Don’t wanna lose her

The night began the way most dangerous nights begin: accidentally.
I almost didn’t go.
At twenty-nine, after more than fourteen years in a relationship and three months of living alone in an apartment that had started feeling too quiet, I had slowly become the kind of man who said no to things automatically. Office parties. Birthday dinners. Late-night drives. Cigarettes outside pubs with people younger and louder than me. Those belonged to an earlier version of myself — someone quicker with jokes and less careful with his emotions.
But Friday had been unbearably long.
The kind of evening where even the glow of the laptop after work felt hostile.
So when Karan called again and said, “Just come for an hour, bro. Fifteen people are coming. You know half of them anyway,” I agreed before the practical part of my brain could stop me.
That was mistake number one.
The pub felt too loud when I entered.
Exactly loud enough twenty minutes later.
People moved between tables while introductions collided into old friendships. Someone shouted over the music about college stories nobody else fully remembered. Beer glasses sweated onto wooden tables under yellow hanging lights.
And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, I met her.
Not dramatically.
No slow-motion moment.
No cinematic music.
Just a black dress, tired eyes with playful sharpness hidden somewhere inside them, and a laugh that arrived half a second late like she first needed to decide whether something deserved it.
“Arjun.”
I extended my hand.
She shook it once and told me her name.
I forgot it immediately.
Not because it wasn’t important.
Because I noticed her smile instead.
The first hour stayed harmless.
Group jokes.
Introductions.
Shots somebody forced on everyone.
Music too loud for proper conversation.
And slowly, without realizing it, I slipped back into an older version of myself with frightening ease.
The funny version.
The version I used to be before adulthood became mostly deadlines, grocery lists, EMI calculations, and asking my wife over video call whether she had eaten dinner in another city.
I started making people laugh without trying.
Observations.
Callbacks.
Tiny brutal jokes softened by timing.
And every time I spoke, I noticed the girl in black watching me like she was trying not to laugh too much.
That should have been mistake number two.
Later, outside in the smoking area, the air smelled like nicotine, rainwater, and spilled beer.
Five of us stood there passing around cigarettes and lighters.
I didn’t need a lighter.
Three people already had one.
Still, when she lit her cigarette, I leaned slightly toward her and asked casually:
“Light?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t have your own?”
“I trust yours more.”
It was a stupid line.
Exactly stupid enough to work.
The tip of her cigarette touched mine.
Orange glow meeting orange glow.
A tiny moment.
Too tiny for sober people to remember later.
But something shifted after that.
Because once two people establish rhythm — even a small one — the body starts recognizing it before the mind does.
And throughout the night, I kept choosing her cigarette over everybody else’s lighter.
Once becomes coincidence.
Twice becomes pattern.
By the fifth time, both people know.
At some point I made a joke about her in front of the group.
Then another.
Nothing cruel.
Just enough attention that another girl finally laughed and asked in Hindi:
“Kyun piche pade ho bechari ke?”
The group laughed.
I should have left it there.
Instead I tilted my head innocently and replied:
“Maine aisa kya le liya usse?”
The table exploded.
Not because it was vulgar.
Because nobody expected me to say it.
And in the middle of all that laughter, I looked at her.
That was the real danger.
She wasn’t offended.
She was smiling with her head slightly lowered, avoiding eye contact for one second too long.
Recognition.
That moment when two people silently realize the tension between them is no longer private.
Much later, after dancing and more cigarettes and enough alcohol to blur the edges of restraint, somebody got up from the chair beside her.
I noticed immediately.
I hated that I noticed immediately.
Still, five minutes later I sat there casually, pretending the decision meant nothing.
The funny thing about attraction, I would later realize, is that it usually hides inside practical movements.
A chair pulled closer.
A lighter borrowed unnecessarily.
Walking slightly slower than the group.
Nobody announces the important moments while they’re happening.
The photo happened sometime after midnight.
In it, we looked almost disappointingly ordinary.
Two people dressed in black sitting beside each other inside a crowded frame.
But what the picture couldn’t capture was rhythm.
The accumulated weight of shared cigarettes.
Inside jokes.
Accidental eye contact.
The strange familiarity built in four hours that felt older than it should have.
If strangers saw that photograph, they’d probably assume we already knew each other.
That was the problem.
We didn’t.
When the party ended, eight of us started walking the girls home through empty streets still shining from leftover rain.
The city had softened by then.
No traffic.
No urgency.
Just tired laughter and slow footsteps.
At one point she stopped suddenly to photograph the moon.
The rest of the group drifted ahead instinctively.
I stayed back.
“Show me.”
She handed me the phone.
Then I tried taking one from my own phone, standing under a streetlight while the others kept moving farther away.
When I finally looked up again, she had stopped walking.
Waiting.
Not close enough to make it obvious.
Not far enough to disappear.
Just waiting.
Thirty seconds maybe.
But later, lying awake at four in the morning, I replayed that moment more than any other.
Because there are people who continue walking.
And people who pause for you.
Near the apartment building, the birthday girl insisted everyone come upstairs for water.
Nobody wanted to.
It was late.
Everyone was exhausted.
Except me.
“Come on,” I insisted.
“I’m thirsty.”
Everybody knew I wasn’t thirsty.
Including her.
Especially her.
She laughed quietly near the staircase while the debate continued, watching me fight for five more minutes of a night neither of us seemed ready to end yet.
Upstairs, I deliberately chose the small water bottle for myself while everyone else shared the large one.
Another meaningless decision.
Another thing my brain would later turn into mythology.
When we finally stood near the door to leave, she looked at the half-empty bottle in my hand and asked lightly:
“You want more water? I can refill it for you.”
The room laughed softly.
Not mocking.
Understanding.
I smiled.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I need more.”
And for one suspended second, the entire room became aware of something invisible standing between us.
Not love.
Not betrayal.
Possibility.
The next morning was merciless.
No messages.
No calls.
No continuation.
Only cigarettes tasting like memory.
I sat alone in my apartment staring at the lighter I had taken from her the previous night.
Black plastic.
Cheap.
Forgettable.
Except it wasn’t.
Because somewhere between the smoke, the laughter, the moon photograph, the walk, the teasing, and the refill joke, the lighter had stopped being an object.
It had become proof.
Proof that I was still capable of feeling something reckless and alive.
And that terrified me more than anything else.