I met her by accident, the kind that feels scripted only after it’s already gone.
We were standing inside the Bedlam Theatre, pretending to listen, pretending to be strangers who weren’t about to collide into something irreversible. Old walls, tired wood, stories echoing where footsteps once mattered. And then there she was, leaning slightly forward, like she belonged to curiosity more than certainty.
She had that kind of light on her face that doesn’t try to be beautiful. It just is. Skin catching the day softly, as if the sun had learned restraint for her. A smile that didn’t ask for attention, but took it anyway, wide, unguarded, the kind that makes the world feel briefly forgiven. Her eyes weren’t loud. They were calm. Honest. The kind that look like they’ve already decided to trust you before you’ve earned it.
There was an ease to her. Shoulders relaxed. Hair tied back, not to impress anyone, but because the day asked for practicality. She looked like someone who laughs easily and leaves quietly. Like someone who belongs to moments, not places.
I fell in love with her there. Not the dramatic kind. The helpless kind. The kind that happens when your heart doesn’t wait for your permission.
We spoke. Briefly. Casually. As if our voices were aware of the lie we were telling ourselves, that this was just another afternoon, another tour, another stranger. I remember thinking how unfair it was that she existed so gently in a world that never gives warnings.
And then she left.
An exchange student. Temporary by design. A passing chapter pretending to be a whole book. She didn’t stay long enough for me to be brave. Didn’t stay long enough for me to say goodbye. The word never even made it to my mouth. It stayed lodged somewhere between my ribs and my throat, unfinished, like us.
No closure. No ending. Just absence.
And that’s the confusion of it. Nothing went wrong. Nothing broke. She just left. And my love story remained exactly where it began, unspoken, unfinished, unbearably warm.
Some people arrive like storms. She arrived like sunlight through an old theatre window, beautiful, quiet, and gone before you realize you were standing in it.
I saw her today. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was only the idea of her wearing a familiar face, moving through a very ordinary afternoon, pretending not to undo me.
She was struggling with a grocery bag, too full, cutting into her fingers like it didn’t know how precious it was to be held by her. I remember thinking how strange it is that the world keeps asking her to carry more than she should. I remember wanting to take the bag from her, not because it was heavy, but because loving her always felt like a reflex my body learned before my mind could stop it.
There was this one strand of hair. Just one. It had escaped, like it didn’t belong to the rest of her, like it was trying to tell me something I already knew. It kept falling into her face, soft and annoying and perfectly timed. She tried to shake it away, failed, smiled at her own failure. And God, in that moment, I wanted to be there so badly, not to say anything heroic, not to fix her life, just to slide that strand behind her ear. Just that. Just the smallest intimacy that feels larger than forever.
And that’s how I knew I was in love again. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But quietly, inconveniently, like muscle memory. Like my hands remembered her even when my life had learned to live without her.
It’s confusing how love doesn’t ask for permission. How it returns without explaining where it’s been. How it doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t heal either. It just exists. Standing across the street. Carrying groceries. Being human.
This isn’t sad. That’s the strange part. It’s tragic in the way sunsets are tragic, because they don’t stay, not because they aren’t beautiful. I don’t mourn her. I don’t chase her. I just love her, again, in this soft, useless, impossible way.
And maybe that’s enough. Maybe love doesn’t always need to be lived. Sometimes it just needs to be noticed.
I saw her here right in this garden in Edinburgh. The air was soft and cool and every corner of this place whispered of something ancient and tender. The leaves had fallen quiet under the weight of autumn. The flowers were tired. Even the sun seemed unsure of its warmth. But then there was her. Standing there like the last piece of summer that refused to fade.
She bent down and touched a leaf that had turned brown, brittle, almost gone. I remember holding my breath as if I knew something was about to happen. Her fingers brushed against it so gently that even the wind paused. And in that stillness I saw it. The leaf shimmered for the smallest second, and the green came back to life. It was as if spring had found a way to bloom through her touch.
Her eyes were the kind you do not just look at, you fall into them and never really climb back out. They had that colour of honey mixed with dusk. A warmth that holds you without asking. A light that hurts and heals all at once. When she looked up the whole garden changed its breath. The world seemed to tilt toward her, as if everything in it was trying to get just a little closer.
The curls in her hair caught the light like they were made of it. They fell freely, the way music spills from an open window on a quiet street. I remember thinking that even if time stopped right there it would still not be enough to hold her beauty. There was something endlessly alive about her, something that refused to belong to just one moment.
And I, standing there like a fool, felt the season inside me change too. Everything cold began to melt. Everything lost began to return. I think that is what love does. It takes your dying autumns and quietly turns them into spring.
How beautiful she looks when she tucks her hair behind her ear. There is something so disarmingly human about that one little gesture. It is soft and ordinary and yet it feels like the entire world pauses just long enough for my heart to forget how to beat. The way her fingers move, almost unaware of the way they draw every inch of light toward her. The way a single strand falls forward again, like even her hair refuses to let go of her face. That little moment lives rent free somewhere between my ribs, where breath becomes prayer.
She never realizes how it happens to me every single time. She thinks it is nothing. Just a way to clear her view, a small motion before she speaks or laughs. But I swear the sky bends differently when she does it. The light shifts, the air thickens, and for the briefest instant, the universe rearranges itself around her. It is such a quiet kind of beauty, the kind that never announces itself but simply exists in its own rhythm, calm and unbothered by how much I am falling apart inside.
When she tucks her hair behind her ear, it feels like she is reminding the world that she belongs in the kind of silence where everything feels right. There is something so tender about the way her hand lingers near her face, as if even her touch knows it is holding something sacred. I have seen her laugh, I have seen her cry, I have seen her walk away into rooms filled with light and sound, but nothing quite strikes me like that one effortless movement. It feels like love distilled into motion. It feels like the softest kind of confession.
I often think about how much beauty hides in the small things. The curve of her fingers, the shy tilt of her head, the way she breathes before speaking, the faint touch of her thumb at the edge of her jawline when she’s thinking. But when she tucks her hair behind her ear, everything else fades. It is the only time my heart forgets to build walls. It is the only time I stop pretending that I am not hopelessly, irreversibly, devastatingly in love with her.
There are moments when I think love isn’t supposed to be loud. Maybe it is supposed to exist quietly, inside moments like these. Maybe it lives in how I notice her even when no one else does. Maybe it breathes in the stillness between us when she looks away, unaware of how the light from the window paints her cheek like it has been waiting its whole life for her. I find myself memorizing that look, that softness, that warmth. I think of it when I am alone, when the world is cold and unkind. I think of it and I feel alive again.
Sometimes I imagine telling her all this. I imagine saying, do you know that you ruin me every time you tuck your hair behind your ear? That you make it impossible to believe that something so simple could hold so much grace? That in that single second you make time feel like it has stopped running, like it wants to stay and watch you too? But then she would smile, maybe laugh, and I would lose my courage. Because how can I tell her that something so ordinary to her is sacred to me? How can I explain that I have built entire worlds inside that gesture?
There is love that burns and love that breaks and then there is the kind that just quietly fills the spaces inside you until you do not know how to be without it. She has become that for me. Every time she tucks her hair back, I fall again. I fall into the memory of her, into the idea of her, into the impossibility of ever being free from her. I fall into that delicate ache that feels both like home and heartbreak.
And maybe that is what love really is. Not the grand confessions or the endless promises, but the little things we notice and never say aloud. The small gestures that become lifelines. The moments we hold close because they remind us what it feels like to be human. Maybe love is her, standing there in a world that will never deserve her, tucking her hair behind her ear, unaware that someone somewhere is quietly falling to pieces in the softest way imaginable.
How beautiful she looks when she tucks her hair behind her ear. I will never stop thinking about it. I will never stop falling for that small, fleeting movement that feels like the beginning and the end of everything I have ever felt. And maybe I do not need her to know. Maybe it is enough that I do. Maybe it is enough that I saw her once, that I saw her truly, that I was lucky enough to witness something that pure.
Because every time she tucks her hair behind her ear, I am reminded that beauty does not need to be loud to be infinite. That love does not need to be returned to be real. And that sometimes the smallest things, the ones we almost miss, are the ones that change everything.
Aaditya Bajpai 