RHEA
The blue door groaned at 6:15 AM. Rhea turned her face toward the wall, pretending to be asleep.
Samar handed her tea anyway. Their fingers almost touched but didn't. Six years of marriage, and this was what remained—two people sharing space, not lives.
Morning sun caught on the chipped paint of their bedroom door. They had painted it together during lockdown—her wearing polka-dot shorts, him bare-chested, both laughing when he spilled Prussian blue on the bedsheet. Now the paint flaked near the hinges.
She sipped her tea without a thank you. On the dining table, beside a dying bonsai they'd bought on their third anniversary, lay an envelope with her name written in Samar's handwriting.
She'd watched him place it there last night before retreating to the sofa, where he had been sleeping for eighteen days now. Not that she was counting.
***
SAMAR
He paused at the doorway, keys jangling in his pocket. Mumbai's humidity hit his face like a slap. He glanced back at Rhea, still at the table, her fingers tracing the edges of his unopened letter.
In the beginning, they couldn't keep their hands off each other. They had met at a student protest against fee hikes. She held a hand-painted sign that read "My anger is a public service." He photographed her from a distance, struck by the fierce tilt of her chin. By the end of that week, they had debated politics over chai, kissed in the rain, and made love in his cramped hostel room while a neighbor's radio played old film songs.
They were fire once. Now they were lukewarm tea.
"I might be late," he said.
She didn't look up. "You usually are."
The door clicked shut. Another day, another departure.
***
RHEA
Rhea waited for Samar's footsteps to fade before touching the envelope. It felt heavier than paper should.
His "therapy," that's what he called these letters. He rarely spoke anymore, but he wrote to her. Sometimes he left them where she would find them. Sometimes he didn't.
Last week, while searching for a missing earring, she found one tucked in his sock drawer. It said simply: "I miss liking you."
Seven words. The most honest thing he'd told her in months.
She stepped onto the balcony, letter in hand. The monsoon had arrived early. Mumbai smelled of wet concrete and garbage. From five floors up, everything blurred—the never-ending metro construction, the crumbling walls of the opposite building, the vegetable seller arranging his cart below.
A baby cried in a nearby flat. The couple upstairs fought about money. Life continued all around her while inside their home, everything had stopped.
When had they hit pause? Was it after she lost the baby last year, when Samar couldn't find words to comfort her? Or earlier, when his photography career failed and he took a bank job he hated? Perhaps it was when her mother called their marriage a "compromise," and Samar pretended not to hear.
She slid her thumb under the envelope flap.
The doorbell rang.
***
SAMAR
His meeting ended early. He could have called to tell Rhea he'd be home for dinner, but his thumb hovered over her contact without pressing it. Their conversations had become purely functional—who would pay the electricity bill, when the gas cylinder needed replacing, why the washing machine made that noise.
He bought chaat from their old favorite vendor near the station. A peace offering, though neither had openly declared war.
"Remember when you two shared one plate?" the vendor asked, handing him two separate packages.
"Times change," Samar replied, overtipping.
When he got home, the flat was quiet. Rhea sat by the window, barefoot, her hair loose around her shoulders. The open envelope lay in her lap.
She had read it.
He placed the chaat on the coffee table and removed his shoes. "I got pani puri," he said, voice small in the stillness.
She looked up, eyes red-rimmed but dry. "You remembered the extra mint chutney."
"I always remember."
***
RHEA
The letter wasn't what she expected.
She had braced for goodbye. For "I don't love you anymore" or "I've met someone else."
Instead, she found memories. Samar wrote about their first apartment with the broken shower. About how she looked in morning light before putting on her "office face." About getting lost in Goa during their honeymoon and ending up at a fisherman's home for dinner.
He wrote about the blue door they painted together, and how the color reminded him of her favorite earrings—the ones her grandmother gave her, which she only wore on special days.
The last line read: "If we ever love each other out of habit, forgive me for the silence. I'm still learning how to speak again."
***
SAMAR
They sat side by side on the balcony floor, eating chaat as city lights came on. Not talking, not yet, but sharing space in a way they hadn't for months.
"I forgot we were friends first," she said, licking tamarind chutney from her fingers.
He nodded. That was the cruelest part of falling out of love—forgetting the friendship beneath it all.
"I don't know how to fix us," he admitted.
"Maybe we don't fix. Maybe we rebuild."
Lightning flashed, illuminating her face. He reached out. Her fingers met his halfway.
***
RHEA
Mrs. Sharma from 5B had complained about their leaking pipes again. The plumber came on Tuesday. While he worked, Rhea and Samar emptied kitchen cabinets, finding forgotten wedding gifts and expired spices.
"Remember this?" Samar held up a ceramic lemon squeezer shaped like an elephant. "Your cousin's gift."
"She always had terrible taste," Rhea smiled, then added, "except in husbands."
It wasn't much—this small joke between them—but it felt like the first raindrop after drought.
That evening, she found him staring at the bedroom door. "The paint's peeling badly," he said.
"We could repaint it."
"Same color?"
She thought about it. "Maybe a different blue. Midnight teal, perhaps."
"Like that wall in our Goa hotel?"
"You remember that?"
"I remember everything, Rhea."
***
SAMAR
On Saturday, they repainted the door together. No music, no playful teasing like before, but a comfortable quiet between them. When his thumb left a smudge of paint on her cheek, she didn't pull away.
They weren't fixed. The letter hadn't magically restored what had worn away. But as they stood back to look at their work—the fresh coat gleaming in afternoon light—something shifted.
"It looks good," she said.
"It's a start," he replied.
That night, he didn't go to the sofa. She moved to her side of the bed, making space. They lay facing away from each other, a valley of sheets between them, but breathing the same air again.
Outside, Mumbai roared on. Inside, in a room with a freshly painted blue door, two people who had been strangers, then lovers, then strangers again, began the slow work of remembering each other.
***
RHEA
This morning, she made his coffee exactly how he likes it—one sugar, no milk.
He noticed.
They still don't talk much. Some days are better than others. Yesterday, they fought about her mother's upcoming visit.
But the blue door doesn't creak anymore. Samar fixed the hinge last week.
She keeps his letter folded inside her diary. Not as proof of what they almost lost, but as a bookmark in their story.
Maybe happily-ever-after isn't an ending.
Maybe it's just a chapter break.
Maybe it's the courage to turn the page.
***
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