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.