I very well knew that he is just a friend, and our relation can never go beyond that, but it did go beyond friendship when I was just not ready to accept the fact that I was actually falling in a romantic love with someone.
I met him in class 11th when our sections were reshuffled I took medical and choose non-medical. We used to have our couple of common classes together. For me in the beginning he was one of those studious boys who do not even bother as to what is the total strength of the class and to him I was Miss popular. Slowly, somehow, we started talking; sometimes it was homework and most of the time my pending work. He would always help me up. Our benches were adjacent, every morning we would wait for each other to come, the most important part of the day, WISHING each other GOOD MORNING.
I never gave a thought that it was something beyond a plain friendship. For me, he was just like any other friend just that he was new to me and there was a lot to explore in each other until one day when he suddenly stopped talking and did not even give me a reason for that too. I kept on asking him as to what went wrong or what did I do but he just was not ready to say anything. Until today, I do not know the reason behind that rudeness. However, it was that very first time when I realized that John; yes, that is his name was someone who was just not like any other friend to me, he was a special; a friend who was special in his own way.
However, until now, there was no feeling of love between us, at least not from my side. The year went ahead and so did our friendship. To the rest of or class, we seemed to be so much in love that we just do not care about anything else in this wide world but to us, it was our growing, sweet and affectionate friendship. Somehow, problems begin to take place.
By the end of our 11th grade, we were on the verge of breaking up our so-called beautiful friendship. John went on being insecure about me, about us, about our friendship. He thought that I was ignoring him and giving Steve more attention. Oh! I guess I did not introduce Steve.
Steve, was one of our common friends unfortunately in the history of my life, one of the worst friends as well. He always pretended as if I have a soft corner for him and that I like him. Somehow, by this time John realized that it is I his FIRST LOVE. However, to me he was still the same. Because of Steve and his assumption about me dating him, John backed out. Slowly he started staying away from me, stopped talking to me. By the time, we reached 12th it was over. YES, IT WAS ALL OVER! OUR FRIENDSHIP WAS OVER!
I still wanted to be with him as he was still a very good friend but to him unfortunately, I was someone else’s good friend. He would neither look at me nor talk with me but somehow always remembered to make that one EYE CONTACT once the entire day to reassure that he still has feelings for me. It was on my birthday when he did not wish me that year.
I felt disappointed and realized how indispensable his presence in my life is. May be I was falling in love with him, may be he was becoming someone more than just a special friend. However, I kept quite as to I did not know whether he felt for me the same way or not. The entire year we were in love with each other, making eye contacts daily but chose not to convey this love to each other. For him, I was dating someone else and he should not come in between and to me the reason of his disappointment was still unknown and I didn’t know as to what he feels for me and whether I should tell him this or not.
Rumors kept on building up about Steve and me, and John kept on getting hurt. I kept on missing his presence and things went on being sadder and saddest until the last day of our school came. Yes the last day of our “FAREWELL”, it was at that time he saw me in sari for the first time and like any other Bollywood movie, this hero even could not control himself.
The entire farewell he was looking at me but not saying anything. By the time it was the time to leave and the class photograph was about to be clicked, he came and stood beside me, I was pretending as if I did not notice. That was the moment “THE PHOTOGHRAPH CLICKED! HE TOUCHED ONE OF MY FINGERS AND I HOLDED HIS HAND” the rest is history. Once that happened, we never left each other’s hand. It seemed to be just the perfect day to sort out every problem, every issue between us and we just did not want to waste any time.
Though it was the end of our school life, our farewell, it marked as the beginning of our romantic love life.