After We Stopped Waiting

The next wedding came six weeks after the first one.

By then, the rain had learned new habits.

It no longer arrived suddenly at midnight to trap people beneath prata shop awnings. It came in soft afternoon curtains, washing the heat off roads, dripping from sheltered walkways, gathering in the uneven places of old pavements. Sometimes it came only as threat: grey clouds swollen over the estate, thunder muttering from somewhere far away, the air holding its breath until evening.

Aleesya had begun to understand that not every sky broke.

Some simply stayed heavy until night.

She stood before her mirror in a sage green baju kurung, fastening a small pearl pin beneath her chin. The colour had been her mother’s suggestion. “Soft, but not sad,” she had said, holding the fabric against Aleesya’s shoulder in the shop with the seriousness of a woman choosing armour.

Aleesya had laughed then.

Now, looking at herself, she wondered whether her mother had been right.

The woman in the mirror looked calmer than she felt. Her tudung framed her face neatly. Her lips held a muted rose colour. There was a faint brightness in her eyes that could be mistaken for happiness if no one looked too long.

Maybe it was happiness, in a quieter form.

The past six weeks had not transformed her into someone new. That disappointed her at first. She had imagined, in some private and dramatic corner of herself, that choosing not to wait would feel like stepping into sunlight. Instead, it felt like learning to walk with a healing ankle. Some mornings were good. Some songs still hurt. Some nights, when her phone stayed silent, she felt proud and abandoned in the same breath.

Harith had kept his word.

That was the most difficult part.

He did not disappear. He did not crowd her. He did not punish her with silence or drown her in apologies. He became careful in a way that was not cowardly anymore. At volunteer meetings, he spoke to her when there was reason to speak. He asked before helping. He did not ask questions he had no right to ask. He sent one message after her father was admitted for a minor knee check-up because he heard from her mother through the community auntie network, but even that message carried restraint.

Harith I heard about your father’s appointment. Hope everything goes smoothly. No need to reply if you’re busy.

She had replied that it went fine.

He had answered:

Harith Alhamdulillah. Glad to hear.

And then he stopped.

No hook.

No late-night doorway.

No “have you eaten?” disguised as return.

It should have made forgetting easier.

Instead, it made loving him sadder.

Because now she could see the man he might have been if fear had not taught him to hide. She could see the effort in the spaces he did not try to fill. She could see him learning, too late perhaps, that clarity was not a single confession but a discipline.

Danish, too, had remained in her life carefully.

They met for coffee twice more, then for dinner once at a small place in Geylang Serai where the sambal was too spicy and Danish pretended not to suffer until his ears turned red. Aleesya laughed more easily with him now. She liked his steadiness, his dry humour, his habit of pausing before difficult sentences as if arranging them safely before handing them over.

But she did not reach for him when something good happened.

Not first.

And that was how she knew.

A person could be good, kind, clear, and still not be the place her heart moved toward when unguarded.

Three nights before the wedding, she told him.

They had been walking after dinner, the pavement damp from a passing shower. The lights from the stalls reflected in shallow puddles. Danish listened without interrupting as she searched for words that would not make honesty sound like rejection sharpened unnecessarily.

“I like you,” she said finally. “I really do. But I think I’m still holding something I haven’t finished grieving.”

Danish nodded, hands in his pockets, eyes on the wet pavement. “Harith.”

It was not a question.

Aleesya’s throat tightened. “Yes.”

They walked a few steps before he answered.

“I thought so,” he said. “But I hoped maybe time would make space.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at her then, and the gentleness in his face hurt because it did not accuse her. “Don’t apologize for telling me the truth before it became unfair.”

The sentence almost undid her.

Danish smiled faintly, not because he was happy, but because he was generous enough not to make his disappointment her burden. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad I met you.”

“Me too.”

“If you ever need a volunteer logistics contact who knows too much about curry puffs, I remain available.”

She laughed, and for once the laugh and sadness sat beside each other peacefully.

At the MRT entrance, he did not ask to hug her. He only held out his hand.

Aleesya shook it.

His hand was warm, steady, respectful to the end.

“Take care, Aleesya.”

“You too, Danish.”

After he left, she stood at the entrance longer than necessary, watching people tap through the gantries, their lives moving forward in small beeps of permission.

Then she opened Harith’s chat.

Not to message him.

Just to look.

His name was still no longer pinned.

But it was still there.

That was the truth she was taking to the wedding today: some doors closed slowly, and some did not close at all. They simply remained in the house, no longer entered, still known by hand.

“Aleesya,” her mother called from the hallway. “Ready?”

Aleesya placed the last pin properly and stepped back from the mirror.

“Yes,” she said.

The woman looking back at her did not seem healed.

But she looked honest.

For now, that was enough.

---

The wedding was held in a hotel ballroom near City Hall, which made everyone behave slightly better for the first hour.

The carpet was thick enough to swallow footsteps. Chandeliers threw warm light over round tables dressed in cream cloth. The stage was framed with fresh flowers this time, white orchids and pale roses arranged in careful abundance. Waiters moved between tables with trays of drinks. The air smelled of perfume, polished wood, and food being kept warm behind closed doors.

It was Farah’s older sister’s wedding, which meant half of Aleesya’s university circle had reappeared in better outfits and more expensive makeup, each person pretending not to measure how much everyone else had changed.

Aleesya arrived with Nadiah because her parents had another kenduri in Pasir Ris and had decided she was old enough to attend one wedding without family supervision, a declaration her mother made while still reminding her to text when she reached.

Nadiah, dressed in lavender and carrying a handbag too small to be useful, leaned toward her as they entered the ballroom. “If anyone asks whether you’re next, I’m pretending to faint.”

“Please don’t.”

“I’ll make it elegant.”

“You don’t know how.”

“I’m young. People will forgive me.”

Aleesya gave her a look, but the familiar teasing steadied her.

They found their assigned table near the middle of the ballroom. Farah waved from across the room, already flushed with wedding chaos, one hand holding her phone and the other holding a packet of tissues like emergency equipment. She mouthed, “Later!” before being pulled away by an auntie.

Aleesya sat, placing her clutch in her lap.

She knew Harith would be there.

Farah had told her two weeks ago, carefully, as if announcing weather conditions that might affect travel. Harith knew the groom through a volunteer connection, because Singapore had too few degrees of separation and too many weddings. Aleesya had nodded and said it was fine.

It was fine.

Fine, she had learned, did not mean painless. It meant survivable.

For the first half hour, she did not see him. She greeted old friends. She laughed at Nadiah’s whispered commentary. She accepted a glass of cold water from a waiter and focused on the condensation slipping down its side.

Then the ballroom doors opened again.

Harith entered with Hafiz and Hana.

Aleesya saw him immediately.

Her heart, loyal in the most inconvenient way, moved before she could discipline it.

He wore a dark charcoal baju Melayu, simple and well-fitted, the samping a deep muted blue. His hair was neatly combed, his expression composed, though not relaxed. Hafiz said something beside him, and Harith’s mouth curved briefly in response. Hana, beside them in a soft cream outfit, looked around the ballroom with open curiosity before spotting Aleesya.

Hana waved.

Aleesya, startled, waved back.

Harith followed his sister’s gaze.

Their eyes met across the ballroom.

This time, he did not look away.

Neither did she.

It lasted only a second or two. Long enough to acknowledge history. Short enough not to invite speculation.

Then Harith lowered his head in a small nod.

Aleesya returned it.

Nadiah leaned close. “That was very mature and very painful to watch.”

Aleesya took a sip of water. “Eat the bread.”

“There is no bread.”

“Then imagine bread.”

Nadiah sighed dramatically but, mercifully, said nothing else.

The wedding began with the bride and groom’s entrance. Music swelled. Guests turned in their seats. Phones rose like a field of small black mirrors. The couple walked beneath soft lights, smiling with the stunned, tender embarrassment of people being watched while trying to feel something private.

Aleesya clapped with everyone else.

She tried not to think about the first wedding.

Tried not to remember Farah calling Harith her boyfriend, the flash of the camera, his eyes sliding away. Tried not to remember the corridor vending machine, the shelter, the sentence that had broken without raising its voice.

Bukan kita kawan je?

The memory still hurt.

But it no longer owned the room.

That was progress, perhaps.

During the meal, Harith remained at his table near the back. Aleesya did not seek him out, but awareness still moved quietly between them. She noticed when he stood to let an older guest pass. Noticed when he helped Hana take a photo with better lighting. Noticed, once, that he laughed properly at something Hafiz said, then looked surprised by his own laughter.

Good, she thought, and then felt strange for thinking it.

She wanted him well.

That did not mean she knew where to put him.

After the second course, Farah finally reached Aleesya’s table, breathless and glowing. She hugged Aleesya tightly, then Nadiah, then complained about the photographer, the seating plan, and an uncle who had asked whether the dessert table was “free flow” as if he planned to move in permanently.

“You look so pretty,” Farah said, holding Aleesya by both arms. “Very calm. Very healed woman.”

Nadiah choked on her drink.

Aleesya smiled. “Don’t use words you can’t prove.”

Farah’s expression softened immediately.

For all her loudness, she was not careless when it mattered. Her fingers squeezed Aleesya’s arms once, an apology carried over from the last wedding, still unspoken but understood.

“You okay?” Farah asked quietly.

Aleesya looked across the ballroom without meaning to.

Harith was speaking to an older man near his table. His posture was polite, attentive. Then his gaze shifted, almost instinctively, and found hers.

This time, Aleesya did not feel the old lurch of hope.

Only a deep, complicated tenderness.

She looked back at Farah. “I think I’m getting there.”

Farah nodded as if that answer was enough. “Good.”

Then, because she was still Farah, she added, “Also, if anyone asks you annoying questions, tell me. I will weaponize my volume.”

Aleesya laughed.

The evening moved on.

Speeches were made. The groom cried before finishing his, which made half the ballroom coo and the other half pretend not to wipe their eyes. The bride smiled at him like his tears were safe with her. Dessert arrived in small glass bowls. Children grew restless. Aunties began packing centrepiece flowers into tissue when they thought no one was watching.

By the time guests started leaving, the ballroom had changed.

All weddings did, near the end.

The magic loosened first at the edges. Chair covers slipped crooked. Napkins lay abandoned beside half-empty glasses. Flower petals dropped onto the stage steps. The music softened into a playlist nobody was really listening to. Waiters moved more quickly now, clearing plates, folding stands, preparing to return beauty to storage.

Nadiah had disappeared to take photos with cousins. Farah was busy near the entrance. Aleesya found herself standing near a side table, watching the ballroom dismantle itself.

There was something honest about the ending of weddings.

When the lights remained but the performance began to thin. When people stopped posing. When heels came off under tables. When the bride leaned tiredly against her new husband’s shoulder while someone counted gift envelopes nearby. When love, stripped of stage and music, had to become logistics: Where are the shoes? Who has the car keys? Did you eat? Are you tired?

Aleesya wondered whether love was less about the grand entrance than what remained while chairs were being cleared.

“Hi.”

She knew the voice before turning.

Harith stood a few feet away, one hand lightly holding a cup of water. He did not step closer until she acknowledged him.

“Hi,” she said.

He looked at the ballroom, then back at her. “You okay?”

The question was familiar, but different now. Less claim. More offering.

Aleesya nodded. “Yes. You?”

“I’m okay.”

For a moment, they stood side by side, watching waiters clear the table where guests had been laughing an hour earlier.

Hana passed nearby with Nadiah, both of them holding slices of wedding cake wrapped in napkins and speaking as if they had become lifelong friends in twelve minutes. Nadiah saw Aleesya with Harith, widened her eyes, then kept walking with uncharacteristic wisdom.

Harith noticed and almost smiled. “Your cousin still scary.”

“She thinks the same about your sister.”

“That sounds right.”

The small joke settled between them softly.

Aleesya looked down at her hands. “Danish and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.”

Harith went still.

She did not know why she said it first. Perhaps because the information belonged in the room. Perhaps because she wanted to remove the ghost of jealousy before it appeared. Perhaps because, despite everything, honesty with Harith still mattered to her.

“He was kind,” she added. “Clear. Good.”

Harith nodded slowly. “I’m sorry if I affected that.”

“You did.”

He absorbed it without flinching away.

“But not in the way you think,” she said. “I didn’t end it because you confessed. I ended it because it would have been unfair to keep walking with someone while looking back at someone else.”

His face changed, pain and hope rising together. He controlled the hope quickly, but she saw it.

“I see,” he said.

Aleesya looked at him. “Do you?”

“I’m trying to.”

That answer, too, was honest.

Harith set his cup down on the side table. His fingers rested briefly against the cloth before he withdrew them. “I’m not going to ask what that means for us.”

The word us returned quieter now, no longer a claim but a question he refused to force.

Aleesya’s throat tightened.

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded.

Around them, the ballroom continued to empty. The stage lights were dimmed slightly. Someone laughed near the exit. A waiter folded a table number and slipped it into a box.

Harith looked toward the pelamin, where the bride and groom were taking one last photo with close family. “I used to think the hardest part was saying what I felt.”

Aleesya followed his gaze. “And now?”

“Now I think the harder part is accepting that saying it doesn’t give me control over what happens next.”

She looked at him then.

There was no self-pity in his voice. Only recognition.

He had changed.

Not enough to erase the past. Not enough to make the answer simple. But enough that her heart, foolish and faithful, noticed.

“I wanted you to choose me,” he said. “At the reservoir. Even when I said I wouldn’t rush you, some part of me still wanted my honesty to fix everything.”

“Of course you did.”

He gave a small, sad smile. “You’re supposed to say I’m noble.”

“You’re not.”

“I know.”

“But you’re trying.”

His smile faded into something softer. “I am.”

Another silence.

This one did not cut either.

It held.

Aleesya looked at the half-empty tables, the loosened chair covers, the flowers beginning to wilt under ballroom light. She thought of the first wedding, how public teasing had exposed a private wound. She thought of Harith’s face under the shelter when she asked what they were. She thought of herself saying “kawan je” because pride was the only thing holding her upright.

Then she thought of him at the bus stop last week, saying love without asking her to carry it.

The story between them had become so quiet now that no one else in the ballroom would know a whole heart had lived and cracked inside it.

“Harith,” she said.

He turned to her fully.

She did not know exactly what she meant to say until the words began.

“I loved you in a way that made me very patient with pain.”

His face tightened, but he stayed still.

“I don’t want to love like that anymore.”

“I don’t want you to either,” he said quietly.

The answer made her eyes sting.

She breathed in slowly. “When you said we were friends, I think something in me understood that I had been building a home in a place you still called temporary.”

Harith closed his eyes for a second.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“I’ll probably keep saying it for a long time.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I think I do. Not to make you forgive me. Just because it remains true.”

Aleesya looked away before tenderness could become surrender.

The ballroom entrance was almost empty now. Farah waved goodbye to a group of relatives. Nadiah and Hana stood near the dessert table, pretending not to watch them and failing completely.

A slow song played from the speakers, too soft for dancing, too late for ceremony. It floated through the half-cleared room like something left behind.

Harith spoke again. “Can I ask you one thing?”

Aleesya nodded.

“If there had been no Danish, no jealousy, no fear of losing you…” He stopped, searching for courage. “If I had come to you clearly before all that, would you have said yes?”

The question was not unfair.

But it hurt.

Aleesya looked at him for a long moment. “Yes.”

Harith’s breath caught.

“Without hesitation,” she said.

The honesty landed between them with all the life they had missed.

He looked down, jaw tight.

Aleesya continued softly. “But that version of me doesn’t exist anymore.”

He nodded.

A tear slipped down his face so quietly that for a second she thought it was only light.

Harith wiped it away quickly, almost embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for that.”

He gave a broken little laugh. “Habit.”

“Bad one.”

“I know.”

The urge to touch his arm rose in her like memory.

She did not.

Not because she wanted to punish him, but because touch would speak a language neither of them was ready to translate.

Across the ballroom, the bride and groom finally stepped down from the stage. The bride had removed her heels. The groom carried them in one hand while holding hers with the other. They looked exhausted and happy, ordinary now in the most beautiful way.

Aleesya watched them pass.

Then she said the line that had been living in her since the reservoir, perhaps since the first wedding, perhaps since the first time Harith asked whether she had eaten and she mistook care for courage.

“Maybe we were never just friends,” she said.

Harith went very still.

She looked at him.

His eyes held hers, wet and dark and finally unguarded.

“But maybe,” she continued, voice trembling despite her effort, “you only realized that after I stopped waiting.”

The sentence entered him cleanly.

He did not defend himself.

He did not say no, that was not true.

He did not reach for her.

He only lowered his gaze, accepting the wound because it belonged to both of them but had been carried by her for longer.

“Yes,” he said.

It was the smallest answer.

The bravest he could give.

Aleesya felt the tears then, gathering hot behind her eyes. She smiled because if she did not, she might break in a room full of half-cleared tables and distant relatives and two teenage girls watching too closely.

“I don’t know what happens from here,” she said.

Harith looked up again.

“I’m not closing the door to ever speaking,” she said. “I’m not pretending I don’t care. I’m not saying I never want to see you again.”

His breath shook.

“But I’m also not walking back into what we were.”

“I know.”

“I need to become someone who doesn’t wait at unclear doors.”

His mouth trembled, just once. “I want that for you.”

“I believe you.”

The words surprised them both.

For a moment, hope moved between them—not the old desperate kind, not the kind that demanded an answer. A quieter hope. One that did not promise reunion. Only growth. Only that what had happened would not be wasted if both of them learned from it.

Farah called Aleesya’s name from near the entrance, asking if she was leaving soon.

Aleesya lifted a hand to show she had heard.

Then she turned back to Harith.

There were so many possible endings available in that moment. She could step closer. She could forgive him fully. She could say she loved him still. She could offer a future, or ask for one, or leave the door half-open in a way that would keep them both waiting.

Instead, she chose the truth she could carry.

“I hope you become brave before the next person has to beg for clarity,” she said.

Harith’s face tightened.

Then he nodded. “Me too.”

“And I hope,” she added, softer now, “that one day I can remember us without feeling foolish.”

His eyes filled again.

“You were never foolish,” he said.

Aleesya smiled.

This time, it hurt less.

“I was hopeful,” she said. “Sometimes they look the same from far away.”

Harith seemed to memorize her face then, as if he knew better than to ask for more time. The ballroom lights reflected in his eyes. Around them, waiters folded the last few chair covers. Someone laughed at the entrance. The bride’s bouquet lay forgotten on a side table, petals slightly bruised but still beautiful.

Nadiah appeared beside Aleesya, cautious for once. “Kak? Grab is here.”

Aleesya nodded. “Okay.”

Hana stood a little behind Nadiah, watching her brother with a tenderness that made Aleesya’s chest ache.

Harith stepped back.

Not far.

Just enough.

“Goodnight, Aleesya,” he said.

She looked at him for one long moment.

Not long enough to promise.

Not cold enough to erase him.

“Goodnight, Harith.”

She left the ballroom with Nadiah.

At the doors, she looked back once.

Harith remained near the side table, surrounded by the soft wreckage of a wedding ending. His charcoal baju Melayu looked almost black under the dimmed lights. His hands were at his sides. He did not follow. Did not call out. Did not try to turn her pause into an invitation.

He only stood there, loving her late and finally well enough to let the leaving remain hers.

Aleesya turned away.

Outside the hotel, the night air was cool from rain. The pavement shone under taxi lights. Nadiah walked beside her quietly, no jokes, no commentary, only presence.

Their Grab waited at the curb.

Before getting in, Aleesya looked up.

The clouds had thinned. Between the tall city buildings, a small piece of sky showed itself, dark and clear, with one faint star visible above the glow of Singapore.

Her phone buzzed.

For a second, old instinct stirred.

But when she checked, it was not Harith.

It was her mother.

Mama Dah habis wedding? Text me when you reach home.

Aleesya smiled through the ache.

Some kinds of love were clear from the beginning.

She replied:

Aleesya Dah. Going home now.

Then she placed the phone in her bag and got into the car.

As the hotel slipped behind them, Nadiah leaned her head against the window and finally whispered, “Are you okay?”

Aleesya watched the city move past in silver and gold. Wet roads. Closed shops. Couples waiting at crossings. A man folding chairs outside a café. The whole world carrying on after endings, as if endings were only another kind of weather.

She thought of Harith standing in the ballroom.

Thought of Danish’s respectful goodbye.

Thought of the girl she had been beneath the first wedding’s fairy lights, smiling while something cracked invisibly.

Then she thought of herself now: sad, yes. Still in love, perhaps. But no longer willing to make a home out of uncertainty.

“I’m not okay yet,” Aleesya said.

Nadiah reached for her hand.

Aleesya let her take it.

“But I think I will be.”

Outside, rain began again—not heavily, not cruelly. Just a fine, silver mist against the car window, softening the lights, turning the city into something blurred but still moving.

Aleesya leaned back and closed her eyes.

For once, she did not wait for a message to tell her she had arrived safely.

She was already on her way home.