The sun had a habit of setting differently over Mrs. Sharma's house.
Everywhere else in the colony, the evening light just... faded. Unremarkable. Forgettable. But here — behind the old neem tree in her courtyard — it turned everything amber and gold, like the world was showing off specifically for this address.
I noticed that on my very first evening visit.
I also noticed Mrs. Sharma was terrible at football.
"That was clearly out!" she argued, hands on her hips, slightly out of breath, her dupatta half-escaped from her shoulder.
"Mrs. Sharma," I said, trying — genuinely trying — to keep a straight face. "The goal is that wall. You kicked it toward that wall. That is literally the opposite direction."
"I was... repositioning."
"You scored for me."
"I was letting you win."
"You've been letting me win for forty-five minutes."
She picked up the football with great dignity and walked inside.
I stood in her courtyard laughing until my stomach hurt.
She let me come back the next evening.
And the one after that.
I'm not sure exactly when it stopped being just something I did and became something I needed. Maybe it was the Tuesday she beat me at cricket — genuinely, embarrassingly beat me, three wickets in a row — and did a little victory dance that she immediately tried to pretend hadn't happened.
Maybe it was the Thursday of hide and seek, when she hid behind the old almirah in the storeroom and I found her in thirty seconds because I could hear her trying not to laugh.
"You're supposed to be hiding," I whispered.
"I am hiding," she whispered back, completely failing to hide.
Or maybe it was the quieter moments — when the games wound down, when the courtyard went from gold to blue, when she'd sit on the steps with a steel glass of chai and I'd sit a few steps below and we'd just... talk. About nothing. About everything. About neighborhood gossip and her sister's ridiculous husband and what I wanted to do with my life.
She had opinions about everything. Strong ones. Delivered with complete authority and zero hesitation.
I found it unreasonably attractive.
Here's what nobody tells you about wanting someone — the part they leave out of songs and movies:
It makes you meticulous.
I became a student of her schedule with a dedication I'd never applied to any actual subject in school.
What I learned, across careful, patient evenings:
Mrs. Sharma bathed at 6 PM. Every day. Without exception. The woman ran her routine like a military operation — I half-expected there to be a printed timetable somewhere.
Which meant if I arrived at 6:15, 6:20, 6:30 — I caught her in that soft, unguarded window just after. Hair still slightly damp at the ends. The faint smell of her soap drifting into the courtyard before I even knocked. A different kind of ease in how she moved, like the day had been washed off along with everything else.
She was lighter in that window.
Less Mrs. Sharma of the Colony, more just... her.
I told myself I was just choosing good timing.
I was absolutely not just choosing good timing.
The first week, she'd still come to the door with a slightly formal "Oh, you're here."
The second week, she started leaving the courtyard door unlatched.
The third week, she stopped coming to the door at all and just called from somewhere inside — "Aa ja!" (Come in!) — like I was expected. Like my presence had been factored into the evening without any announcement being necessary.
I tried very hard not to read too much into that.
I failed completely.
It started small.
"Hey—" her voice floated out one evening, from behind the closed bathroom door, above the sound of the running water. "Can you check if my towel is on the bed? I think I forgot it."
I found it on the bed. I carried it to the bathroom door. Knocked twice.
The door opened just enough — just a hand, her fingers curling around the edge — and I passed the towel through.
Simple. Quick. Nothing.
Except my heart did something completely unreasonable for the next twenty minutes.
The next time it was her clothes.
"Yaar, meri salwar neeche reh gayi—" (My salwar got left downstairs) she called out, mildly aggravated with herself. "Bedroom mein dekh, blue wali."
(Check in the bedroom, the blue one.)
I found the blue salwar folded on the chair. Brought it to the door. Same knock, same hand appearing at the edge.
"Thanks," she said through the door, slightly muffled, genuinely unbothered.
She trusts me, I thought, walking back to the courtyard.
The realization sat in my chest like something warm and slightly too heavy to carry casually.
It happened a few more times over that month.
Each time a little less remarkable to her. Each time a little more significant to me.
She'd forgotten something. Or needed something. And I was simply there, and it was simply fine, and that was the quiet, devastating truth of it —
She'd stopped thinking of my presence as something to account for.
That part came slowly. Gradually. So gradually that neither of us marked a moment where it became something.
It started with me sitting on the floor outside, back against the wall, talking to her through the door while she bathed — because we'd been mid-conversation when she remembered she had to, and neither of us wanted to stop talking.
"—so I told him," her voice came through, punctuated by the sound of water, "that if he thinks that's how you play cricket, he's never played cricket—"
"He has played cricket—"
"Then he's played it wrong."
I laughed. She laughed. The water kept running.
It was the most normal thing in the world.
And then one evening — I genuinely couldn't tell you which one, the month had started blurring at the edges by then — she just said:
"Come in and hand me the shampoo, it's on the shelf, I can't reach—"
No hesitation in her voice. Like it was the most obvious request. Like the bathroom door was just a door and I was just a person and the shampoo was just shampoo.
I stood outside for exactly two seconds.
Then I pushed the door open, eyes politely averted, found the shampoo on the shelf, held it out, felt her take it from my hand.
"Thanks," she said. Casual. Easy. Like I'd passed her a pencil.
I walked back out.
Sat down in the courtyard.
Stared at the neem tree for a long time.
One month, I thought. One month and we went from football arguments to this.
The neem tree did not offer a response.
But it seemed, somehow, impressed.
Epilogue of the Month
Thirty days.
Thirty evenings of bad football and good chai and hiding behind almirahs and voices through bathroom doors and towels passed through two-inch gaps and shampoo bottles and the slow, patient, deliberate unraveling of every guard she'd ever thought she needed around me.
She didn't decide to let me in.
She just... stopped keeping me out.
There's a difference. I'd learned that. The first kind is a door being unlocked. The second kind is the door ceasing to matter.
By the end of the month, the door didn't matter.
And I —
I had made a decision.
She was going to be mine.
Not because I'd planned it perfectly, though I had.
Not because I'd read her schedule like a map, though I had.
But because somewhere between the goal she kicked in the wrong direction and the shampoo bottle passed through steam and half-light —
I had fallen for her completely.
And I was fairly certain, though she'd sooner lose another cricket match than admit it —
She knew.