I met Kavya on one of those gray mornings when the sky pressed down like a low ceiling and everything — even breathing — felt like effort.
Arc Coffee was half-awake, smelling faintly of burnt toast and espresso, humming with quiet discontent. I stood in line, half-asleep, muttering about my cappuccino having more foam than coffee. It was the kind of trivial complaint that fills the space where purpose should be.
She was in front of me — plain white T-shirt, jeans, and hair that could’ve been poetry. Thick, black, cascading waves that caught even the weak morning light and shimmered like defiance itself. The kind of hair you’d want to touch, to lose yourself in, to believe that something that beautiful could anchor you.
When I sighed too loudly, she turned — calm eyes, unreadable — and smiled. Not the kind of smile people give to please. This one said: You’re being ridiculous.
I didn’t thank her. Just took my drink and left, embarrassed at how small I’d felt in her presence.
⸻
The second time I saw her, I stepped on her shopping bag at Pentagon City.
She looked at the crushed paper, then up at me. “You have terrible aim,” she said dryly.
“I’m really sorry,” I stammered.
She shrugged, “You will be if it was my favorite candle.”
Then that smile again — quiet, unbothered, slightly amused. And she was gone.
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Months slipped into their dull routine — Outlook reminders, the hum of office lights, people saying “we should catch up” and never meaning it.
Then one packed evening on the Metro, I saw her again — hair pulled up this time, still thick and impossible to ignore. She looked tired, maybe thinner, but her eyes still carried that unshakable warmth.
“You still remember me?” I asked.
“Hard to forget someone who crushed my shopping bag,” she said, laughing softly.
We talked till Ballston Metro Stop — about how D.C. people walked fast, loved their titles, and forgot how to laugh. She had this way of speaking — light but sharp, like she saw the world as both absurd and precious.
After that, we kept meeting. At first by coincidence. Then by intent. Always at Arc Coffee, always with laughter sneaking into the silences.
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We never said the word dating. But our weekends began to orbit each other — Eastern Market strolls, lazy walks by the Potomac river, failed attempts at cooking together.
When the wind blew, her hair would brush my arm, and it felt like something larger than comfort — like a reminder that being alive could still feel electric.
Somewhere in those ordinary moments, I fell in love.
One evening by the waterfront, I told her so. She smiled faintly, looked at the water, and said, “You shouldn’t.”
It wasn’t harsh. Just… final.
I laughed it off, pretending not to hear the weight behind her words.
⸻
Weeks later, I found out why — not because she told me, but because I found out.
She had left her notebook at my place — small, brown leather, pages crowded with sketches, phrases, dreams. Between them, a folded paper — a hospital form. Her name. Diagnosis. Stage Four.
The words blurred as I read them.
I sat there for a long time, the city noise fading outside my window.
The next morning, I met her at Arc Coffee, hands shaking, trying to act normal.
When I finally said, “I know,” she froze. Then exhaled slowly and said, “So you found it.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“You weren’t supposed to,” she said. “I didn’t want you to see me as someone to save.”
Her voice didn’t tremble. Mine did. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want pity. I wanted to live like everyone else — to argue about coffee foam and burnt toast.”
She said it simply, and I realized then — she wasn’t running from death. She was running toward life.
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After that, everything changed — not in what we did, but in how I saw.
Every moment became sharper, louder, fragile.
We cooked pasta, burned it, laughed. She taught me to sit in silence without fidgeting. We read Murakami by the river. And when her hair began to fall — first in strands, then in clumps — she didn’t hide it.
One afternoon, I found her in front of the mirror, cutting it short.
“Easier to manage,” she said lightly, but her eyes betrayed her — grief hidden behind humor.
I wanted to say she was still beautiful, but she stopped me.
“Don’t,” she said softly. “Let me be me — not a story about courage.”
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She kept her life small but fierce — painting, journaling, trying new teas, humming to old Hindi songs.
One night while I was overcooking pasta again, she said, “You know, I always wanted to write a book. A love story — a real one. Not perfect, but true. Maybe ours.”
“Then do it,” I said.
She smiled. “Maybe I already am. Every day’s a page, isn’t it?”
That night, she curled up next to me, her shorter hair brushing my cheek like a whisper.
For the first time in years, I felt grateful just to exist.
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I proposed to her a few months later.
She looked at the ring, then at me, with that same gentle firmness. “No.”
“Why?” I asked, already knowing.
“Because I want you to live, not wait,” she said. “You have one life — don’t tie it to something fading.”
“I’m not tying myself,” I said quietly. “I’m choosing you.”
Her eyes softened. “Then choose life, too. Promise me that.”
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The night she died was cold and oddly quiet.
She’d had trouble breathing for days, but still insisted on making tea that morning. “I can handle it,” she said. “I hate hospitals.”
By evening, she couldn’t speak. I rushed her in, heart pounding, hands slippery with fear.
The ER was a blur — blue curtains, machines humming, nurses moving like practiced ghosts.
I held her hand as her breathing grew shallow, uneven.
“Kavya,” I whispered, “remember the first time I saw you? You smiled like I was hopeless.”
Her lips curved faintly. “You were.”
She coughed, tried to speak again. “You… learned?”
I swallowed hard. “Still trying.”
She looked at me — eyes calm, body trembling. “Promise me something,” she said.
“Anything.”
“When I’m gone… don’t shrink.” Her voice was faint, each word an effort. “Don’t let the fear of endings make you small. You get one life. Don’t waste it surviving. Live it.”
Her hand tightened weakly around mine.
And then the night slowly drowned into silence.
A deep, unbearable stillness, broken only by the faint hum of machines that no longer mattered.
Her hair — now thin, soft as breath — lay scattered on the pillow like fragments of a life once fierce and full.
I brushed it gently aside, as if touching what was left of the sun.
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Morning came too early. The city didn’t pause — buses groaned, people hurried, phones rang.
Life had moved on. Only I hadn’t.
For weeks, I drifted — waking, eating, existing. Arc Coffee became a place I both dreaded and needed. The foam was still wrong. The world still indifferent.
Then one morning, a woman sat by the window — long, dark hair spilling down her back, catching sunlight the same way Kavya’s used to. She laughed softly to herself.
For a heartbeat, my chest tightened. Then she turned — and it wasn’t her.
Of course it wasn’t.
But I smiled. Not the forced kind, but the one Kavya gave me that first day — the one that said: Don’t be ridiculous. You’re alive. Act like it.
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Now I live differently.
I say yes to things that scare me. I write more. Travel more. I even learned to make coffee the way she liked it — less foam, more heart.
Sometimes, when the morning light hits just right, I almost hear her whisper — steady, amused, eternal:
“You have one life. Make it count.”
And I do.
Every single day.
⸻