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Sahil's POV

"So... How was your day, Sahil?"

The kind lady didn't mention the date, but then again, nobody would have to.

May 23rd was the anniversary that lived in the marrow of my bones, in the faint tremor behind my fingertips, in the ache that lingered behind my ribs like smoke after a fire long extinguished.

Seven years since the accident.

Seven years since Aavya's laughter stopped echoing down the hallways, since I stopped believing in God, in good mornings, in the lie of forever.

Seven years since my life was split into two hemispheres-before Aavya and after the silence she left behind.

I exhaled through clenched teeth, rubbing absentmindedly at the faint scar on my left palm-the one I earned the night I lost her. When I bled and screamed and collapsed in a puddle of everything, I didn't know how to say.

My gaze drifted upward toward the ceiling as though the words I couldn't find might be hanging there.

"Today was... different."

"Different how?"

"Usually..." I began, slowly, "Usually I spend today in the penthouse. Curtains drawn like eyelids shut against the pain. Lights off, as though darkness could cradle what light never could. I keep the kids away-tell them I'm busy, or tired, or not feeling well by sending them off to my parents. But the truth remained: I'm terrified. That my grief might bleed into them like ink in water. That it might seep into their smiles and curdle their joy. I'm scared that the ghosts I live with might start whispering to them too."

I paused, swallowing the lump forming in my throat, the weight of unshed tears pooling behind my eyes like thunderclouds waiting to break.

"There's a version of me I become every year on this day. Hollowed out. Splintered. I shut myself in and let the silence chew at my bones, let the regret rot in the corners of my soul like mold I no longer bother to clean. That version of me... he doesn't belong near children. He doesn't belong near life."

The therapist's silence was a mirror, and I was starting to see myself in it again.

"But today..." I whispered, almost as if saying it aloud might fracture the fragile, tender miracle of it all. "Today, I didn't disappear but instead woke up," I inhaled as though I were diving into memory's deepest pool, "not in the cold, haunted corners of the penthouse, but in my own bed. Not alone, not drowning in silence, but surrounded by the warm, sleepy chaos of my little ones."

"There was Neel," I continued, "snoring with his mouth hanging open and Nyesa curled into my arm, drooling with her fingers fisted in my shirt like I might vanish if she let go, and instead of choking... I felt anchored. Not suffocated or lost, but simply the best I would've ever let myself be."

I looked down at my hands, as though the memory were cradled there-real, tangible, sacred.

"We made breakfast, or rather, something resembling it. My daughter poured half the pancake batter on the floor, and my son tried wiping it up only to smear it further across his shirt and the table." I chuckled, rubbing the back of my neck, "They fought over the spoon, arguing not just about who stirred the batter, but who stirred it better. Nyesa accused him of cheating while I... I watched them, ate along, and dressed them later, making sure their uniforms were neat, backpacks zipped, and snacks packed. However, just as I slung Neel's bag onto his tiny shoulders, he looked up at me and said... 'Can we just... stay with you today, Daddy? You look a little blue in your face'."

The laugh that escaped me this time was wet and unsteady.

"And I don't know what came over me, doc, but instead of brushing him off-like I always do-instead of pulling away, I said yes. 'Let's go spend the day together.' And I took them to the penthouse."

"I hadn't been there in almost a year now." I confessed. "Not without the weight of intention to fall apart."

My voice turned breathless, almost in awe of what I was saying.

"Neel sprinted down the hallway-the same one where Aavya used to twirl with her scarves, her laughter dancing like wind chimes in monsoon. And Nyesa-my little storm of curiosity-she found that old bookshelf... the one Aavya used to stuff with those ridiculous, dog-eared romance novels. Nyesa asked if she could read one. I told her she'd have to grow a little more first. She pouted. Aavya used to do the same when I said no to joining her in the madness. And then... then they found the box. That old photo chest I had hidden in the back of the closet. The one I swore I'd never open again. They dragged it out like it was a treasure trove, squealing like pirates on the edge of discovery. For a second, I thought I'd lose it, but I didn't. I sat and watched them pull out her photographs, one by one, like they were touching fragments of a forgotten hymn. And then... I told them about her. About how she sang terribly in the shower and burned rice so often we had to throw out a dozen pots in our marriage. I told them how she cried every time a Pixar character said goodbye, how she danced barefoot in the kitchen and made me do the same even when I begged her not to. I told them how she smelled, how she tapped her foot when she lied, and how her laugh used to make the air itself laugh along. And my children laughed, doctor. They laughed like joy was contagious and the one who gave them birth wasn't a tragedy but a story worth remembering."

A hush fell between us-thick, golden, sacred.

"I didn't cry. Not like I used to. I didn't crawl into the guest room. Didn't hide in the darkness like a prayer to numbness. I lived today. With them. For them. And for her, too, I think."

Another beat passed. Then another. Each second heavy with unsaid things.

"Aavya would've liked that." I whispered. "She would've loved to see them laugh like that. She would've loved to know I didn't break this time without her."

"And how do you feel now?" The doctor probed.

"Like I've been walking underwater for seven years, and today... today I finally breached the surface. I saw the sky again. I don't know if it'll last. I don't know if tomorrow will unravel it all. But today-I remembered my first love, and I didn't drown. And I think that means I'm not afraid of remembering her anymore."

Dr. Sutaria didn't rush me but waited patiently before pulling from the seams of a wound, "And today... did you find yourself comparing the past and the present?"

The breath I'd just taken snagged like a fishhook in my throat, sharp and sudden, pulling something raw and submerged to the surface. My ribs cinched around my lungs like iron bands, as if the very name of my past with Aavya spoken beside Pratiksha's was a fragile contradiction that might implode if held too close.

"Yeah," I murmured, my voice thin as paper. "I did." I glanced up-hesitant, ashamed-as if the act of admitting it out loud might stain me beyond forgiveness. "But... not like before," I added quickly, desperately, my voice rough with the ache of remorse. "Not in that cruel way I used to. Not in the way grief sharpens love into a blade and turns memory into a measuring stick-where every smile Pratiksha gave me was held up to a ghost she never met, every gesture of hers filtered through the sepia-toned lens of a past I refused to bury."

I looked down at my hands-these hands that had held two women and failed both in different ways-and continued.

"There was a time," I said slowly, "when I'd hear Pratiksha laugh and feel it land wrong because it didn't echo like Aavya's laughter-soaked in mischief, ringing off walls like a song without end. And I hated myself for that. Because Pratiksha never once tried to replace her. Not the love. Not the memories. Not even the empty spaces Aavya left behind. She just... had been herself alwats. Quiet. Gentle. Maddeningly patient. She never demanded anything-not answers, not explanations, not my heart, not even a name for what we were. She stood there, still as a lighthouse in my storm, while I kept handing her broken pieces of a puzzle she never signed up to solve. And I... I kept her waiting in the corridor of a half-life. Neither loving her, nor letting her leave." My voice frayed around the edges. "I hurt her with absence that filled the spaces where promises should've lived. With this obsessive loyalty to a memory that had calcified into my spine, refusing to loosen its grip. I kept walking backward, eyes locked on a door that would never open again-while Pratiksha stood right there, holding another, waiting for me to choose."

I paused, the weight of those years pressing hard on my chest.

"But today..." I said, the words unfolding slowly, like sunrise pushing through fog, "When I saw Nyesa dancing barefoot in the old living room-her curls flying like wild vines and her giggles bursting like bubbles against the ceiling-and Neel listening to my stories about Aavya with that tilted-head wonder... I didn't compare. I didn't weaponize memory. I didn't feel disloyal for remembering or unfaithful for not collapsing. I just... missed the woman who once held my past in her palms. And I appreciated the woman who had stayed-quietly, faithfully-in my present."

The breath I drew next was ragged but clearer.

"I thought about how Pratiksha would've navigated a day like this. How she has-in her quiet, invisible ways. How she's made space for my grief year after year, cutting pieces of herself to cushion my edges. How she texts me reminders to eat lunch, even when I don't reply. How she learned my silences like scripture and never asked for absolution. How she never demanded a place beside my children, and yet... somehow became their mother through sheer love and intention."

My throat constricted, my voice sinking into a whisper.

"She never asked to be my wife. But became one in every unspoken way that matters. And I-" I faltered, breath catching. "I didn't even give her the dignity of acknowledgment. I buried her under the shadow of a woman I couldn't let go of, and somehow... she never stopped holding out her hand for me."

I dragged a hand through my hair, emotions roiling beneath my skin like a tide unwilling to recede.

"She's not Aavya," I reiterated. "And thank God for that. She doesn't need to be. She's Pratiksha Naik, who bore the weight of a marriage that never saw sunlight. Who tucked in two children not born of her and made them feel safe in a house that hadn't yet made space for her name. Pratiksha, who held my grief like a sleeping child and never asked me to let it go-just... to maybe make room beside it. And I didn't then."

"And now?" Dr. Sutaria asked gently, brushing dust off me.

"Now... I think I finally see her. Not as the woman in the wings of my grief play. Not as a stand-in or placeholder or guiltless saint. I see her for what she is-a woman who stood at the edge of my sorrow, not to rescue me, but to wait. Patiently. Unmoving. In the hope that I might someday find my way out. And... I think I'm ready to walk toward her."

My voice broke then, cracking like thin ice under weight too long carried.

"I don't know how to undo what I did. I don't know how to fix what I broke just by being broken. But I know this: I don't want to live the rest of my life haunted by the woman I loved while losing the one who stayed. Not out of guilt. Not because I owe her a return-though maybe I do-but mostly because I miss Pratiksha. I miss my wife when she's not around, and maybe I've been missing her all along, without even having the grace to admit it."

"I've waited nearly four years to ask you this," my therapist trails off. "And today... I think it's the right time."

I nod, signaling her to go ahead.

"Do you still love Aavya, Sahil?"

My eyes turned toward the window, searching for an answer in the sky where, outside, the day was dying in slow poetry. The horizon bled molten gold into wine-dark clouds, a bruised and burning twilight unfurling like the last verse of a sonnet. It was the kind of sky that held the silence of old letters, of words never sent, of loves that didn't get to grow old.

Did I still love her?

Once, the answer would've surged through me like a storm-immediate, unchecked, absolute. Once, I would've answered like a man at war with time, clinging to memory as if it were all I had left of breath.

But now the answer arrived like a tide at low moon. Quiet. Reluctant. Cradled not in urgency, but in understanding.

"I think..." I began, and the words didn't stumble-they bowed. "I think I'll always love her. You know there was a time in my life," I said slowly, "when loving Aavya was like breathing through fire-painful, necessary, all-consuming. Even after she was gone, I wore that ache like armor. I believed the depth of my sorrow was a monument to her memory. That if I grieved hard enough and hurt long enough, it proved our love was real. That to stop mourning would be betrayal. That healing would mean I hadn't loved her enough."

A tremor passed through my chest-less of pain, more of release.

"But grief..." I exhaled, "Grief isn't love. It's the residue. The echo that lingers when love has nowhere else to go. It's the ghost of a kiss that never happened. The silence after a song that ends mid-verse. I embalmed her In memory," I whispered. "Turned her into something celestial. Sacred. Untouchable. But in doing so, I forgot she was human. I forgot the way she'd fall asleep during every movie ten minutes in, no matter how much she wanted to watch it. I forgot the little constellation of bobby pins she left in every drawer, every pocket of our world. I forgot that she could be sharp, impatient, and moody on Mondays and stubborn when she couldn't find her keys. I loved her, God-so wholly, so recklessly. But what I held on to wasn't her. It was the relic of her. An ideal. A goddess carved in stone, immune to fault."

A smile ghosted across my lips-fragile and folded with years.

"And now... now that love feels different. It's no longer an inferno. It's a candle in a quiet room. Flickering, warm, not burning anything down. I don't look for her in every corner. I don't whisper her name Into dark hallways. I remember her without drowning. I miss her without martyring the man I am now."

I turned to Seher, and for the first time in what felt like an entire lifetime, my grief did not feel like a cage-it felt like a path I'd walked through and emerged from, limbs singed but intact.

"My love for her is gentler now, yet not unfulfilled, like a pressed flower in a journal-preserved, delicate, not meant to be touched every day, but there... still, quietly beautiful. And it doesn't compete with what I have now. It doesn't stand guard over Pratiksha's."

I inhaled, and this time, I let the air fill my lungs completely. Not half-breaths. Not careful sips. A full breath, which had finally been earned.

"So yes," I said. "I still love Aavya. But I'm not in love with the ghost of her anymore. I don't wake up yearning for the life we never got to finish. I don't punish Pratiksha by reliving the echo of what once was because she has been standing at the threshold all this time, asking for nothing but a home in the place I'd abandoned, and I think... the greatest way I can cherish my past now is by living my present." The words felt sacred-hallowed offerings wrested from the catacombs of my chest, where they'd lain buried beneath the weight of unspoken truths. "Because love like hers-like ours-was never meant to anchor me in mourning. It was meant to teach me how to bloom in its aftermath. Aavya gave me something luminous, taught me how to feel, how to give, and how to be-so that one day, I could become the kind of man who chooses life, even after being cleaved by loss."

And that loss had once been total. A sky without stars. A world stripped of language. I remembered waking each morning as if surfacing from a dream I hadn't wanted to leave, only to find that her absence was more present than the dawn itself. I had laughed once and choked on the sound-because joy had felt like betrayal. Because moving forward had seemed like erasure.

"But if I keep letting grief eclipse every other feeling," I said slowly, "then all the beauty we shared-all the warmth and light and laughter-wither into something hollow. Something tragic. And she... Aavya... she wasn't just tragedy. She was music. She was mess and thunder and the scent of cinnamon on rainy evenings. She was life in its most dazzling, untamed form."

I could almost hear her laughter then-clear and defiant-like wind chimes shaken by a storm.

"I owe it to her," I breathed, "not to stay buried in the ache of what was... but to honor it by embracing what is. To open my heart not in guilt but in reverence. For Pratiksha. For what we are becoming. For this wonderful woman who has stood beside me not as a shadow, not as a substitute, but as herself-fierce and quiet, stubborn and soft, waiting with a grace so profound it undid me."

"I used to believe that love only happens once. That Aavya was the summit-and everything after would be descent. But I was wrong. Love doesn't have a peak. It isn't a singular flame. It's a wildfire that can light again in new soil. It transforms. It expands. It finds new names, new silences, and new ways to unfold. What I have with Pratiksha... it's not a repetition. It's a rebirth. It's slower, perhaps. More fragile in its unfolding. But it's real. So achingly, stunningly real. And it deserves all of me-not the man I was, but the man I am now. The man who has walked through fire and still chooses to reach for warmth instead of ash."

The room fell still-but it wasn't the stillness of absence.

It was the stillness of a held breath before something sacred.

"Then maybe the truest love... isn't the kind that clings. Maybe it's the kind that lets go. So it can take root somewhere new."

I nodded slowly, as if her words had already lived in me, waiting to be named.

"Yes. That's it. I'm ready now. Ready to stop surviving the past like it's a battlefield. Ready to choose the present, not from obligation or apology, but from desire. From clarity. From reverence."

I paused, and when I spoke again, it was with the quiet fire of a vow.

"I loved Aavya with everything I had. And now, I want to love Pratiksha... with everything I am."

The words, once buried beneath guilt and ghostlight, rose now like dawn cresting the edge of a long, silent night. They did not tremble. They did not ask for forgiveness. They stood-bare, true, consecrated by the ache they had survived.

Across from me, Dr. Sutaria watched me with eyes ancient in their understanding and smiled not the polite curve of clinical success but the quiet smile of an individual who had borne witness to another's resurrection.

And beyond the walls of that quiet room, twilight, in its slow unraveling, gave itself to the velvet hush of night. The last of the amber light dripped down the horizon like molten honey, leaving behind a canvas of deep indigo brushed with the soft, radiant breath of stars. There was no mourning in the sky-no grief for the sun that had vanished.

Only reverence.

The heavens made no protest as light surrendered to dark-they welcomed it. As if to say: beauty does not end. It only changes its form.

And as I sat in that silence, I felt the same truth bloom in my chest.

I was no longer mourning the sun of my past.

I was making room for a different kind of beauty. One born not in fire, but in ember. Not in the dazzling certainty of youth, but in the hushed reverence of second chances.

A beauty shaped by survival, softened by sorrow, and lit from within by something quiet, enduring, and hopefully real.

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Lots of Love,

ANKITA