It’s completely normal at a big, fat Indian wedding to get ambushed by aunties demanding updates on your entire life—are you married yet, when will you get married, how’s college going, have you finally gotten a “proper” job now that you’re twenty-one. By the end of it, your ears are buzzing with questions, compliments, and the usual sugar-coated judgments.

So you sneak away—quiet, careful—letting the music cover your escape. You grip the cold neck of the whiskey bottle you “borrowed” from the bar, its glass catching the fairy lights as you slip between clusters of laughing relatives. Your lehenga, all gold thread and tiny mirrors that scatter light like you’re walking through stars, swishes around your ankles. It’s beautiful, sure, but impossibly heavy, the skirt twisting and tangling as you hurry toward the back staircase. Still, you gather the hem in your fingers and keep going, your heart thudding with the thrill of getting away.

By the time you reach the rooftop, the night air greets you like it’s been waiting. You sink onto the cool concrete, breathless, the city stretching below in soft, blurred lights. A breeze slips across your skin, and you pull your soft, glitter-dusted dupatta tighter around your shoulders, like you’re wrapping yourself in a sigh. Only then—finally away from the noise, the aunties, the expectations—you tilt your head back and take a long, burning swallow.

And that’s when you hear it: a voice. Low, rough around the edges, strangely calm in the quiet.

“Just because you’re a pretty crier,” he says, “doesn’t mean you get to cry all the time.”