Where We Left Our Seventeen

Aarvika has everything.
Asia's top entrepreneur. Award-winning author. The woman men want and women envy.
What she doesn't have is him.

At twenty seven, Aarvika's life is measured in boardroom wins and book tours. But when seventeen-year-old Nitya confesses her first crush, something cracks open. "Mausi, did you ever fall in love?"
Yes. She did.

With Adit. In high school. At seventeen.

He was the boy with dark eyes and messy hair who lived on the backbench of her heart. The one she promised to love 'till the very last day'. The one who walked away after graduation and never looked back.
She kept her vow. He didn't.

Now, sitting on a terrace under the same kind of indigo sky that watched them fall in love, Aarvika must choose: give Nitya the fairy tale version, or the truth. That some loves don't get happy endings.

Her best friend Vaniya begs her to move on "It's been more than 10 years. He has moved on. When will you?"
But Aarvika still sees him in every crowd. Still hears his laugh in every silence. Still writes every novel trying to find the words he never said goodbye with.

Where We Left Our Seventeen is the story of first love, last promises, and the ghosts we carry into adulthood. It's about the girl who became everything except his and the woman who has to decide if telling the story will finally set her free, or bind her to it forever.

Because some backbenches are haunted and Aarvika never stopped waiting.