If You are With Me

To the lovers ,

Whose hearts overflow with love, yet find themselves loving someone made of stone. To those who still choose to burn quietly, hoping their warmth might teach the stone how to feel. This is for the ones who loved without measure, even when love was never returned in the same language.

Some places remember love even when people forget it.

That coffee shop did. The table did. Even the ceramic cup still carried the heat of moments that once meant something. They returned to the same place, but not to the same feeling. What once felt safe now felt unfamiliar , like revisiting a memory that no longer recognises you.

Earlier, when love still lived between them, he would stand up without being asked. He would bring an extra tissue and wrap it around her fingers so the burning ceramic cup wouldn’t hurt her skin. It was never dramatic. Just care, folded into instinct. Back then, she believed that gesture meant protection, that it came from love and not repetition.

Today, they sat at the same table again.

Same chairs. Same coffee. Same air between them.

Yet everything else had changed.

They faced away from each other, their backs turned like two stories that once shared a beginning but no longer shared a future. He was the one whose love had slowly faded with time. She was the one who had almost broken the night before, yet held her heart tightly just to see him one last time, still hoping he would reach for that tissue again.

He didn’t.

And in that silence, something finally became clear to her.

Agar Tum Saath Ho began to play in her head - not as a song, but as a truth she had been avoiding. Each line echoed what she was living: the need for presence, not promises; for company, not reassurance. The song wasn’t asking for love to return. It was only whispering . If you are here, I can survive this.

But he stayed still.

As the melody lingered, she realised something painful and honest. What she had once mistaken for forever had become a habit. Not an urge to protect her. Not a concern about the coffee spilling. Just repetition performed without feeling.

She wanted to scream.

To ask why it had been so easy for him to let that love fade.

Why keeping it alive felt like effort to him, while losing it felt like relief. Why did she carry the weight of remembering, while he had learned the art of forgetting. Tears rolled down his eyes , not out of longing, but guilt …believing he was no longer good enough for the love she still held.

She held his arms firmly and looked at him with the same softness she always had. For the last time, her heart refused to hate him. Not because he stayed , but because once, he had cared enough to stand up.

The silence between them grew louder than any argument. It echoed with everything they no longer said. Love hadn’t ended with anger or betrayal. It ended with a missed gesture, a song playing in her head, beats of the heart unrecognised and a tissue that was never picked up.

She finally loosened her grip on his arm.

Not because it stopped hurting, but because holding on was beginning to hurt more than letting go. The coffee had gone cold by then, untouched… just like the space between them. She stood up slowly, as if standing meant accepting what sitting had delayed.

He didn’t stop her.

And that told her everything.

As she walked away, Agar Tum Saath Ho faded . Not abruptly, but gently, the way love leaves when only one person keeps choosing it. She understood then that the song was never about staying together. It was about staying present.

He had stopped choosing.

She never knew how to stop.

She didn’t look back.

Some endings don’t need witnesses.

And somewhere between the closing door of the café and the last note of the song, she learned this:

Agar Tum Saath Ho is not a request - it is a truth.

When someone is truly with you, they don’t have to be asked.