To everyone else: Find your Neha. Or find your own version. Find the person who makes the mundane magical and the arguments adorable. And then, never stop writing the story.
Here are the romantic storylines of Me and My Neha . Every great romance has an origin story that sounds inevitable in hindsight. Ours was anything but.
The romantic storyline here is partnership . It’s the promise that you don’t have to be strong every minute. You just have to show up. If I were writing this as a novel, I’d wrap it up with a beautiful metaphor. I’d say our love is a garden that needs watering, or a fire that needs stoking. To everyone else: Find your Neha
She became my anchor.
We met not with a lightning strike, but with a flicker. It was at a friend’s crowded party. I was trying to find the host’s Wi-Fi password; she was trying to rescue a slice of chocolate cake from a toddler. Our eyes met over the crumb-covered rug. She rolled her eyes at me (I later learned she thought I looked “lost and slightly pathetic”). I was immediately intrigued. And then, never stop writing the story
But the truth is simpler. My relationship with my wife, Neha, is a long, meandering, beautiful, and sometimes messy, ongoing storyline. We are still in the middle of it. We don’t know how it ends, and frankly, I never want to know.
So, to my Neha, if you’re reading this (and you probably are, because you’re my biggest fan and my harshest critic): Thank you for being the plot twist I never saw coming and the happy ending I get to wake up to every single morning. Ours was anything but
The romantic payoff? A rainy evening, a borrowed umbrella, and a confession that I had been “lying about my card game skills just to have an excuse to see her again.” She kissed me on the cheek and said, “I know, you’re terrible at bluffing.” I am not a grand gesture person. I overthink everything. Neha, on the other hand, reads romance novels where the hero flies the heroine to Paris. I was terrified.
Finally, as the sun began to set and she turned to me, her face lit by the golden hour, she said, “You’re being weird. Are you okay?”