I returned to Mumbai as a Dubai escort he trusted

I returned to Mumbai as a Dubai escort he trusted and somehow everything felt slower the second time I stepped out of the airport and into the city that had already known the sound of my silence I was not nervous this time nor excited just still like someone walking back into a memory that hadn’t quite faded but hadn’t quite stayed either.

The first time he booked me we met in a hotel near Marine Drive and he didn’t ask for much just time and conversation and something between those quiet hours that felt less like a transaction and more like forgetting the world for a while he was older than me not dramatically so but in the way where life had already shaped his voice to sound gentle even when he said very little.

I remember how he looked at the sea back then not as someone admiring beauty but as someone searching for proof that something could still feel endless it had stayed with me not because it was romantic but because it was real and now as the car moved past the same shoreline I wondered if he still sat at that same table by the glass or if the city had changed him too.

He had sent the invitation just like before short direct and without pressure he wrote that he would be in Mumbai for four nights and if I was free he would like to see me again I didn’t say yes immediately not because I wasn’t sure but because I had to feel if it still meant something to go and when it did I sent him my details and he confirmed everything just like last time politely respectfully and always in advance.

That part never changed not with him not with any of the ones I accept time with everything is always agreed and settled beforehand not because I do not trust but because I know myself well enough to move only in spaces where I am valued and where my boundaries are honored and he understood that from the very beginning.

When I entered the hotel the staff remembered me not by name but by the way I walked through the lobby like I had walked there before with quiet purpose and no desire for attention and it made me feel like some part of me had never left that place as if a version of Audrey still sat there waiting for the other part of me to return.

He was already in the room standing by the window with his sleeves rolled up and a glass of water in his hand he turned before I knocked as though he had sensed the air shift and when he smiled it wasn’t bright or forced it was simply the kind of smile you give someone you’ve waited for without letting yourself hope too loudly.

We didn’t speak much at first I placed my bag in the corner removed my shoes and sat at the edge of the bed not because I felt unsure but because I always like to take in a space before I place myself in it he watched me in that still quiet way he always did not with hunger or judgment but with that old understanding that sometimes just being there is the most honest thing two people can do.

He asked if I was hungry and I wasn’t but I said yes because I knew he wasn’t asking about food he ordered something light the same dishes as before which made me smile because I hadn’t remembered but he had and when it arrived we ate slowly as though chewing time itself afraid that if we rushed it the moment would slip through our fingers before we even held it.

He told me about work and family and how the year had been heavy but manageable he didn’t complain and I didn’t ask for details because with clients like him it’s not about fixing anything it’s about being a pause in their life not a cure just a quiet interruption that reminds them they’re still human and still capable of softness.

That night we didn’t undress we didn’t even touch beyond the brush of our arms as we sat side by side watching a film neither of us paid attention to it was never about the act it was always about the stillness the comfort of knowing someone is near without demanding anything in return and as I rested my head on his shoulder I felt a kind of peace that had nothing to do with the city outside.

Mumbai didn’t sleep that night I heard it breathing through the windows cars horns footsteps distant calls of life happening just beyond the glass and I thought about how many people in this city were lying beside someone who didn’t really see them and how strange it was that in a room paid for by hours I felt more seen than in most places I had called home.

The next morning he asked if I wanted to go out and I nodded not because I needed sightseeing but because I liked the idea of walking beside him again not as an escort and a client but just two people drifting through a city that didn’t care who we were we walked through Colaba and Fort and a part of Bandra and he let me choose where to stop which I rarely get to do when I travel for work.

We found a bookstore tucked between two tall trees and he bought me a journal not because I said I needed one but because he saw me run my hand across the spine of one with gold writing and he told me to write in it only when I felt something I couldn’t say aloud and I promised I would even if I never actually wrote a word.

Later we sat by the sea again not at the same place but close enough and he turned to me and said thank you not for being there but for coming back which to him meant more than I think he knew and I looked at him and just smiled because sometimes the deepest things are the ones we don’t try to explain.

We spent the next two nights the same way talking eating resting watching the rain fall outside the window and occasionally just sitting in silence letting the weight of everything unspoken fill the room without fear and I thought how rare it is in this work to be invited back not for the body but for the presence and how strange that I had become something safe in someone else's story.

When it was time to leave we stood at the door together not awkward not sentimental just present and he reached for my hand and held it gently for a moment long enough to mean something and short enough not to ask for more than what had already been given and I gave him a quiet nod and walked away without turning back.

In the cab I sat with the journal still unopened on my lap and I stared out at the city slipping past the glass like a movie I had watched once and now returned to as someone different and I realized that every city changes you in some small way but the ones you return to change you twice once when you arrive and once when you leave again.

Back at the airport I moved slowly not because I was tired but because something in me wanted to hold on a little longer to the quiet weight of what had been felt and not spoken and when I reached my gate I sat down and opened the journal just to see the first page and there in that space untouched I finally understood why I had come back.

I didn’t write about him or the trip or the moments we shared I just wrote one line I returned to Mumbai as a Dubai escort he trusted and then I closed it and let that be enough because sometimes the memory doesn’t need details it just needs truth.