Espresso │ Shubman Gill

It was almost 2 in the morning.

Shubman hadn't moved from the bed in hours. The tv played something in the background, he didn't know what. He wasn't watching. Everything felt too loud and too quiet all at once.

His phone lay beside him, face down. He hadn't touched it since after practice in the afternoon. 

His fingers itched to pick it up and dial her number, hear her voice again. But he wouldn't. Because she didn't want him to.

The screen buzzed quietly against the pillow, barely audible. Shubman didn't look at it right away, but when it buzzed three more times, he blinked, reached over and picked up the phone.

Ishan: Hey...
Ishan: Have you checked Instagram?
Ishan: Shubman...
Ishan: Check Naina's story.
Ishan: Now.

That was it. No context. No emojis. No jokes. Just a short, urgent message from the one person who knew better than to say more. Ishan never texted him about her. That had become an unspoken rule between them since the night she left. They talked about everything else, but never her.

His thumb hovered over the notification for a moment longer, his heart clenching as he took in a deep, shaky breath. There was a strange tightness in his chest, like his lungs didn't know how to take in air anymore.

Shubman should have ignored it. But he didn't. He opened Instagram, swiped on the screen before finding her account. His finger hovered over the circle and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, pretending to himself that it could keep him from falling apart. Atleast for now.

The screen was black for a few seconds, the sounds of the city heard faintly in the background, before a soft piano loop began to play.

Then, he heard her voice, and it seemed to knock the air right out of his lungs.

"I know I said it's better this way
But I never said I'd stop missing you
And maybe silence was a safer place
But it's too loud without you."

The video ended, but he didn't move. He just sat there, staring at the blank screen like it held all the answers. As if it was a confession. From her.

And then, without even thinking about it, he played it again.

The sound of the music filled the room again. Just her voice, the piano, and everything she wasn't saying, hidden between the lines of her snippet. Every time he listened, it hurt more.

Shubman had been pretending he was fine all this time, but now the truth was finally catching up to him. She never said his name.

But he felt it anyway. In the way her voice cracked when she sang, like it meant something more. Like it wasn't just about another breakup. Like it was about him.

What hit him most wasn't even the lyrics. It was the fact that she posted it. She could have kept it to herself, just another note on her phone like she always used to do when she got ideas for new lyrics but didn't want to work on them yet.

But she didn't. She let the world hear it. Let him hear it. And that wasn't an accident.

It was a message. A kind of apology, or a confession, even Naina didn't know for sure. It was the words she hadn't been able to say that morning when she walked out of that hotel room.

And as much as both of them might've denied it, deep down, they knew. She didn't post that song for anything else. She posted it for him.