t be the person you need me to be. Every time I fail—every time I miss a call or forget a detail or need space—I see it in your face. That disappointment. That fear. Like I’m one more person who’s going to leave you.”

“Aren’t you?”

The words slipped out before I could stop them. His face crumpled, and I felt a sharp satisfaction I immediately hated myself for.

“I don’t want to be,” he said. “But I think I already am.”

I reached across the table and took his hand. His fingers were warm and still. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t curl them around mine either. He just let his hand sit in my palm like something borrowed.

“Then don’t keep up,” I said. “Just be here. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

He looked at me—really looked—and for a moment I saw the boy I’d fallen for, the one who’d held my face at the dhaba and called me a force of nature.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t pull away. But he didn’t hold on, either.

That was the beginning of the end. I just didn’t know it yet. Or maybe I did, and I was just refusing to name it.

---

The apartment in Gulmohar Park was quiet when I got home. The blue sofa. The photo of Kabir on the fridge—I turned it face-down before I even took off my shoes.

I sat down. “Why? It was so perfect. But what happened to him, today?” I started to recollect our time together—our last week’s meals, our last month’s trip to Ladakh. The thin air there, how he’d held my hand at the monastery. “I always knew everything before. But what happened now?”

I put my hand on my head. Then I took off my earrings—gold, a birthday gift from Aba—and set them on the counter. The apartment smelled like sandalwood and old coffee. The fridge hummed. Something in the pipes clicked and settled.

At nine o’clock, my phone rang.

“Beta.” Aba’s voice was steady, the way it always was. “How was your day?”

I sat in silence for a moment. Outside, the city hummed. Inside, the apartment was still. I didn’t speak. Then I broke the silence.

“Aba, are you happy? With the factories, with everything?”

“Beta, I built twelve factories from nothing. I gave you an apartment, an education, a life your mother dreamed of. What is happiness compared to that?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” he said softly. “It isn’t.”

“Are you okay? Really?”

“Don’t worry about me. Just focus on your studies. Be good. Be safe. That’s all I need.”

“Kabir and I—I think we’re ending.”

A pause. Longer this time. I heard him breathe in, then out. “Beta, I never asked much about that boy. He is not from our community. Not our faith. But I saw you were happy, so I stayed quiet. A father hopes his daughter will choose a life that fits. A good Muslim boy. A proper family. But more than that, a father hopes his daughter will be secure. That boy—he never seemed like he could give you security. His eyes were always somewhere else.”

I closed my eyes. The words were a weight and a relief, both. “I know.”

“Whatever you decide, I am here. At nine o’clock. Every night.”

“Goodnight, Aba.”

“Goodnight, beta. I’ll call tomorrow.”

I didn’t know it was the last normal conversation I’d have with him for a long time. I did know about the the factories already faltering, since last year. I just knew, in that moment, that my father loved me the only way he knew how—at nine o’clock every night.

---

The text arrived the next day, at 3:47 PM.

I was in the library, spine pressed against the cold concrete wall. The phone buzzed against my thigh.

*This isn’t working anymore. You’re too much. Sorry.*

Three lines. Seventeen words. Three years, finished.

I read them fourteen times. Maybe more. The phone said 3:47, then 3:49. I couldn’t remember if I’d blinked.

*Too much.*

I’d heard that before. From my mother, about my grades. From friends I’d collected and lost. Now from Kabir. The word landed in the same old wound and turned there.

And then, unbidden, a memory. Second year. My birthday. I’d told no one—I never did—but Kabir had found out somehow. He showed up at my door with a small cake, the cheap kind from the bakery near campus, and a single candle. “You didn’t post about it,” he’d said. “So I figured you were hiding.” He’d remembered. He’d noticed. He’d chosen to show up anyway. The candle had been slightly crooked, melting onto the frosting. He’d lit it with a match from his pocket.

Now he’d remembered wrong. Or I had. Or one of us had been wrong all along.

I pressed my palm against the fake wood grain of the shelf. The library smelled like dust and cold metal. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

I called Priya. Once. Twice. Three times.

Voicemail. *Mom’s appointment.*

The tears came before I could stop them. Hot and sudden, the kind that don’t ask permission.

---

I don’t know how long I sat there. Long enough for the light outside to shift from gold to grey. Long enough for the library to empty out around me. The chairs were all pushed in. Somewhere, a janitor was moving.

When I finally looked up, I saw someone across the room.

They were sitting alone near the window, head bent over a sketchbook. A small crowd had gathered—two or three students, watching the work take shape. One of them laughed. Another leaned in, pointing at something on the page. The figure at the center didn’t look up. Their hand kept moving, steady and unhurried, as if the people around them were just weather. I understood that posture.

I couldn’t see a face. Just the curve of a shoulder, the way dark hair fell forward, a cream-coloured cardigan draped over the back of a chair. Could be a boy. Could be a girl. I couldn’t tell from this distance, and I wasn’t sure why I was trying.

Then the hand paused. The figure lifted their head slightly, and for a fraction of a second, I caught the glint of round glasses catching the grey light. A smudge of graphite on a cheek. And the tilt of a head—as if they’d known I was there before I’d noticed them. As if they’d been waiting for my gaze to find them.

Then they bent back over the sketchbook, and the moment passed.

I didn’t know who they were. I wasn’t sure why I was even looking, with my soul empty and my cup drained. But there was something there—a glow I was missing that day. A stillness I wanted to stand inside. The certainty of someone who didn’t need to be watched to exist.

The tears were still wet on my face. My phone was still clutched in my hand. Somewhere outside, the city kept moving, indifferent and blind.

But I felt it. Something had shifted. Someone was already reaching toward me from across the room, and I didn’t know yet whether that was a promise or a warning.

-

---