By the third meeting, we stopped pretending it was coincidence.
She texted me, finally. Her name was Zahra. We started spending time — slowly, irregularly, but intentionally. Parks. Cafés. Long walks that turned into short nights. Nothing serious, we both said. But the way she looked at me when I talked, the way her hand hovered just near mine without touching — it felt serious.
One evening, we found ourselves at her rooftop, the city lights blinking like tired eyes. We talked about love. Or almost-love. She said she was scared of it, how it made people forget themselves.
I asked, "What if it helps you remember who you are?"
She didn't answer right away. But she looked at me — and I knew something real was shifting.
Still, she kept a part of herself closed, like a room you're not allowed to enter. And I, too polite or too scared, never pushed. We were something like almost. Almost lovers. Almost real. Almost more.
But the thing with "almost" is — it always finds a way to drift.