Without a map

The rain started just as Aarohi confronted him near Karve Nagar.

“You vanished,” she said. “No texts. No calls. Nothing.”

Raghav exhaled. “Because I didn’t know how to say this.”

He told her everything.

The boarding school in Dehradun. Parents who’d planned his life down to the minute. The transfer to Pune was made without their knowledge. Living with his uncle. The lie.

“I just wanted one year to be me,” he said softly. “And then I met you.”

Aarohi’s world tilted.

“So you’re leaving,” she said.

“Tonight. Heading west.”

Silence hung between them, heavy with rain.

“Take me with you,” she said suddenly.

Raghav stared at her. “Aarohi—this isn’t a movie.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m choosing it.”

She was tired of pretending she fit into a life she didn’t want. Of staying safe. Of waiting.

“I’d rather be lost with you,” she said, voice steady, “than stay here wondering what could’ve been.”

They didn’t know if they were brave or foolish. Maybe both.

As they drove out of Pune, the city lights dissolving into the rain-slicked darkness, Aarohi felt the weight of everything she was leaving behind, and the quiet thrill of everything ahead.

Love, she realized, never arrives with directions or guarantees. It doesn’t hand you a future neatly marked on a map.

It simply asks for one thing...the courage to go without a map, just before you leave.