It was past midnight at a silent, fog-laced railway station in Kerala. The rain had just stopped, leaving the air thick with the scent of wet earth and melancholy. The empty station echoed with the hum of overhead lights and the distant howl of a goods train.
Arjun stood on Platform 1. Forty, ruggedly handsome, his shirt damp, his eyes bloodshot. Just two months ago, his world had crashed — quite literally — when a flight from Delhi to Kochi fell from the sky. His wife, son, and daughter… all gone. What remained was an ocean of silence that roared in his ears every waking moment.
Tonight, he'd decided to end it. Not with pills. Not with a rope. But right here — under the cold, uncaring wheels of the 1:40 express train.
As he stepped closer to the edge, he noticed her — on the opposite platform, Platform 2.
She was wearing a maroon cotton saree, rain-kissed and clinging gently to her curves. Long hair, a dusky glow to her skin, and eyes that seemed… just as broken. She looked around 30, maybe a little older, yet there was a youthful fire hidden under that sadness.
Their eyes locked.
Time didn’t slow. It stopped.
Arjun stepped back slightly from the edge. So did she.
They stared for a minute, two… lifetimes. Then she called out softly across the tracks, “You too?”
He nodded.
She smiled, painfully. “We’re both cowards, aren’t we? We showed up… but can’t take the step.”
He didn’t reply, just stood there, unsure what to say.
She continued, “I come here every week. Just to think of what it would feel like. But something stops me. Maybe the hope that one day someone will ask me to stay.”
A pause. Then, “Will you?”
He didn’t know what came over him. Maybe it was the desperation, or the recognition of another aching soul. He leapt the tracks. Crossed into her world.
They didn’t speak for a few seconds as he stood beside her, drenched in rain, grief, and something unfamiliar — maybe desire.
“Arjun,” he said softly.
“Meera,” she replied, looking into his eyes, voice trembling. “32. Orphan. Never belonged anywhere.”
He touched her face gently. She closed her eyes.
That night, they didn’t go home. They didn’t even try. They checked into a small, half-lit hotel near the station. No questions were asked.
The room smelled of old walls and new beginnings.
She touched his chest first, trembling fingers tracing the shape of a man who had carried too much pain. He held her waist, pulling her close, his breath ragged, hers uneven. Their kiss was not of passion, but of surrender — two souls finding momentary solace in each other’s bodies.
Clothes fell, not hurriedly, but reverently. Each piece removed a memory, a scar, a reason to give up.
Meera’s lips whispered over his skin like rain on fire. Arjun’s hands moved over her curves with the carefulness of a man afraid to lose again. They moved as one — slow, intense, exploring every inch like it held secrets they needed to survive.
It wasn’t just lust. It was therapy. A silent conversation of skin and warmth. A forgotten language of feeling wanted, again.
After, they lay in silence, bodies tangled, hearts still beating.
“You still want to die?” she asked, her head resting on his chest.
“No,” he whispered. “Not tonight. Not with you.”
Meera smiled, tears slipping down. “Then maybe we found something more powerful than death.”
“Loneliness?” he asked.
“No,” she said, kissing his shoulder gently. “Love. Or maybe just the hope of it.”
Outside, the 1:40 train passed by.
And no one jumped.
