The day of the workshop arrived, feeling less like a real day and more like a scene from a movie I was about to watch. The air in my dorm room was thick with a nervous, electric energy. I woke up two hours before my alarm, my heart pounding a frantic, unsteady rhythm against my ribs.
I changed my shirt three times. The first one was too faded. The second one had a tiny, almost invisible stain that suddenly looked like a giant coffee-splatter billboard. I settled on a simple, dark blue shirt—safe, unremarkable, and hopefully invisible. I was aiming for a look that screamed "I am completely normal and not at all having an internal emotional crisis about seeing you for the first time in three years." I'm not sure I succeeded.
Walking to the college entrance to meet her felt surreal. My own campus, a place I walked through every day with the numb familiarity of a prisoner in his own cell, suddenly looked different. The colors seemed brighter. The sounds were sharper. It was the world waking up from a long, gray slumber, all because she was about to step into it.
I stood by the main gate, my hands shoved deep into my pockets to hide the fact that they were trembling. Every auto-rickshaw that pulled up, every girl who stepped out, sent a jolt of panic through my system. I was a mess of contradictions: I couldn't wait to see her, and I was terrified of seeing her. I wanted to run towards her and run away at the same time.
Then I saw her. She got out of a cab, her bag slung over her shoulder, and looked around, a little lost in the unfamiliar surroundings. And for a full ten seconds, my brain simply ceased to function.
Three years. It's a long time. It's enough time for a person to change in a hundred small, imperceptible ways. Her hair was shorter than I'd ever seen it, cut in a way that framed her face and made her look older, more confident. She wasn't the twelfth-grade girl I held in my memory; she was a woman. The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow.
She spotted me and her face broke into a wide, brilliant smile. The kind of smile I had only seen in my memory for years. It was like watching a black-and-white photograph slowly fill with color.
"Hey, stranger," she said as she walked up, her voice exactly the same, a perfect, clear note that cut through all my anxiety.
"Hey," I managed, my own voice sounding rough and unfamiliar.
The first few minutes were a masterclass in awkwardness. We stood there, a few feet apart, a chasm of three years and a thousand unspoken words between us. We talked about the traffic, the weather, the sheer size of my campus—the holy trinity of meaningless small talk.
But then, as we started walking towards the workshop hall, something shifted. She bumped her shoulder against mine, a playful, familiar gesture.
"So," she said, looking around at the massive engineering buildings. "This is where you build your army of killer robots. It's bigger than I imagined."
"They're not killer robots," I said, the familiar retort coming to my lips without a thought. "And this is just the administration block. The real nerdy stuff is over there."
She laughed, and just like that, the awkwardness evaporated. The chasm disappeared. We were just us again. The years, the fight, the confession, the heartbreak—it all faded into the background. It was a miracle. A small, temporary, beautiful miracle.
The day was perfect. It was a glimpse into an alternate reality, a universe where I had never sent that stupid reel, where I had never broken her trust, where we had just seamlessly transitioned from high school best friends to college best friends.
The workshop itself was a blur. I don't think I retained a single piece of information from the guest lecturers. My entire focus was on her. We sat in the back of the auditorium, and it was like no time had passed at all. I'd lean over to whisper a sarcastic comment about the presenter's tie, and she'd stifle a laugh behind her hand. She'd point out someone in the audience who had fallen asleep, and we'd have a silent, giggling fit like a pair of delinquent school kids.
During the lunch break, I showed her my department, my lab, the ridiculous, over-engineered robot arm I was building for my final project.
"So this is the thing that's been causing you to lose sleep for six months?" she asked, poking at one of its metal fingers.
"That's the one," I said proudly. "It can pick up an egg without breaking it."
"Impressive," she said, her eyes twinkling. "Can it make me a cup of coffee?"
"That's phase two."
"Call me when you get to phase two," she said, grinning.
We fell into a rhythm that was so comfortable it was heartbreaking. We moved together, a single, unspoken unit. I'd buy her a bottle of water without asking because I knew she'd be thirsty. She'd steal a chip from my plate without a second thought. We argued about the best way to navigate the campus. We teased each other mercilessly. We talked about everything and nothing.
For one day, we weren't a boy with a broken heart and a girl who couldn't love him back. We were an old couple, bickering and laughing, moving through the world with the easy, unconscious synchronicity of two people who just fit. It was the most beautiful and the most painful day of my life.
As the sun began to set, casting long shadows across the campus, the magic started to fade. The end of the day was approaching, and with it, the end of the mirage. The real world was waiting to rush back in.
We walked back towards the main gate, the silence between us heavier now, filled with the things we couldn't say. The perfect day was over. The play was finished. It was time for the actors to go back to their real lives.
"I had fun today," she said, her voice soft as we stood by the road, the evening traffic starting to build.
"Me too," I said, my own voice thick with an emotion I couldn't name. It was gratitude mixed with a profound, soul-deep sadness.
She booked a cab on her phone. We stood there for a few more minutes, in a silence that was no longer comfortable. The roles we had to play—the rejected lover and the careful friend—were reasserting themselves.
Her cab pulled up, a yellow and black chariot ready to whisk her back to her reality, and me back to mine.
"I'll text you when I get home," she said, opening the car door.
"Okay," I said.
She gave me one last, small smile, then got into the cab. I watched as it pulled away, merging into the stream of traffic, until her car was just another anonymous set of tail lights in the distance.
I stood there for a long time, the sounds of the city buzzing around me. The warmth of the day, the feeling of her presence beside me, was already starting to fade, like the last bit of heat from a dying fire.
It had been a perfect day. A beautiful, cruel, one-day mirage. And as I turned to walk back to my empty dorm room, I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that it had made getting over her a thousand times harder.