With everything going around on, will someone find love and peace they think they will get?

Maya didn't really believe in love. Not in a dramatic, jaded way — she just thought people who talked about "soulmates" probably hadn't paid rent on their own yet.

She worked the evening shift at her uncle's bookstore, the small one near the bus stop, the kind with a wobbly ceiling fan and a cat that technically belonged to nobody. Her job mostly involved reshelving books people abandoned mid-aisle, refilling the chai thermos her uncle kept behind the counter, and pretending she hadn't heard the same customer ask "do you have wifi" for the fifth time that week.

It wasn't a glamorous job. Most days it was just her, a half-broken card machine, and whatever playlist she felt like putting up with.

One Tuesday, a guy walked in looking like he'd run there.

"I need a book. Any book. My sister's birthday is in like... two hours, and I completely forgot."

He was out of breath, hair a mess, holding his phone like it owed him answers.

"Okay, breathe first," Maya said. "What does she actually like?"

"Honestly? Drama. Chaos. Watching me suffer."

Maya almost laughed, caught herself, then didn't bother holding it back. She grabbed a thriller off the front table and turned it over in her hands before handing it to him.

"This should cover all three."

He thanked her like she'd saved his life, paid in coins he clearly dug out of his car, and left in just as much of a hurry as he'd come in.

Maya figured that was that. People like that didn't usually come back — they got what they needed and moved on, the way most customers did.

But he came back the next week. Bought one book, nothing urgent this time, just browsed for a while first like he wasn't in any rush. Came back the week after that too, and bought another book he very clearly did not need.

"I'm looking for something on... birds."

"You don't seem like a bird guy."

"I'm not. I saw one yesterday just sitting there, staring at me, and I felt judged. I need answers."

"That's not really how birds work."

"You don't know my bird."

By his fourth visit, Maya had stopped pretending she hadn't started saving him the chair by the window — the one that didn't wobble. She told herself it was just good customer service. She wasn't very convincing, even to herself.

It took a while before anything really started. Weeks, actually. They'd talk a little whenever he came in — nothing deep, just easy back and forth about books neither of them had finished, or whatever was annoying him that day. He introduced himself properly on his sixth visit, like it had only just occurred to him that he hadn't.

"I'm Arjun, by the way."

"I know. It's on your card."

"Right. Fair."

They became friends the way most people actually do — slowly, with no clear starting point you could point back to later. A few texts turned into a few more. Him sending her a photo of a sandwich at 11pm captioned "this is either genius or a mistake." Her replying three hours later because she'd fallen asleep mid-conversation, which happened a lot, and which he never let her forget.

They didn't go out properly for almost a month. It was mostly just him hanging around the store till closing, the two of them talking while she did the last bit of tidying, in no rush to end the conversation. Her uncle noticed before either of them said anything.

"That boy comes here more than the regulars," he said one evening, not looking up from his newspaper.

"He likes books."

"He likes you. The books are an excuse."

Maya rolled her eyes and didn't argue, because arguing would've meant admitting he wasn't wrong.

The first time they actually went somewhere together — a small dhaba two streets down, nothing fancy — Arjun spent most of dinner debating with her about whether biryani needed a side dish or not, a topic he had unreasonably strong feelings about.

"It's a complete meal. Rice, meat, masala. Why are you adding salad like this is a diet plan."

"Some balance wouldn't kill you."

"Balance is for people who don't understand food."

It was a stupid argument and they both knew it, but it went on for twenty minutes anyway, neither of them willing to let it go just for the fun of it.

A few weeks later, he came over to her place insisting he'd cook for once. It went badly.

"I said low heat."

"You said medium, I'm pretty sure."

"There is smoke coming from the pan, Arjun."

"There's always a little smoke. That's just how rice works."

It was not how rice works. Maya's smoke alarm disagreed loudly, and they ended up eating cereal on her kitchen floor instead, laughing about it far more than the situation deserved. He blamed the stove. She blamed him. The stove remained innocent.

It wasn't one big moment that changed things between them. It was slower than that — at some point she noticed she was telling him things she hadn't told anyone, small things, embarrassing things, and he was doing the same without either of them really deciding to.

When he eventually told his family about her, he was oddly nervous about it, more nervous than she expected from someone who once argued with a bird for a full ten minutes. He kept rehearsing what he'd say, then forgetting it the moment his mother actually asked.

The first time Maya met her, it was over chai at their house, everyone a little too polite, the kind of politeness that makes a room feel smaller.

His mom looked Maya up and down for a second too long and said, "You're the one who got him into birds?"

"I will not be taking responsibility for that," Maya said.

"Smart. Nobody should."

That broke whatever tension had been sitting in the room. By the end of the evening, his mother was telling Maya stories about Arjun as a child that he very clearly did not want repeated, and he sat there red-faced, mouthing "please stop" across the table while nobody listened to him.

It wasn't all easy, and Maya doesn't pretend it was, even now. There were stretches where work drained both of them and they'd go a few days barely talking — not on purpose, just tired in that specific way that makes you bad at being a person. There was one stretch, a few months in, where Arjun was dealing with some family stuff he didn't want to talk about, and Maya didn't push, but it left a quiet kind of distance between them that neither of them liked.

Then there was the fight. Not a big dramatic one — just a stupid, forgettable one, about whose turn it was to deal with something neither of them wanted to deal with. It started small and somehow turned into both of them saying things they didn't mean, the way arguments do when they're really about exhaustion and not about whatever started them.

They didn't talk properly for two days after that. It wasn't comfortable. Maya kept picking up her phone to text him and putting it back down.

On the third day, he showed up at the store right before closing, holding a slightly crushed packet of her favorite biscuits like a peace offering.

"I'm not good at this part," he said. "The apologizing part. I usually just wait for things to feel normal again, which I know isn't fair."

"It's not."

"I know. I'm working on it."

"You brought the wrong biscuits, by the way."

"I panicked at the shop."

She let him in anyway. Not because the biscuits fixed anything, but because he'd shown up, and that mattered more than getting it perfectly right.

A few weeks after that, sitting outside the store after closing, neither of them in a particularly good mood that evening either, Arjun finally said something more honest than usual.

"I don't have most of this figured out. Work, money, whatever's supposed to happen next. Today I genuinely yelled at the printer like it had wronged me personally."

"I talked to a pigeon again," she said. "Still judging me."

That got a laugh out of both of them, finally, the first real one in a few days.

"I'm not put together either," he said, quieter. "But I keep wanting this. You. Even on the days that are just... annoying. Not romantic at all."

Maya looked at him for a second, no music swelling, nothing cinematic about it — just two tired people sitting on a curb.

"I think that's the part nobody tells you," she said. "It's not the big moments. It's someone still being there on the boring Tuesday."

The proposal, when it came, wasn't some big planned-out thing either. They were at the bookstore, late, doing the closing routine they'd done a hundred times by then. He kept being weirdly slow about locking up.

"You're stalling."

"I'm not stalling."

"You've checked that lock four times."

He finally just stopped and looked at her. "I don't have a speech. I tried writing one and it sounded like a greeting card, and you'd never let me hear the end of it."

"Probably not."

"So I'm just going to ask. Marry me. Not because of some big moment — because of this. The boring closing-up part. I want this part with you too."

Maya didn't cry, though she came close. Mostly she laughed, a little stunned, a little embarrassed, completely sure.

"Took you long enough."

They got married on an ordinary Saturday — nothing fancy, a few too many relatives, an uncle who insisted on giving a toast that ran twelve minutes too long and somehow brought up his own wedding twice. Arjun's sister made sure everyone heard the bird-watching story at least three times that day, embellishing it a little more with each telling.

Years later, their daughter asked how they met, the question kids ask without realizing how much is packed into it.

"Your mom trapped me with a thriller novel," Arjun said.

"Your dad walked in needing a birthday gift and somehow became one," Maya said.

Nothing about their life got perfect after that, the way it never does. Bills still showed up on time whether they were ready or not. Jobs were still hard some days for no real reason. The world outside stayed just as loud and uncertain as it had always been.

But most evenings, without needing any of it to be flawless, they still chose each other. Not loudly. Not with fireworks. Just quietly showing up, again and again, the way people actually do.

That was really the whole thing.

Unconditional love, unconditional story

May I get a love like this in my life but Khair ❤️

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