30/07/2025
The girl with the yellow umbrella
Chapter 1 cont.
I donât know what came over me, but I walked toward her, just⊠drawn. She noticed me before I reached her and offered a crooked grin.
"Your umbrellaâs broken," I said, mostly to say something. She shrugged. âSo am I.â
And then she laughed again, the kind of laugh that made people turn their heads . wild, carefree, unfiltered.
That was Ada. Messy and Honest. Alive in a way that made you feel like you hadnât really been living until she smiled at you.
We ended up sitting in that cafĂ© for hours. I learned that she was a freelance writer that worked odd jobs, hated deadlines, loved classic jazz and hated small talk. She asked me questions people donât usually ask on first meetings;
âWhen was the last time you cried?â
âDo you believe love ever really ends?â
âIf you knew the exact day youâd die, what would you do differently?â
I gave her half-honest answers. She gave me none. Just smirks and stories, changing subjects with the elegance of someone whoâs lived through things they donât talk about.
That night, I walked her to the bus stop. She offered me her number, then quickly added, âI donât always respond. But if I do, I mean it.â
I saved it under âAda Chaos in Yellow.â
She was like that. Never just Ada.
Two weeks passed before she replied to my first text.
âIâm at the dock. Bring coffee. Black. No sugar.â
I found her sitting alone, shoes off, legs dangling off the edge of the dock. She didnât say hi. Just reached for the coffee and sipped it like she trusted me.
We sat in silence for an hour. It didnât feel awkward.Thatâs how it started quietly, without declaration. She became my late-night call, my voice note at 3 a.m., my coffee partner on days when the world felt too loud. Sheâd show up at my place with books, sit on my floor, and read aloud while I cooked. Sometimes, sheâd cry during certain paragraphs and pretend it was dust.
We never said the word love.
But every time she looked at me like I was both a question and an answer, I felt it. Ada wasnât easy.
She disappeared sometimes no warning, no texts. Gone for days. When she came back, sheâd curl up next to me and whisper, âI just needed space.â I didnât question it.
I didnât want to scare her away but I didn't like it either.
Looking back now, I wonder if I should have asked more. Demanded more. Maybe then I wouldnât be standing here, years later, trying to make sense of the story she left unfinished.
Because if thereâs one thing Iâve learned, itâs this: Some people donât come into your life to stay.
They come to stir things.
To shift your walls.
To show you what love feels like when itâs raw and unafraid. And when they leave, they take the part of you that believed life was predictable.
Ada took that part with her the day she walked into the rain⊠and didnât come back.
To be continued!
