“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds
Boston, Late Summer Night
Every night, she stands there like a silent sentinel.
Not smoking. Not pacing. Just... watching.
No smirk. No whisper. Just those eyes—brighter than floodlights from a chopper slicing through midnight fog.
I’ve interrogated killers. Watched men flinch when I so much as leaned in. I’ve broken mobsters and politicians alike. But her? Blueberry doesn’t break. She reveals. And not by force. Just by being.
She’s a wonder left over from a world with slower clocks and stronger coffee. A place where right and wrong weren’t up for interpretation, and heroes didn’t have marketing teams.
You look at her, and you feel the contradictions burn through your ribs:
The grace of a ballerina who’s walked through blood.
The heart of a child who still believes in justice.
The fists of a woman who’s had to fight for it—over and over again.
I used to think I was the seasoned one. The cynic. The tough guy in the trenchcoat, hiding his estranged father's badge in the lining like some sacred relic. I walked around thinking I understood the city because I knew the names of its shadows.
But then she came along and made me realize I’d never seen the light. Not really. I was flying blind — my wings were frayed, my instruments out of whack, but there was my co-pilot with all her sass.
I fell for her when I was still pretending. Pretending I had it together. Pretending I didn’t want more than the job. Pretending I wasn’t afraid.
And she didn’t shatter me. She humbled me, fuck yeah she did. She unlocked me.
She never asked me to be anything but honest. And that’s the hardest thing a man like me can do.
So now, when I see her—whether she’s staring out the blinds or studying a case file with that quiet fury in her jaw—I don’t see a goddess or a ghost or some noir cliché.
I see Berry. My partner. My compass. My redemption.
I used to think the city was trying to kill me.
Now I think it was trying to lead me to her.
Undisclosed Location, Late Night
He doesn’t know I hear him.
Not his words, necessarily. Just the ache behind them.
The way his boots land heavier when the case is closing in. The way he grips his pen like it’s a knife when he’s wrong but too proud to say it.
Joe thinks I’m strong because I don’t flinch. Because I can stare down a thug or a crooked mayor and not blink.
What he doesn’t see is what I do after he walks out of the room. When I sag against the wall and exhale all the breath I held just to keep him steady.
I believed in good guys before I met Joe. But I didn’t believe they lasted.
Then he shows up—loud, messy, noble in ways he doesn’t admit to himself. A man trying to live up to his father’s legacy while pretending he’s already surpassed it.
I watched him for weeks before I let myself feel anything. Not because I was afraid—God knows I’ve faced worse than heartbreak.
But because I didn’t want to love someone who’d look at me like I was some porcelain dream instead of a woman who’s been punched, spit on, nearly buried alive… and still shows up early to case briefings.
And yet—he surprises me.
He sees me. Not the myth. Not the beauty. Me.
He lets me speak without interruption, lets me fight my own fights, but always checks the corners I forget to watch.
I don’t need him. That’s what makes choosing him so precious.
When I see him dozing at his desk with his coat wrapped around him like a shroud, I think:
This is what love looks like in our world.
Not flowers or sonnets or rings in champagne.
Just two people walking through gunfire with each other’s names tucked behind their teeth like talismans.
He thinks he’s lucky to have me.
The truth?
I thank the stars above this broken city every night… that the boy in the trenchcoat chose to grow up — even a little, even if he still has a long, long way to go.
egacy while pretending he’s already surpassed it.
I watched him for weeks before I let myself feel anything. Not because I was afraid—God knows I’ve faced worse than heartbreak.
But because I didn’t want to love someone who’d look at me like I was some porcelain dream instead of a woman who’s been punched, spit on, nearly buried alive… and still shows up early to case briefings.
And yet—he surprises me.
He sees me. Not the myth. Not the beauty. Me.
He lets me speak without interruption, lets me fight my own fights, but always checks the corners I forget to watch.
I don’t need him. That’s what makes choosing him so precious.
When I see him dozing at his desk with his coat wrapped around him like a shroud, I think:
This is what love looks like in our world.
Not flowers or sonnets or rings in champagne.
Just two people walking through gunfire with each other’s names tucked behind their teeth like talismans.
He thinks he’s lucky to have me.
The truth?
I thank the stars above this broken city every night… that the boy in the trenchcoat chose to stay.
Her back is arched just enough to reveal the sheen of sweat along her shoulder blades—highlighted in pale rose-gold.
Her eyes are almost closed. Her mouth barely parts. A whisper of a smile. Her arm drapes across a crumpled trench coat. She wears nothing but the city’s humidity.
Behind her, out the open window, the sky is pink-haze and halos. Boston’s skyline is absent, fog-wrapped like a ghost city. A single streetlamp bends into view, casting Venetian-blind shadows onto the curve of her hip.
A Maggi noodles container on the sill, imagined as a glass vase of wilted flowers
An empty coffee cup, envisioned as a metal water bottle etched with her name: “Berry”
A handwritten note pinned by a paperweight reads:
She sees the truth in you, even when you don’t.
Her hand gripping Joe’s earlier.
Her lips half-parted with sleep.
Her silhouette walking away down a rainy corridor.
“You don’t need me to stay, Joe. But you always hope I will.”
And Joe? Joe lies shirtless in bed, sweat on his brow, eyes half-lidded. His fingers hover over the curve of air, where her body used to be—or still is, in his dreaming mind. The sheets on her side are untouched in reality, but pulled down in memory.
A shadow crosses his jaw—the ghost of a kiss not yet given.
His monologue bleeds down the page like cigarette smoke curling around his thoughts:
I lean in. She’s still slick from us, from the city, from summer itself. Her skin tastes like rain waiting to fall.
“Hmm,” she says. That’s all. Like she’s a cat curled against thunder, unbothered.
That Maggi container? It’s flowers in this room. Her favorite. Lilies, maybe. Hell, anything that doesn’t smell like waterfront gutter steam.
That water bottle It was hers. Metal. Always cold to the touch. Like her when she left me the first time.
I still taste her. Even when she’s not here. Even when she hasn't called.
I want her to talk back. Not just moan in my memory. I want her voice like gravel and roses. I want her laugh to shatter me awake.
I think about leaving this city. Letting Ava be. Trading fog for fire somewhere south.
But then I see those eyes again. Her eyes. Then her breasts. Then her laugh.
And then... I sleep.
[Voicemail — Unsent | 5:41AM | Duration: 1m 48s]
(Soft exhale. A long pause. The sound of a match being struck. Then the message begins—her voice low, gravel-sweet, like a jazz record left playing in an empty diner.)
Hey...
(Click.)
“When the Fog Fell Away”
A dream inside Joe Lupo’s sleeping mind
Boston. Summer. 12:41AM.
She’s above him, eyes half-lidded and patient, like she’s studying him and the whole of the human condition in one gaze. Her rhythm is slow, deliberate—not teasing, not aggressive, but intentional, like she’s laying claim to time itself.
Joe’s hands are everywhere—her cheek, her neck, her ribs, her temple. Not out of hunger, but as if to remind himself: She’s real. She’s here. Stay with her. Don’t drift away.
He buries his face against her collarbone, murmuring things even he doesn't fully hear. Every inch of her is poetry in motion, but it’s her face—God, her face—that he keeps coming back to. He kisses her there again and again. The bridge of her nose. The spot just beneath her eye. The corner of her mouth, as she bites her lower lip to keep from laughing at how damn earnest he is.
He lifts her, arms sure and solid, as if she weighs less than memory. She gasps, arms around his neck, forehead against his. He carries her to the window and presses her gently against the glass. Outside, the city’s vanished into fog and soft pink starlight.
Above them, the sky reveals only one clear constellation. It’s unfamiliar, impossible—but to Joe, it looks like her name scrawled in stars.
He looks back at her. Hair tangled, chest rising fast, that look in her eyes—half lover, half lighthouse.
“You're lovelier than the sky itself, Berry. And that sky’s trying to outshine you.”
She doesn’t answer. She kisses him. It’s all the reply he needs.
They finish together, foreheads pressed, no words spoken—just breath, shared.
And then they laugh.
That real kind of laugh—the kind that tastes like freedom.
Later, in the kitchen—still dreamlight, but grounded now.
She’s at the stove, wearing only his shirt and a pair of socks with cats on them. Her hair is tied up with a rubber band he left on the radiator three nights ago. She’s making aloo sabji, humming something in Hindi under her breath that he doesn’t understand but loves like an old radio tune.
The smell hits him like a memory of home he never had, in a land he’s always longed to go to. She made it possible for him to discover it authentically through her identity, through her lived experiences often told in tales that spoke of talent on top of all those memories.
She hands him the plate with mock ceremony, then sits beside him cross-legged, watching.He eats like he’s never eaten before—like every bite rewrites something inside him. “So damned delicious….oh my God Berry….” he manages to mumble out.
“You always eat like the world’s ending,” she says softly, smiling.
Oh, how she smiles. That smile could save a city.
He wants to ask her to stay. Wants to say her name. Wants to build a forever out of this moment.
But he doesn’t.
Because somewhere, beneath it all, he knows he’s dreaming.
And in that knowledge, the pink sky begins to fade.
They’re on the floor now, tangled in a throw blanket and half a dozen old case files scattered like petals around them. The sabji is finished. The fog has thinned just enough to let in a sliver of moonlight that draws the edges of her face in silver.
Blueberry hums first. Then sings.
Mil Jaaye Iss Tarah, Do Leharein Jis Tarah
Let us meet in such a way, like the meeting of two waves
O... Mil Jaaye Iss Tarah, Do Leharein Jis Tarah
Let us meet in such a way, like the meeting of two waves
Phir Ho Naa Juda, Haan Yeh Vaada Raha
Then we shall never get separated, it's a promise
Her voice isn’t perfect—but it doesn’t need to be. It carries truth, and Joe swears he hears his father’s grunt of approval before he takes another sip of wine. "
She sways a little, eyes half-lost to memory, one hand holding her glass, the other resting lightly on his chest. The lyrics pour from her like warm rain, soaking something inside him that hasn’t been touched in years.
He doesn’t say anything at first. Just stares at the ceiling and lets the tears slip sideways into the pillow. One of them, she catches with her thumb and says nothing. She just rests her head on his shoulder.
“Mama used to hum that, papa taught her.” he finally mutters.
“After she’d finished cooking.”
She looks up at him. He’s not hiding anymore. He’s naked, in more ways than one.
“She’d have loved you,” he adds.
“You’re everything she tried to teach me to find… before I forgot to listen.”
Berry just nods. She already knew.
She always did.
But she’s glad he said it.
They toast nothing. They drink quietly. The bottle’s half-gone, forgotten.
“Are you happy?” he asks her softly, brushing a curl behind her ear.
She looks at him. Not evasively, not guarded—just honestly.
“I don’t know,” she says.
“Are you?”“Only when you’re around.”
She smiles—sad and lovely.
“You should be happy all the time, Joe.”
“Will they accept me?” he asks, voice quiet as a stolen prayer.
“Your family?”
She doesn’t even blink.
“They’re good people. You’d surprise them.”
“What about Aunt Ava?” she counters, eyes narrowing with affection.
“What does she really think of me’?”
He grins.
“She thinks the world of you. Said you reminded her of herself in the war.”
That earns him a kiss. One she draws out slowly, like she’s trying to imprint her lips on his timeline. It feels better than anything he can put into words, ironically.
When they pull apart, she glances at the old analog clock above the bookshelf.
“It’s 6:14,” she whispers.
“You need to wake up. Frankie’s waiting. And the squad’s a mess without you.”
Joe tries to hold her longer.
Just one more minute.
Just one more breath.
Just one more dream.
But her form begins to soften, fading like dew in morning sun.
The wineglass vanishes.
The blanket is just a coat.
The warmth is just the radiator’s hum.
The scent of aloo fades into coffee grounds.
And then he’s alone.
Eyes open.
Sweat on his brow.
The city calling.
Again.
Monday Morning, Boston. 6:21AM.
Real time. No fog. No music. Just the slow return of weight.
Joe sits at the edge of the bed, hunched forward, his elbows digging into his knees like he’s afraid they’ll vanish if he sits up too straight. The cheap fan rattles. The sheet’s twisted around his legs like a shroud. His hand rests on the empty pillow beside him, fingers drumming where her shoulder used to be in the dream.
The radio murmurs headlines he doesn’t care about.
Some politician fell. A car fire in Dorchester.
The usual.
He lights the stove. Black coffee, no sugar. Just heat. Just purpose.
On the counter, the Maggi container is just that—a plastic shell, greasy and stubborn.
The wine bottle’s corked. Untouched.
The throw blanket is still folded.
He presses the rim of the mug to his lips and closes his eyes. The taste of aloo is gone. But the feeling it gave him—that rare, golden domestic quiet—it still lingers just behind his ribs.
📱Ringtone. Buzz. Incoming Call: “Frankie 🇰🇪”
He answers before the second ring.
“Joe!” Frankie’s voice, always warm, always a little too loud in the morning. “You alive or floating in some whiskey dream again?”
“Coffee dream this time,” Joe mutters. “Real strong. No casualties yet.”
Frankie laughs. His laugh could light a damn room.
“Good. We’ve got that academy talk today. Recruits are expecting grit and guts and you better not show up quoting Sartre again.”
“No promises,” Joe replies, allowing the ghost of a smile.
“These kids want to learn how to disarm a knife fight, not debate existential dread.”
“You ever been to a knife fight in Dorchester?” Joe fires back. “That is existential dread.”“Touché.”
They run through the day’s docket.
Three guest instructors.
Two squad briefings.
One ride-along with the new cadets.
Frankie updates him on the precinct. The new girl’s settling in. The vending machine ate his dollar again. Someone left a banana on Joe’s desk with a Sharpie mustache.
Joe listens. Nods. Sips.
6:43AM.
The sunlight is harsher now. Less romantic.
It cuts through the grime on the windowpane like a blade.
Joe stands with his coffee half-empty. The mug bears a fading precinct logo and a chipped handle. He watches the street below, sees a couple arguing over nothing, a bus hissing by, the city getting on with it.
His thumb hovers over his phone.
He opens her contact. “Berry.”
He stares for a second. Then calls.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
No answer.
No voicemail this time. Just silence.
He lowers the phone. Doesn’t sigh. Doesn’t swear. Just stands there.
Then he puts the phone down, drinks the rest of the coffee cold.
Final Act, Part I: “Big Brother Blues”
Boston Police Training Academy, 10:02AM
Lupo leads. Dublin’s gone. Berry still nowhere.
The training hall isn’t glamorous—cinderblock walls painted government beige, flickering fluorescents, the faint odor of floor polish and spent adrenaline. But to Joe, it’s sacred ground. The kind of place where lost kids walk in and maybe—just maybe—walk out with a spine and a purpose.
He stands before two dozen new recruits. Some are nervous. Some cocky. One's still chewing gum like he's above the law. Joe clocks them all in a single sweep.
Behind him, on the left: Detective Frankie Mahachi, born in Nakuru, raised around the world. Knows the city better than most cabbies. Warm eyes. Soft heart. Hard fists when needed.
On the right: Agent Anna Ma, a new addition from the forensics unit. East Asian, poised, sharp as a scalpel. Her specialty? Forensic toxicology and blood pattern analysis. But more than that, she listens with intent. A rare gift.
Joe’s voice cuts through the room—deep, gravel-coated, but calm.
“They told me I had 45 minutes to talk to you about field readiness. I’m gonna use five. The rest is on you.”
He walks slowly. Doesn’t pace. Doesn’t posture. He speaks like Dublin used to—like someone who’s seen too much but still gives a damn.
“You’re here because someone said you could be trusted. Not to be perfect. But to keep showing up even when it gets messy.”
“Out there—” (he points toward the wall, where the city lies beyond it) “—people won’t care about your GPA. They’ll care if you flinch. If you freeze. If you lie.”
He glances at the woman in the front row, who’s scribbling too fast. Then at the guy slouched too far. Then at all of them—twenty-four souls, looking up at him like he’s already a legend.
“Three things I want you to remember, and I mean live by.”
“Self-efficacy. The belief that you can handle your business. That you don’t wait for someone else to tell you what’s possible.”
“Situational awareness. The moment you lose track of the room, the car, the sidewalk, the kid screaming in the back—someone gets hurt. You can’t afford tunnel vision. Stay awake.”
“And finally—clarity. Not just of thought, but of purpose. You can’t lead if you don’t know who the hell you are.”
He pauses, lets it land. There’s a beat of silence. Aria nods. Frankie crosses his arms and smiles to himself.
Joe adds, softer now:
“Captain Dublin used to say: ‘Don’t be the loudest in the room. Be the one who knows what needs to be done.’ He’s fishing in Maine today. So I guess I’m the one who needs to be loud.”
The room chuckles. It’s just enough warmth to keep it human.
Then he finishes, looking them dead-on:
“Out there, people bleed. People lie. People break. What they need from you... is to not.”
3:18PM — South Street Diner, Boston
The metal rail sizzles against Joe’s forearms as he leans forward in the booth. Frankie’s halfway through a stack of pancakes and regaling Anna with a story about getting his ass handed to him by a grandma with pepper spray in JP.
Joe chuckles on cue, but it’s telegraphed laughter. The kind you send out when your mind’s three blocks away.
He stares out the window.
The sky is blue. No fog.
Too much light.
He glances at his phone again. No new messages. No missed calls.
Berry’s name still pinned at the top of his favorites.
“You alright?” Frankie asks between bites.
“Yeah,” Joe lies.
“Just thinking.”“She’ll call,” Frankie says, not needing to name her.
Joe nods, stirs his coffee. Doesn’t sip.
Anna watches him. The way her gaze lingers—gentle, not intrusive—he knows she knows. But she won’t ask. She’s too professional for that.
Frankie, though—he leans over, nudges him.
“You gave them something today brother. Don’t let the silence steal it.”
Joe nods again. More to himself than to anyone else.
“I just miss her, man.”
“I know.”
Joe’s Second Daydream: “The Real Boston Cream”
Location: His apartment, 4:13AM, imagined past
Half memory, half desire, all hers.
He doesn’t remember how they got from the Diner to his kitchen. Just that she’d been talking fast—about crime scene inconsistencies, about bad coffee, about how she’d never understand how Americans call it “pie” when it’s got no crust—and then she’d bent forward to grab a spoon and—
He moved.
His body pressed flush against hers, hands on her hips, her name on his breath. And she didn’t flinch. Didn’t ask. Just arched back into him with a little sound—that sound—the one that drives him past thinking and straight into feeling.
“Jesus, Berry—” he groans, hand already buried in that dark, perfect hair.
She gasps when he tugs, then laughs—bright, breathless, wild.
“That all you got, detective?” she teases.
Challenge accepted.
He’s driven, like there’s a warrant out on his own loneliness, and the only way to cancel it is her.
The counter thuds beneath her palms.
The kitchen sings with the rhythm of urgency and homecoming.
“Berry,” he says, over and over, like the name itself is sacred.
“God, Berry…”
When they’re spent—sweaty, smiling, splayed like two survivors of a torrid tempest—they collapse on the couch. Her hair is tangled, his chest is still rising fast, but their fingers are already linked.
“Boston cream pie isn’t even a pie,” she mutters, eyes rolling like a lucky pair of dice.
“It’s cake, silly American. It’s lying cake.”“Still sweet, though,” he offers.
“Like someone I know.”
She rolls her eyes and swats his arm.
“You’re so American sometimes it hurts. And your coffee—Joe, it’s offensive. It tastes like burnt ambition.”
“That’s how we like it.”
“Well, your ambition is over-roasted.”
He laughs and kisses her cheek.
“And yet, you’re still here.”
“Unfortunately.”
She rests her head on his chest, drawing little spirals with her fingers across the top of his hand. He watches her, that blend of detective and dream—his Berry, who never asked for softness but always deserved it.
“You’ve come a long way,” she whispers.
“I’m proud of you. We’ve cracked some serious cases. You’re… you’re really becoming who you were meant to be.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that. So he pulls her tighter. Kisses her forehead.
“You ever worry?” she asks.
“About the money? The burnout? You haven’t taken a vacation since… ever.”
He shrugs.
Thinks for a moment.
Then says the only truth that matters:
“You’re my vacation.”
She exhales softly. No sarcasm. No comeback. Just a full-body melt into him.
And for a second—a real one, not dream-tinted—he believes they could build a life out of these stolen mornings. One kiss at a time.
Reality breaks the reverie.
A fork clangs onto a diner plate.
Frankie’s saying something about a precinct memo.
Aria’s nodding.
Joe blinks.
Berry’s gone again.
But the warmth of her lingers — as it always does.
Tu Tu Hai Wohi, Dil Ne Jise Apna Kaha
You are that one, which the heart called as my own
Tu Hai Jahaan Main Hoon Vahaan
Wherever You are, I am there
Ab Toh Yeh Jeena, Tere Bin Hai Saza
Now living life without You seems like a punishment
Tujhe Main Jahan Ki Nazar Se Chura Loon
I'll steal You away from the gaze of the world
Kahin Dil Ke Kone Me Tujhko Chhupa Loon
I'll hide You in some corner of my heart
Kabhi Zindagi Mein Pade Mushkilein Toh
If there may be some difficulties in life
Mujhe Tu Sambhale, Tujhe Main Sambhaloon
May You take care of me, and I take care of You