The Song She Left Behind

By Saloni Duggal

Aarohi loved music the way lungs love air. It wasn’t a hobby, nor a career. It was the only way she knew how to feel. When words failed her — as they often did — her fingers would find the strings, her eyes would close, and her soul would begin to speak.

Her notebook was a landscape of heartbeats: scribbled lyrics, half-formed lines, arrows linking thoughts, and stains of coffee that looked like tiny planets. Music was her heartbeat. Her confession. Her prayer.

And then came Aarav.

He didn’t arrive like a spark. He arrived like a note — steady, calm, impossible to forget. He had soft, thin lips that rarely spoke but always said enough. His almond-shaped grey eyes carried the calm of a cloudy morning, but when he smiled, they looked like the sky clearing after rain. His laughter was quiet, polite, and sincere — the kind that made you want to protect it.

They met at a local café, where the walls were painted with half-faded lyrics and the air smelled like coffee and unfinished dreams. Aarohi was on stage — curls loose, dimples deep, a little nervous, but singing like she was praying.

Aarav sat near the window, his hands wrapped around a cup gone cold. He didn’t clap when she finished. He just looked at her, still caught inside the last note she’d sung.

When he finally walked up to her, he said softly, “You don’t sing songs… you breathe them.”

She laughed — a sound so bright it made the lights flicker. “Then I hope I’m breathing right,” she teased. “Perfectly,” he said.

From that night onward, something gentle began to grow between them. They met again, then again — first for coffee, then for music, and eventually for silence that didn’t feel empty.

Their love wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It lived in the spaces between their laughter, in the way he’d wait for her outside the studio just to walk her home, or in the way she’d bring him sweets even though he’d sworn off sugar.

She’d sing; he’d listen. He’d write; she’d hum along. Together, they became a single, beautiful song that didn’t need words.

Aarohi often said, “Music is how I say I love you. ”And he believed her. Because she said it every day — in melodies, in smiles, in the way her curls brushed his shoulder when she leaned in to fix a chord.

They were inseparable — until one night, they weren’t.

No warning. No goodbye. Just a phone call. A car crash. A silence that would never end.

For days, Aarav didn’t speak. For months, he didn’t play. He couldn’t bear to touch the guitar she once held, as if the wood might cry out her name. The studio stayed locked. The city outside kept moving, but his heart stayed where it stopped — in that single, eternal pause between two notes that never met again.

Every night, he would lie on the bed, hug her guitar, and fall asleep. Sometimes he would whisper her name against the strings, sometimes just listen — hoping, foolishly, that the silence would hum back.

Weeks turned into months, and months into two long, empty years.

Then one night, while cleaning an old drawer, he found a small silver pen drive — dusty, forgotten, but still holding the smell of her perfume. On it was written, in her neat handwriting: To Aarav

He stared at it for a long time before plugging it into his laptop. The world seemed to hold its breath. Only one file - Will_You_Say_Yes.mp3

He clicked play.

And just like that, she was there again.

“Testing, testing,” she laughed softly. “Okay Aarav, don’t laugh at me, this is just a rough take.”

Her voice was warm, trembling a little. A gentle strum followed. She hummed a few lines — uncertain, searching — and then found the rhythm. He could hear her breath, the sound of her curls brushing against the mic, the way she smiled when the tune worked.

And then, in a whisper almost afraid of being heard, she said, “This is the one I’ll sing to him… when I ask him to marry me.”

Aarav froze. The world disappeared. He pressed pause, but silence hurt too much. So he pressed play again.

The recording ended mid-note — incomplete, unfinished, like her. No chorus, no goodbye. Just the sound of love still trying to find its way home.

He sat there, tears falling quietly. For the first time in years, his room wasn’t silent. It was alive again — with her.

That night, he picked up her guitar. It was out of tune, its strings rusted, but when he touched it, it felt warm. He held it the way he used to hold her hand — gently, afraid it might vanish.

He listened to her recording again, and again, until he knew every sigh, every breath. Then, slowly, he began to play along. He didn’t try to fix it. He didn’t try to perfect it. He just wanted to finish it for her.

He added the words she didn’t get to sing — lines she would’ve loved. Simple, honest words about late nights, coffee cups, and promises left unsaid.

When the last note faded, he whispered, “Yes, Aarohi. I would’ve said yes.”

He named the song Forever.

Weeks later, he shared it with the world — not as a professional release, not for fame, but as a gift. He kept her voice, raw and beautiful, and added his own — soft, trembling, blending into hers. Together, they sang the love they didn’t get to live.

He wrote one simple caption:

FOREVER Written by Aarohi Sharma Completed by Aarav Mehta

The song spread quietly — like a secret people wanted to share. Couples played it at weddings. RJs played it on late-night radio. People sent messages saying it reminded them of someone they lost. A woman said she played it for her father in the hospital. A child hummed it while learning the alphabet.

And everywhere it played, Aarohi came alive again.

Each time the chorus returned, she was there — her dimples, her curls, her laughter tucked between the notes.

Aarav never gave interviews. He never performed it live. He didn’t need to. The world was singing it for him now. And every time he heard it — on a cab radio, in a café, from a stranger’s phone — he smiled.

It wasn’t sadness anymore. It was love — stretched across time, carried by voices that didn’t even know her name.

That night, as he lay down to sleep, he took her guitar into his arms like always. The city was quiet, but somewhere, someone was playing Forever. He could almost hear it drifting through the night — her voice, soft and alive.

He closed his eyes and whispered, “You did it, Aarohi. You’re still here.”

And for the first time in years, he slept peacefully.

Outside, her song kept playing — a gentle echo in a thousand hearts, a melody that refused to fade. The world kept singing her name.

And in that endless chorus, they stayed together —

forever.

By Saloni Duggal