One Summer day

We grew up together as family friends—two kids who knew each other before we even knew ourselves. Our families took trips together, shared meals, spent countless weekends hanging out. We stayed over at each other’s homes so often that it felt like we were extensions of the same household. Everything between us was easy, familiar, comfortable.

Until that one night.

We stayed up late watching a movie, the kind of lazy weekend tradition we’d repeated a hundred times. At some point, he fell asleep on the couch. Nothing unusual. And yet, when I glanced over at him, something shifted inside me—like a lens suddenly snapping into focus. He looked different… or maybe I was seeing him clearly for the first time. He seemed gentle, warm, somehow beautiful. And in that moment, everything changed.

I wasn’t comfortable around him anymore.

I wasn’t me around him anymore.

I’d long for him, replaying that moment in my mind over and over. But when I did see him, I would get so overwhelmed that I’d push him away, act cold, even rude. I’d fantasize about him when we were apart and avoid him when he was near. It was confusing and strange and painfully transparent. And I knew he felt it too—there was a heaviness between us neither of us could name.

Then he told us he was going to study abroad.

I acted normal, but inside I broke.

The night he left, I stayed up crying until the sky changed from black to grey. Every memory—every shared meal, every stupid joke, every glance—played in my mind like a movie I didn’t want to end. I missed him in ways I couldn’t admit even to myself.

Months passed. Slowly, I taught myself to move on. Or at least I thought I had.

Then he returned home for summer break.

The moment I saw him, everything I had buried came rushing back like a tidal wave. He looked thinner, softer somehow—sad, even. My breath caught. I couldn’t pretend anymore, not when he looked like that.

I sat beside him, trying to sound normal.

“What’s the matter? How are you handling everything… your studies, life there?”

He turned to me with tears gathering in his eyes.

And in a voice that sounded like breaking glass, he said,

“How do you think I am? I can’t see you or be around you. I miss you like crazy.”

It felt like lightning struck me.

What was he saying?

How could he feel what I felt?

I stared at him, frozen, completely unprepared for the truth I’d wanted for so long.

But he didn’t freeze.

He pulled me into a tight embrace—one that felt like home and heartbreak and everything in between—and whispered against my ear,

“You mean a lot to me. I can’t imagine

We talked for hours after that. About everything we’d hidden, everything we’d felt but never said. Every word peeled back another layer of silence and fear.

going 

And finally… I told him the truth.

How long I’d wanted him.

How badly I’d missed him.

How impossible it had been to be around him.

It was beautiful—soft, honest, and overwhelming.

It felt like the happy ending I had only ever dared to dream of.

And somehow, impossibly, it was real.

The Reboot

After fifteen years apart, Maya and Arjun bumped into each other at the most unexpected place — a tech conference in Berlin.

She was presenting on AI ethics; he was demoing a blockchain-powered supply chain solution.

Their eyes met across the buzzing expo hall, and for a moment, the future paused to let the past catch up.

“Is that really you?” Arjun asked, smiling like no time had passed.

Maya laughed. “Still trying to save the world with code, huh?”

They ended up skipping the next two talks just to sit on a hallway bench, catching up over overpriced lattes.

She told him about her startup that failed gloriously and her quiet victory in academia.

He spoke of burnout, recovery, and the joy of building slow, meaningful tech.

The more they talked, the more it felt like picking up a sentence that had been paused mid-thought years ago.

That night, they walked through Berlin’s streets, the city lights reflecting off cobblestones like fragments of old memories.

They laughed over how they once fought over semicolon styles and who wrote cleaner code.

At midnight, a light rain started to fall, but neither of them made a move to go inside.

Instead, Arjun reached out, gently brushing a drop from her cheek.

“Some bugs,” he said, “are worth rediscovering.”

Maya rolled her eyes, but her smile betrayed her heart.

The next day, they skipped the conference altogether and took a train to nowhere in particular.

They talked about old dreams, new ones, and maybe starting something — this time, together.

By the end of the weekend, they had a joint GitHub repo and dinner plans for next Thursday.

It wasn’t just a spark.

It was a reboot.

The one that got away

 He saw her first at a café on a lazy afternoon—short hair, soft features, and a presence that seemed to bend the air around her. Something about her hit him like a warm wave crashing too suddenly. He didn’t know her name, her world, or her story. All he knew was that his heartbeat changed shape the moment she walked in.

She was unlike anyone he had ever met—pure but playful, the kind of woman who could laugh with her whole body and still carry an old-soul quiet in her eyes. Sexy without trying, humble without realising. She looked like someone who lived freely, who didn’t have to announce her magic for anyone to notice it.

Every time he caught sight of her, his face lit up in a way he couldn’t quite control. She awakened something in him—curiosity, longing, and a gentle ache that felt both beautiful and dangerous. He found himself scanning the room for her even when he knew she wasn’t there, as if gravity itself had shifted toward her.

Around her, he felt… exposed. Not because she did anything, but because she saw things. He could feel her gaze reading the parts of him he never spoke about. She made him uncomfortable, but it was the kind of discomfort that felt alive, like standing barefoot on cold earth at dawn. He loved it. He craved it.

He wanted to be near her every day—wanted to hear her voice, see that lopsided smile, watch the way her short hair caught the light. And yet something in reality held him back. Maybe it was timing. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was the quiet intuition that she belonged to a world he could admire from afar but never hold in his hands.

He could never draw himself away from her. And he could never truly be with her.

So he loved her the only way he knew how—silently, from a distance, collecting moments of her presence like tiny, stolen constellations he carried inside his chest.

And though she moved through life unaware of the storm she stirred in him, she remained the one impossible girl he would never forget—the girl with short hair who taught him, without a single word, that some people are meant not to stay, but to awaken something in you you didn’t know was sleeping.