DAISY’S BOOKS
DAISY’S BOOKS
YUVAAN
"I finally have the work I want you to do." I'd said it as casually as I could manage that morning. "Be ready in an hour. Meet me at the front gate."
That was all. No explanation. No hints. Nothing.
She'd frowned at me immediately. That familiar little crease had appeared between her brows, the one that always shows up whenever she suspects I'm planning something but hasn't yet decided whether she's curious enough to ask or annoyed enough to refuse.
I'd simply smiled and walked away before she could interrogate me. Now I'm standing beside the car outside the palace entrance, checking my watch for what must be the third time in five minutes.
I already know what it says. She's late. Of course she is. Some things never change.
A smile tugs quietly at the corner of my mouth as I glance toward the empty doorway.
I've spent half my life waiting for Anamika.
As children, it was because she'd stop every few minutes to rescue an injured bird, pet someone's dog, or get distracted by a book she'd somehow discovered in the most unlikely place.
Today . . . Apparently she's still exactly the same. I only hope she hasn't walked into something. That possibility is never entirely unreasonable where she's concerned. For reasons I'll never understand, her mind has always travelled three steps ahead of the rest of her.
Her body simply . . . tries to keep up. Which explains the endless collection of bruises she accumulated throughout childhood.
Scraped knees. Stubbed toes. A spectacular tumble down three garden steps because she'd been too busy explaining why butterflies probably recognised colours.
And my personal favourite . . . The afternoon she walked directly into one of the marble pillars near the west courtyard while passionately arguing that dogs definitely dream.
She'd insisted it was the pillar's fault.
I still don't know how she survived growing up without permanently breaking something.
"There you are." She appears around the corner almost at a run. Breathless. One hand pressed against her side. The other trying unsuccessfully to smooth back hair that escaped its clip.
"I'm sorry . . . " She stops in front of me, taking a deep breath. "I lost track of—"
"It's alright." I laugh softly before she can continue apologising. "I expected as much."
She narrows her eyes. "That sounds suspiciously insulting."
"It wasn't."
"It definitely was."
I open the car door before she can continue arguing. As she steps closer, my hand finds the small of her back for the briefest moment, guiding her toward the seat. The touch lasts barely a second.
Nothing anyone watching would notice. Nothing that should matter.
Yet every time I touch her like this . .
. Something inside me quietly settles. As though my heart still hasn't quite accepted that she's really here.
That I'm allowed to stand this close. That she's no longer disappearing onto trains.
She slides into the passenger seat before turning immediately toward me. "Where are we going?"
"You'll see."
"That's not an answer."
"It is."
"It's a terrible answer."
I smile despite myself. She folds her arms. "I'm not speaking to you."
"You'll last approximately four minutes."
She lasts three. "So. . . " She glances out of the window. " . . . are we at least leaving the palace?"
"Yes."
"Market?"
"Maybe."
She sighs dramatically. "I married an impossible man."
I don't answer. Mostly because I'm trying very hard not to smile too much.
The drive itself isn't particularly long.
Yet my thoughts refuse to stay still. I keep looking out of the window instead of at her.
Not because I don't want to. Because I'm suddenly not entirely sure I've done the right thing.
I turn the same worry over and over in my head. Anamika has always guarded her independence with quiet ferocity. It's one of the things I've admired most about her. And one of the things I've accidentally hurt before.
I'd meant love. She'd heard pity. It took me so much time to convince her I'd never intended to make her feel small. I still remember how relieved I'd been when she'd finally forgiven me.
What if today feels like that all over again? What if she doesn't see this as remembering her dream . . . What if she sees it as me trying to buy one? The doubt sits heavily inside me all the way through the drive. The car finally slows. Then stops. "We're here."
She steps out first. I follow a second later. She simply stands there looking at the building across the road.
Cream-coloured walls. Freshly painted windows.
The signboard above the entrance. She doesn't speak.
Not immediately. Confusion crosses her face first. Then recognition.
Slow. Almost hesitant. Like she doesn't trust the thought forming in her own mind.
Then something else appears. Something frighteningly close to disbelief.
She turns toward me slowly. "Yuvaan . . .
" Her voice is barely above a whisper. "What is this? "
"A bookshop." I keep my own voice deliberately casual. "The market didn't really have one. So . . . " I shrug lightly. " . . . it seemed like a good idea."
She doesn't even look at me. Her eyes return to the building.
"No." The word comes quietly. "You. . . " She shakes her head once.
" . . . you didn't." I remain silent. She takes one slow step forward.
Then another. Only now does she notice the tiny daisies painted carefully around the front windows.
Her breathing changes.
I see it happen.
Her eyes lift toward the signboard.
Daisy's Books.
She stares at the name for a long time. Long enough that I wonder if she's even breathing anymore. "You . . . " She turns back toward me. "Did you build this . . . "
" . . . for me?" There are moments in life where silence says more than explanation ever could. This is one of them. Because while she's looking at the sign . . . I'm looking somewhere else entirely.
Backwards.
Twelve years. She's sitting cross-legged on the old palace ramparts with one of my economics notebooks balanced across her knees.
She'd stolen it. Again. Apparently blank pages belonged to whoever needed them most. I remember leaning over her shoulder.
"What are you drawing?" She'd immediately tried hiding the page.
Then sighed dramatically. "You'll laugh."
"I won't."
She'd hesitated. Then slowly turned the notebook toward me. Cream walls. Bookshelves. Little flower boxes beneath the windows. A tiny reading corner. A hanging wooden sign.
Daisy's Bookshop.
Her handwriting had curled neatly beneath the drawing. "I want it to smell like old books," she'd said with complete seriousness. "And coffee. And rainy afternoons."
"I want people to come in because they're lonely . . . " A pause. " . . . and leave a little happier."
I'd watched her face while she spoke. Not the drawing. Her. She'd been smiling so brightly that afternoon. The kind of smile that makes other people start believing impossible things might actually happen.
I never forgot it. Not once. Even when everything else changed. Standing beside me now . . . She looks exactly the same. Older.
Wiser. More careful.
But that same hopeful girl is still there somewhere beneath all the years life placed on her shoulders. Her eyes shine as she looks back at the shop. Then at me. They're full now.
Not dramatically. Just quietly.
"Yes." My answer is almost a whisper. "I remembered.
" How do I tell her? How do I explain that when the rest of my world was dissolving into gray static, those years we had were the only color I had left?
How do I tell her that I didn't just remember the big things—the day she tripped over the curb outside the bookstore, the furious way her eyebrows knit together when she was losing at cards, the sound of her laugh before she realized anyone was listening—I remembered the fractions of seconds in between?
If I tell her how deeply she anchored me, I am handing her the map to every single place inside me that is raw and bleeding. I am telling her that she was the architect of a recovery she never even knew I needed.
And if I say it out loud, the whisper won't be a whisper anymore. It will demand an answer to a question we aren't ready to ask: What do we do now that we're both standing in the wreckage of the time we lost?
She blinks quickly. "Yuvaan . . . " Her voice trembles. "You didn't have to."
I smile gently. "There you go again." She laughs through the tears threatening to fall. "I only helped build the place." I gesture toward the building. "The market genuinely needed a proper bookshop." That part is true. Just not all of it. The truth stands right in front of us.
Every shelf. Every window. Every daisy painted onto the walls.
The cream colour she'd once spent twenty minutes describing because ordinary white felt too cold.
The reading corner tucked into one side of the shop.
Low shelves. Soft cushions. A little space built specifically so Sara could curl up with books whenever she wanted.
Every single detail began with a conversation she'd probably forgotten years ago. I never did. I couldn't.
Because when Anamika shared her dreams .
. . She handed them to people with complete trust. I considered that the greatest privilege of my life.
She doesn't need to know any of that. Not yet.
She'd refuse everything. Try giving it back.
Insisted it was too much. Her pride carried her through years I still know almost nothing about.
I refuse to become the reason it bends now.
She walks toward the entrance slowly. Almost reverently. I stay one step behind. Watching. She trails her fingers lightly across one of the wooden shelves. Looks toward the reading corner. Runs her eyes over rows waiting to be filled with books.
Morning sunlight pours through the front windows, catching loose strands of her hair. For one impossible moment . . . She's fifteen again. Standing on the palace ramparts. Talking so excitedly about books that she'd forgotten to breathe between sentences.
A quiet hope settles inside me. Maybe this place can become what the palace never managed to be. A place where she doesn't have to stay guarded. Where she can breathe. Where she remembers who she was before life taught her to expect disappointment.
She turns around. Her eyes are properly wet now. She's smiling. Not politely. Not carefully. Completely.
The kind of smile I haven't seen in years.
"Thank you . . ." She pauses. Then laughs softly.
"Pretty Boy." Everything inside me stops.
For a second . . . I forget where I am. I haven't heard that nickname since we were teenagers.
She'd always used it whenever I became too serious.
Whenever life felt too heavy. Whenever she wanted to make me laugh instead of letting me brood. Two ordinary words. That's all.
Yet they land squarely in the centre of my chest. I have to look away. Not because I want to. Because if I keep looking at her . . . She's going to see exactly what those two words just did to me.
Seven years.
Seven years of learning how to keep my face unreadable.
How to sit through political negotiations without giving away a single thought. How to let entire rooms wonder what I was thinking. And somehow . . . One old nickname destroys every bit of that discipline in a heartbeat.
I look toward the shelves instead. Take one slow breath. Then another. When I finally trust my voice again . . . It's rougher than I'd intended. "Anytime . . . " I smile back at her. " . . . Daisy."