A Short Story by Dave Hibbins
Where It Began
Leena hit the brakes too hard and skidded sideways into a rice sack.
The scooter thudded into the pile, soft enough to spare her bones but loud enough to alert half the street. A tuk-tuk driver laughed, and a noodle vendor shouted something about “young people and broken mirrors.”
Leena peeled herself off the ground, brushed dust from her elbows, and gave the noodle vendor a smile that said: I’m fine. Please don’t tell my mother.
That’s when she saw him.
From across the road, a man in a grease-smudged T-shirt looked up from a disassembled motorbike. He was wiping his hands on a red cloth, a single streak of engine oil across his forehead like a war mark. His hair was half-gray, but not tired. His eyes were warm, patient. He walked over—no rush, no judgment.
“You alright, miss?” he asked in Thai, voice soft like a worn record.
“I meant to crash,” she said.
He blinked, then laughed. It was a laugh that came from his belly, like he hadn’t had a reason to use it in a while.
His name was Daniel.
He owned the motorbike shop tucked under the weathered banyan tree near the edge of Old Town. The kind of place that smelled like rust and jasmine, and where lizards lounged on toolboxes like unpaid staff.
Leena brought her scooter in “for repairs” every week after that.
Sometimes it was a rattle she made up. Sometimes she just sat there while he worked, talking about how dumb her cousin’s engagement party was or how no one else in her family knew who Radiohead was.
Daniel listened. Mostly. Occasionally he would say something small and perfect like:
“Sounds like you needed a place to say things out loud.”
“Music’s just memory with rhythm. What do you want to remember?”
And then she would blush and call him weird, and he would shrug like maybe he was.
They didn’t mean to fall in love.
He was 42. She was 27.
She drank bubble tea with too much sugar. He sipped instant coffee like it was a religion. She liked loud music and fast scooters. He preferred silence and slow tools.
But somehow, in the space between their silences, something bloomed.
He let her paint the wall of the shop with stars one evening. She brought him mango sticky rice in little plastic tubs, claiming she didn’t like the texture.
She did. She just liked watching him eat it more.
One night, while rain tapped gently on the tin roof of the shop, she sat on his workbench and asked:
“Do you think I’m childish?”
“No,” he said. “I think you’re alive. There’s a difference.”
Then, after a pause:
“Do you think I’m too old?”
“No,” she said. “I think you’re safe. That’s not the same as boring.”
And when their fingers touched for the first time, it wasn’t electricity.
It was something quieter. Something softer.
Like finally finding the page in the book you didn’t know was missing.
Pressure Cracks
It started with a gold box.
Leena found it on the kitchen table, wrapped in red ribbon, tucked beside her mother’s half-eaten rambutan. Inside: a diamond pendant, shaped like a lotus. Classic. Understated. Expensive.
“Who’s getting married?” she joked, hoping for the wrong answer.
Her mother smiled with the kind of pride that feels sharp to the people it slices.
“You, beta. Rafiq is coming this weekend. You remember him. He’s very handsome now. Works with Samsung. Drives a BMW.”
Leena stared at the pendant like it might bite her.
She met Rafiq that Saturday.
He was tall. Sharp jawline. Clean-cut. The kind of man who had never sweated on a motorbike or patched a tire in the rain. He smelled like cologne and expectations.
He called her “princess” and talked about crypto.
When she asked what kind of books he read, he laughed. “Books? Nah, I’m too busy getting deals done.”
She smiled politely. Her mother watched from the doorway, hands clasped, as if Leena were a lottery ticket she had just handed in.
Daniel didn’t ask why she stopped coming.
He noticed. Of course he did.
Her scooter didn’t need fixing. Her laugh didn’t echo through the shop anymore. The jasmine she used to leave on his bench wilted without its morning arrival.
He didn’t text. He didn’t call.
Because loving Leena meant giving her space to choose—even if she was choosing silence.
Then one night, she showed up.
Hair soaked. Eyes glassy. Sandals in hand. She didn’t knock—just walked into the shop like she used to, like her heart still remembered the path even if her mind tried to forget.
Daniel looked up from his bench, socket wrench in hand. Didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I let them dress me up like a gift box. I smiled. I nodded. I didn’t scream.”
Daniel set the wrench down.
“He’s not a bad man,” she whispered. “But I don’t want to love someone I have to learn to like.”
Then she looked at him—and her voice cracked.
“I already do love someone. But I have to lie about it every time I’m home.”
He wiped his hands on that same red cloth. The one from the first day. It was still stained, still soft.
“I don’t want to be a secret you have to keep hiding,” he said. “I’m tired of being the thing you’re scared to speak.”
And she broke. Right there, beside the scooter with the scratched paint and the dent in the left handle. She broke like a whisper shouted too loud.
He pulled her into his arms, and they stood there—no kisses, no fanfare. Just two people leaning against each other like the last two pieces of a crumbling wall.
But love doesn’t wait forever. And families don’t forget birthdays.
Leena’s engagement was announced at her uncle’s 60th. She hadn’t even said yes yet. But she wore the necklace that day—the lotus pendant—because refusing would cause a scene. And her mother would cry. And her father would speak with his eyes full of thunder.
Daniel watched the photos appear online like bruises.
When she finally came back, two days before the formal engagement ceremony, he wasn’t angry.
Just quiet.
“You know,” he said, “if I’d been younger—if I had a job they could brag about—maybe I’d have fought harder.”
“You’re the only man who ever made me feel safe,” she said.
“Then why aren’t I enough?”
She didn’t have an answer.
Only tears.
She left again.
And this time, he didn’t think she’d come back.
He slept in the shop, stopped opening the front shutters in the morning. He drank cold coffee from a cracked mug and read the same page of a poetry book three days in a row.
There was a poem she’d underlined once:
“Love isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it just waits quietly, hoping someone will notice it’s still there.”
The Breaking Point
The engagement party smelled like rose water, tension, and disappointment wrapped in silk.
Leena stood in front of a backdrop of gold streamers and plastic orchids, surrounded by relatives she hadn’t seen in years. They came with smiles, selfies, and the same questions:
“When is the wedding?”
“You’re so lucky—he’s so handsome!”
“Beta, are you excited?”
She smiled on cue. Her face hurt. Her heart didn’t bother showing up.
Rafiq stood beside her, grinning like the prince of a toothpaste commercial. He kept his arm around her waist like she was a handbag he didn’t want to misplace.
“You should loosen up,” he whispered as they posed for a photo. “You look like someone died.”
“Maybe something did,” she said softly.
Outside the venue, a storm gathered—not in the sky, but inside her.
Her fingers fidgeted with the edge of her shawl. She could barely breathe under the weight of her family’s pride, the cloying perfume of forced affection, the way Rafiq kept tightening his grip when she tried to step away.
It was too much. All of it. The fake laughter. The ring that didn’t belong to her soul. The way she couldn’t even cry without someone handing her a napkin and telling her to “fix her makeup.”
Then it happened.
She stepped out for air. Just five minutes.
And across the road—under a flickering streetlamp, behind the shadow of a banyan tree—stood Daniel.
Not close. Not watching. Just there.
Hands in pockets. Shoulders heavy.
Like a man who showed up not to fight, but just to see her one last time.
Their eyes met.
And in that heartbeat of silence, something broke.
Not loudly. Not dramatically.
But like a lock that finally, quietly snapped open.
Rafiq followed her outside.
“Where are you going?” he asked, irritated.
“I need air.”
“With him here? That mechanic guy again?” He snorted. “God, is that still a thing?”
She turned. “Don’t call him that.”
Rafiq stepped closer. “Leena, don’t embarrass your family. Go back inside. This is what they want. He’s just—he’s not for you.”
His hand closed around her wrist.
And that was it.
The storm inside her finally raged free.
“No,” she said, voice steel.
“No more silence. No more lying. No more pretending.”
She looked back across the road.
Daniel hadn’t moved.
Tears flooded her eyes—not from sadness, but from relief. Because for once, she wasn’t going to break her own heart to make everyone else comfortable.
She pulled her wrist free, kicked off her shoes, and ran.
Across the street. Across her fear. Across the years of trying to be the daughter they wanted instead of the woman she was.
She didn’t stop until she was in his arms.
Daniel caught her like he’d never stopped holding her.
They didn’t speak.
There weren’t words big enough to hold what had just happened.
But in the way she clung to him…
In the way his fingers threaded into her hair like they’d been aching for years to do it…
In the way their foreheads touched, eyes closed…
It was all there.
The pain.
The love.
The beginning.
“Are you sure?” he whispered, voice barely holding itself together.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure of one thing.”
“What?”
She smiled through tears. “You. Just you.”
The Road Back to Her
They didn’t run far.
Just two towns over, past the last of the beach bars and the gas station with the peeling Pepsi sign. A sleepy fishing village where no one asked questions, and where gossip had the courtesy to whisper.
Daniel found a one-room house near the coast—wooden shutters, a hammock out front, and a leaking tap that he fixed before she even finished unpacking.
Leena brought three dresses, her favorite books, and a single pair of gold earrings. She didn’t bring the necklace.
She left that in a glass of water by the window.
Let the sun bleach it hollow.
The days blurred in softness.
She started painting again—oils this time, big messy canvases with too much sky.
He worked on local bikes in a borrowed shed. Fixed a fisherman’s boat engine for free and refused the offer of fish in return.
They didn’t have much. But what they had never felt like less.
They ate by candlelight, not for romance, but because the power cut out a lot.
She learned to cook eggs the way he liked—slightly burnt edges.
He learned to leave the curtain open in the morning, just because she liked waking up to the sea.
And they laughed.
God, how they laughed.
At her sandal breaking in the market.
At him calling her painting “upside-down spaghetti.”
At the absurdity of it all—that love, after everything, had survived long enough to become light.
One night, as they watched lightning dance on the horizon, she said:
“I used to think love had to be fire. But maybe it’s just… someone holding your hand when the power goes out.”
He smiled. “That, or someone who doesn’t steal the blanket.”
She hit him with a pillow. He kissed her shoulder.
The world felt kind again.
But healing isn’t always clean.
Some nights, she cried.
Not because she missed her family, but because she missed what she wished they could have been.
Daniel never told her to stop.
He just held her. Gently.
Let her bleed out the ache in whatever shape it came.
And some days, he stayed quiet too long.
Still afraid she might change her mind.
That she’d wake up, remember her old life, and walk back to it.
She never did.
One morning, he found a folded note on the workbench.
In her handwriting:
“I spent my whole life trying to be the right kind of girl.
The obedient one. The perfect one.
But you let me be loud. Messy. Wild.
You didn’t just love me—you saw me.
I’ll never leave again. Even if the world forgets us—I won’t.”
There was a jasmine flower taped to the top.
He pressed it in a book and didn’t say a word.
But he smiled for the rest of the week like he’d been given the map back to his heart.
They stayed.
Not hidden. Just quiet.
No big announcements. No grand declarations.
Just the small miracle of two people waking up every day and choosing this.
Not perfect.
Not easy.
But real.
The Quiet Place Between Us
It was nearly a year later when she asked him to repaint the shop wall.
They’d returned—not to her family, not to the noise—but to the old motorbike shop beneath the banyan tree. It stood just as they’d left it: crooked sign, dusty window, the faint scent of old oil clinging to the floor.
But the stars she once painted had faded.
The blues were dull. The white dots had chipped away like time had tried to forget.
So, one Saturday, she dipped a brush in silver paint and said:
“I want to leave new stars behind. Ones that look like us.”
She painted with reckless joy, splattering dots like constellations across the wall.
Daniel sat nearby, tinkering with an engine and watching her—like she was the moon, and he was the tide.
At one point, she turned to him, streaked with paint and laughing.
“I still don’t know what I’m doing,” she said.
He wiped his hands and walked over, looked up at her scattered sky.
“You’re making a map,” he said. “So if we ever get lost again, we’ll find our way back.”
She paused.
Then slowly, she dipped the brush in white and painted a small heart under one of the stars.
Later that evening, as the light faded and the world settled into its hum, she brought out two cups of tea and joined him on the rooftop.
The same rooftop where they used to sit in silence.
Where their fingers first brushed.
Where she once told him about her dreams in a whisper, as if speaking them too loudly might scare them away.
Now, she rested her head on his shoulder.
“I saw my mother last week,” she said.
He didn’t flinch. Just sipped his tea and waited.
“She was at the temple. I think she saw me.”
“And?”
“She didn’t look away. But she didn’t come over, either.”
She paused. “It hurt. But… less than I thought.”
He nodded.
“I think,” she continued, “some love is quiet. Like yours. It doesn’t force itself. It just… waits. Until we’re ready to hear it.”
He smiled. Kissed the top of her head.
They sat in silence for a while—two cups of tea growing cold beside them, the stars returning above.
Below them, the world kept spinning. Families feuded. Plans changed. People grew apart or together or sideways.
But in that small rooftop space, with the silver wall below and the moon above, nothing needed fixing.
Nothing needed hiding.
They were just there.
Together.
Leena reached into her pocket, pulled out a folded scrap of paper.
“What’s that?”
“My last secret,” she said. “One more than I meant to keep.”
He opened it.
Inside was a line from the poem he used to read, underlined in blue:
“Love isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it just waits quietly, hoping someone will notice it’s still there.”
She looked at him.
“I noticed,” she whispered.
He didn’t answer.
Just pulled her closer.
Because sometimes love doesn’t need words.
Sometimes it’s just a hand on your back when the storm returns.
Sometimes it’s a shop wall full of stars.
Sometimes it’s a rooftop where no one can see you—but you’ve never felt more visible.
And sometimes, love is quiet—so quiet, it becomes the place you go to finally hear yourself say:
I’m home.