What the Rain Remembers

I am Prachi Arora. I have a mother who loves me, friends who make me laugh, and a career that will make me CEO before I'm thirty-five. I am happy. I repeat this to myself in the mirror some mornings, and most days, I almost believe it.

The lie holds until it rains.

The first drop on the glass is a knock on a door I keep locked. The scent of wet earth is a key turning. For everyone else, rain is just weather. For me, it's a confrontation.

It brings him back. Not as a ghost, but as a feeling, so vivid and warm it hurts. For years, I told myself that the book was closed, that what we had was just a prelude to the main story of my life.

But how can a chapter be over when you still feel every word?

Ranbir Kohli will always be a part of me, no matter how much I deny it. And tonight, with the storm raging outside my window, denial feels like a house of cards in a hurricane.