Class 12 began like a fresh page, but Zia's heart was still tied to old paragraphs she hadn't finished reading. The morning bells, the notebooks filled with clean margins, and Ruqayyah's familiar chatter made everything feel normal on the outside.
But inside, Zia felt like she was walking through a fog—one made of memories, what-ifs, and unsent messages.
Her boyfriend still messaged her in the first few weeks. Just small talks—how her day was, whether she ate properly, what drama her teachers were creating.
It wasn't like before, not the long emotional conversations or those silly late-night texts, but it was enough. Enough to keep her smiling at her phone and writing his name in the margins of her diary.
Until one evening in late April, his last message came:
"My mother is really angry about my results. She thinks it's all because of the phone. I won't be able to talk for a while."
A while. That "while" stretched into days. Then weeks.
Zia stared at his chat every morning before school. She left him messages at first:
"I miss you. It's hard not talking to you."
But slowly, her messages stopped too. There's only so long a heart can scream into silence before it goes quiet.
It hurt. The kind of hurt that made her stomach feel heavy, like something important had sunk too deep to reach.
She told no one, except Ruqayyah and Sana, who noticed her changing smiles, the way her eyes stared at the sky during lunch, the way her playlist went from love songs to instrumentals.
"You still love him, don't you?" Sana asked one afternoon as they sat under a tree near the school canteen.
Zia nodded, not trusting her voice.
Ruqayyah, ever the fierce one, put an arm around her. "Then wait. Real love comes back, even after the silence. If it doesn't, then it was never real."
But some days, even hope felt exhausting. Even breathing felt like carrying a weight she didn't sign up for.
One quiet evening in May, a boy from her coaching class sent her a message.
"I've liked you for a while. You're different. Strong. Beautiful. Will you talk to me?"
Zia stared at the screen. There was a time she would have blushed, felt something stir inside her. Now, all she felt was absence.
"I'm sorry. There's someone I still love," she replied simply.
The boy didn't text again. And she didn't feel proud or powerful—just hollow. Like she was a room with the lights turned off.
But she kept going. She studied. She helped Ruqayyah with math, listened to Sana's endless K-drama rants, and even laughed at times. Still, at night, under her blanket, she whispered his name like a secret prayer no one was listening to.
And then, his birthday came.
July 3rd.
Zia remembered every detail of how they had celebrated it last year—the voice notes, the long call at midnight, the silly poems she wrote for him, and that one drawing she stayed up all night finishing. She remembered how he said, "No one's ever made me feel this special."
But this year, she didn't even have the courage to send a text.
She opened WhatsApp, stared at his name, typed something, erased it, then typed again. Her heart raced, fingers trembling over the screen.
In the end, she couldn't bring herself to message him directly. Instead, she poured her feelings into a story. No direct mention. No tag. Just pain, love, and longing woven into her words:
"Happy birthday to someone who still lives in my heart. We just paused the words, not the love. I still carry you in every heartbeat. Today's your day… and I'll still celebrate you in silence. Some dates are etched in the soul. No matter how far we drift, I still feel you on days like these. And I still love you."
She posted it. And waited.
He saw it.
He didn't reply.
She closed WhatsApp and stared at the ceiling. Her chest felt tight. She helped her mother in the kitchen without saying much, then joined her family at the dinner table.
She laughed at her brother's joke, nodded when her father asked about school, but her mind was nowhere in that room.
Maybe he didn't feel the same anymore. Maybe she had been holding onto something that was already gone.
She was halfway through her meal, chewing slowly, when her phone buzzed.
A message.
She froze.
Slowly, carefully, she wiped her hands and picked up the phone.
"Thanks for wishing me."
Just five words. Her eyes didn't leave the screen.
She read it once. Then again. And again.
Her fingers moved on their own.
"I meant every word," she typed.
There was a pause. A longer one. Her heart beat so loudly, she thought her parents might hear it.
Then another message popped up.
"I saw your story… I wasn't sure if I should reply… but I missed you too."
Zia felt the tears rising, but she blinked them away.
"I waited," she replied. "Every day. Even when I knew you wouldn't come."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to leave you like that. I was hurting too."
"You could have told me. I would have understood. I always did."
"I didn't want to hurt you more… I thought I was protecting you by staying away."
"You weren't," she wrote. "You were the only person I wanted to talk to."
They talked. Not like before. No jokes, no teasing, no flirty texts. Just honesty. The raw kind that comes only after silence.
Zia told him how her days felt longer. How she avoided certain songs. How she had almost started to forget the sound of his voice.
He told her how he had wanted to message her so many times. How he wrote and deleted texts. How he reread their old conversations late at night. How he saw her story and knew he couldn't stay silent anymore.
"I don't know what we are now," Zia finally typed. "But I never stopped loving you."
"I never stopped either," he replied. "I was just too afraid to say it."
"What are we going to do now?" she asked.
"We try," he said. "No promises. No pressure. Just… try."
Zia smiled. A real one. Not the polite kind. Not the cover-up kind. The kind that came from somewhere deep inside.
That night, after everyone had gone to sleep, she lay in bed with her phone pressed to her chest. The world hadn't changed. But something inside her had.
The silence that used to weigh her down had shifted. It no longer felt like loss. It felt like space. Space where something fragile could begin again.
She didn't know what tomorrow would bring. She didn't need to.
Because tonight, he had come back. Not with grand gestures. Not with promises of forever.
But with a message that meant more than a thousand poems.
And that was enough.
Some loves pause. Some drift. But the real ones? They always find their way back.
And this time, she wasn't afraid. She was ready to begin again. Not from the beginning. But from the silence they had both survived.