Edinburgh nights were nothing like Punjab nights.
Back home, night arrived like a familiar guest something you expected, something that knew where to sit. Mummy's voice would filter through the walls without fail, *"Isha, khaana thanda ho jayega,"* and even if Isha didn't move from her bed, just hearing it was enough. Just knowing someone was there, on the other side of a thin wall, thinking about her.
Here, nights were different.
Quieter. Heavier. Like the sky itself sat lower over the city, pressing down gently on everything beneath it.
But this morning this particular Edinburgh morning Isha had made herself a promise.
No crying today.
Not because the sadness wasn't there. It was always there, somewhere a bruise that had stopped being sharp but hadn't disappeared. Vikram lived in the back of her chest like a word she kept almost saying. But today, she had decided, was not going to be about almost.
So when Karan's messages came in at five past ten
Karan:
Party tonight. Priya's housewarming. You're coming.
Karan:Before you say no free food. Good free food.
Karan:
Isha I can see the two blue ticks. I know you're reading this.
Karan:
It'll be fine. I'll be there the whole time.
She had stared at the ceiling for thirty seconds the familiar Edinburgh ceiling, with its one small crack near the light fixture that she had memorized over many sleepless nights and then picked her phone back up.
Isha:
What should I wear?*
She could almost feel his relief through the screen.
Priya Nair was Karan's coursemate a bright, wonderfully loud girl from Kerala who had just signed the lease on her first Edinburgh flat and had decided this was an achievement deserving of full celebration. She had the kind of energy that made rooms feel warmer just by existing in them, and she had taken exactly seven minutes to decide she liked Isha.
"If you come tonight, I will be genuinely happy," she had announced once in the university library, completely ignoring Karan who was sitting right beside her. *"Karan only comes to social events when he brings you. You are the reason I ever see him outside of seminars."
"That is completely false,"Karan had said, not looking up from his laptop.
"Name one event this semester you attended without Isha."
Silence.
The kind of silence that answered the question.
"Exactly," Priya had said, deeply satisfied.
Isha had laughed a real one, not the careful kind she'd been rationing since Edinburgh and Priya had looked so pleased that it was genuinely impossible not to like her.
At seven in the evening, Isha stood in front of her small mirror.
She pulled out the navy blue kurta the one Mummy had folded carefully, placed at the very top of her suitcase, without saying a word about it. Just folded it. Set it there.
Edinburgh is cold, Mummy had said instead, when Isha was packing. Which meant. I packed warm things for you because I will not be there to tell you to put on a jacket.* Which meant ....I am going to miss you every single day and I will never say it directly because that is not how we do things, you and I.
Isha held the kurta against her chest for a moment longer than necessary.
Her eyes filled.
She breathed through it slow, deliberate, the way Mummy had taught her without ever teaching her, just by example.
Not today.
She put the kurta on. Ran a comb through her hair. Went downstairs.
Karan was already outside her building when she pushed through the front door.
He was wearing his grey jacket the one he seemed to own exclusively, the one that had become as familiar to her as the library chairs and the taste of the coffee shop around the corner. He had two cups in his hands. His breath came out in small clouds in the cold air.
He looked up when she came out, and something in his expression some small held tension released.
"You actually came," he said.
"You sound surprised."
"I had backup plans."He handed her a cup. "Plan B was showing up at your door. Plan C was calling Priya to fake an emergency so you'd feel obligated."
"That's manipulative."
"It's creative,"he corrected. "There's a difference."
She took a sip of the coffee exactly how she took it, she noticed. Not too sweet. A little strong. He had never once asked her to confirm it, just remembered from the first time and never got it wrong since.
She didn't say anything about that. Just fell into step beside him.
The streets were cold and grey and Edinburgh cobblestones still slightly damp from afternoon rain, yellow streetlights beginning to flicker on in the early dark. Their breath made matching small clouds.
This is okay, Isha thought, walking beside him. This exact moment this is okay.
Priya's flat was on George Street old stone building, warm amber light in the windows, music reaching the pavement below like an invitation. Inside was full the comfortable chaos of people who had found their people far from home. PhD students, Masters students, a few locals, someone's flatmate who knew nobody but was committed to having a good time anyway.
Isha stopped just inside the door.
Her eyes moved across the room too many people, too much noise, the particular anxiety of not knowing where to stand or who to be in a room full of strangers.
"Snacks are on the left," Karan said.....
quietly, close, only for her. *"We start there. No obligations. If you want to leave in twenty minutes, we leave in twenty minutes."
She looked at him.
He looked back completely unhurried. Like they had all the time in the world. Like there was no wrong answer.
"Okay,"she said.
"Okay," he agreed
The first hour was, genuinely and surprisingly, fine.
Priya swept her into introductions with the cheerful force of someone who collected people the way others collected books "This is Isha, she's Karan's friend, she's from Punjab, she is significantly smarter than she lets on"and before Isha had quite realized it, she was in conversations. Real ones.
There was Meera second year Masters, originally from Delhi, with quick eyes and a sharper laugh who immediately made space for Isha like they had known each other for years. There was chai going around someone had made it, slightly too sweet but genuinely warm and Isha held the cup in both hands and talked about dissertation supervisors and assignment deadlines and the specific cruelty of Edinburgh weather.
Normal things. Student things. Things that had nothing to do with a hospital corridor in Ludhiana or a gate she had stood outside of, being told to leave.
I'm okay,she thought, somewhere in the middle of a conversation about library hours. I'm actually, right now, okay.
Karan had drifted slightly Priya had pulled him into something, a question about research, the kind of conversation that needed his full attention and Isha had let him go easily because Meera was there and the room felt manageable and she was, she reminded herself, okay.
She was mid-sentence something about her supervisor's feedback style when she felt it.
Someone moving toward her with a kind of direction that felt different from the general drift of party movement. Purposeful. Aimed.
"Hey."
She turned.
Tall. European features. The specific confidence of someone who had never been told no and found this to be a perfectly reasonable state of affairs.
"Hi," Isha said, politely, and turned back toward Meera.
"I'm James."
"Isha."Short. Clear.
"Haven't seen you here before."He stepped closer. Already too close the kind of close that people like him think is normal and everyone else recognizes immediately as a choice.
"It's my first time at Priya's," Isha said. She angled her body slightly away another signal. Another thing he chose not to read.
"You here alone?"
Something in his voice on that last word. Something in the way his eyes moved not staying where they should. Something that made Isha's hands tighten around her chai cup and her brain say, quietly and clearly
This is not okay.
"I'm here with friends," she said. Clear voice. Level eyes.
"Right." He smiled the kind of smile that wasn't really for her, was just a thing his face did on the way to what he actually wanted. He moved closer again. His hand came up not touching her, not yet, but rising toward the wall beside her head, creating a circle of space that was suddenly, distinctly his.
Meera had been pulled into another conversation. The crowd had shifted without Isha noticing. She was more cornered than she'd realized.
Her heart rate climbed.
She knew this feeling. Not from parties from a room she had woken up in once, disoriented and frightened, before she'd found the window and the way out. The feeling of space being taken. Of someone deciding something about you without consulting you at all.
Isha Sharma had survived Tanaya's people.
She was not going to stand here and become small.
"I need you," she said voice steady, steadier than she felt, steadier than her hands "to take a step back."
James blinked. She had surprised him. He had expected something else a laugh, a deflection, a girl who would make it easy for him.
"Sorry?"
"You're standing too close," she said. Louder this time. Deliberately louder loud enough that the two people nearest them glanced over. "I've told you I'm here with friends. I'd like you to give me some space."
His face shifted. Embarrassment curdling into something uglier the specific irritation of ego being challenged in front of an audience.
"I was just talking to you"
"You were making me uncomfortable,"Isha said. "Those are different things."
The people nearby were listening now. Properly listening. Someone had gone quiet mid-conversation. Meera had turned around.
James opened his mouth ....
"She asked you to step back."
Karan's voice.
He was simply there appearing from somewhere to the left, no dramatic entrance, no raised voice. Just present. Completely calm. Standing slightly behind Isha's shoulder, looking at James with an expression that was quiet and absolute and required no volume whatsoever to be perfectly understood.
"I think you heard her the first time,"Karan said.
James looked at Karan. Looked at the small audience. Looked at Isha who held his gaze, who did not look away, who did not flinch or soften or give him a single thing.
He left.
No scene. No last word. Just turned, and disappeared back into the party, like he'd never been there at all.
The room noise resumed within seconds. People are extraordinarily good at pretending.
Meera squeezed Isha's arm "You okay?" and Isha nodded, because she was. Shaky, but okay. More okay than she expected.
Karan materialized properly at her side.
He didn't make a speech. Didn't say that was so brave or I saw the whole thing or any of the things that would have made her feel like a scene that needed commenting on.
He just stood there solid, quiet and after a moment said:
"Outside for a bit?"
"Yeah,"she said. "Yeah."
There was a narrow staircase on the building's side old stone steps, slightly cold and damp, leading to a small gap between buildings where the party became a distant hum and the sky opened up in a thin strip above.
They sat.
Edinburgh cold settled around them immediately honest, unapologetic cold.
Isha let out a long breath.
It came out shakier than she'd expected. Now that the moment was over, now that the adrenaline had nowhere to go, her hands were trembling slightly.
"Hey," Karan said softly. "You okay?"
"Yes," she said. Then "My hands won't stop shaking."
"That's okay."
"It's annoying."
"It's adrenaline,"he said. "It'll pass."
She looked at her hands. Breathed.
"You did well," he said quietly.
"I was terrified."
"I know. You did it anyway." A pause. "That's the only kind of brave that counts."
She looked at him in the dim light from the window above, his face was steady and calm, not performing comfort, just offering it plainly like something that was simply there if she wanted it.
"You came anyway," she said. "Even though I'd handled it."
"You hadn't quite finished," he said. "He looked like he was going to argue. I just stood there. You did everything else."
"You didn't take over."
"It wasn't mine to take over."
Isha was quiet for a long moment.
That,she thought. That is exactly it. He stood there so I wasn't alone. He didn't make it his. He just made sure I wasn't by myself inside it.
"Karan."
"Hm."
"Thank you."
He nodded once. Looked up at the strip of sky.
They sat in silence the comfortable kind, the kind that didn't need filling until Karan disappeared briefly and returned with two cups of tea that she didn't ask about and he didn't explain, and they held them in the cold and talked about nothing important.
His research. A terrible documentary he'd watched. The specific injustice of Edinburgh's brief summers.
And slowly so slowly she almost didn't notice the shaking in her hands stopped.
Later, Priya showed her the bookshelf.
"This one," Priya said, holding up a battered paperback Pride and Prejudice, "is for when I'm sad. The spine is broken in exactly the right places."
"That makes complete sense," Isha said.
Priya looked at her the kind of look that reads underneath.
"Karan mentions you,"she said simply. "Not in a big way. Just the way you mention someone who's become part of your daily without you noticing."
Isha didn't know what to do with that.
"We're just friends," she said.
"I know," Priya said easily. "I'm just saying that kind is rare. Hold onto it."
Walking home, Edinburgh quiet around them, Isha stopped at the corner of her street.
"Karan."
"Hm?"
"That thing you did tonight. Standing there. Not taking over."She looked at him. "Where did you learn that?"
He was quiet a moment.
"My cousin," he said finally. "Something happened to her once. At a family function. Everyone pretended not to see."A pause. "I promised myself I'd never be that person."
Isha held that.
"Get inside,"he said then. "It's cold."
She turned toward her building. Stopped once more.
"Karan. Call your mom Sunday. Don't skip it."
A beat of silence.
"I won't,"he said.
Upstairs, Isha opened her diary.
Day 47.
I spoke up tonight. Hands shaking, heart loud, I spoke up anyway.
Someone stood beside me not in front, not instead of me. Beside.
I think that's what safe actually feels like. Not the absence of frightening things. Just not being alone inside them.
I called Mummy after. She asked if I'd eaten.
I had.
She talked for thirty minutes about the neighbor's new gate. I listened to every word.
It was exactly what I needed.
She closed the diary. Put her phone down without checking any other names.
Outside, Edinburgh was cold and indifferent and old.
But inside in this small room, with its cracked ceiling and borrowed blanket and growing pile of library books
Isha Sharma felt, for the second night running, quietly and completely like herself.
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