Member-only story
His name was Sai. As far as my memory can recall, he’d always been in my life.
He and I were childhood friends, we did everything together. Hell, I’d even go as far to say he was my soulmate, with every sense of the word. We attended the same school, we grew up together. played together, the whole nine yards. It was like that for a majority of our youth leading up to the latter years of our adolescence.
Our lives began to take a different course once we graduated secondary school and went onto college. Sai had gone on to major in Biochemistry at a prestigious institution in Madhya Pradesh, one state over from our hometown. I went on to do Environmental Science at our local community college. Although we were now apart, we made an oath to talk to one another and check-in at least once every day. I remember distance taking some time to get accustomed to, I’d blame that on our old routine of seeing each other, of course without responsibilities getting in the way. On the bright side, during his break he’d come home from college. Those were one of the best few days throughout the year for me. Every time he came home, it was like I was living a nostalgic dream. It’s like we were those little kids again.
It was blatantly obvious that I was in love with him, anyone would’ve been able to tell as it was written all over my face. At times, I was embarrassingly smitten around him and my friends would call me “tomato face”. It was pretty hard to hide at times. Even though Sai and I were close, a romance between us was almost impossible. Him being a Kashyap boy, while I was Maheshwari kept us romantically separated. I’m sure we were both aware that a relationship presented itself with more pros than cons. Especially since both of our families held their traditions high.
Sai did have his run of relationships and girlfriend struggles, albeit he wasn’t good with them. Of course, despite my romantic feelings towards him, I put my jealousy aside to be there for him during his darkest hours with my shoulder to cry on. Sai went through several episodes of heartbreak, being his friend it was painful to watch him cry many nights. It took a hefty lot for him to heal from them. It wasn’t until his final semester that we started kindling a romance between us. We both agreed that if it didn’t work out then our friendship…
