There’s a particular set of knowing that doesn’t come from time, it comes from proximity. From years of shared gardens, to borrowed sweets, to bursting crackers on Diwali. From growing together in a way, that your body knows their presence, like it is something casual.

I and Dhruv had always been like that. Adjacent. Inevitable.

We grew up six feet apart, door-to-door, somewhere between pooling rides to school, to sharing restrictions during teenage. We just became the kind of friends people noticed, not in jealousy but as usual. These two, yeah just there. From completing each other’s orders, to arguing on movies that the subordinate has watched yet manages to get on their nerves by saying something new.

There has never been a line crossed, nothing ever shifted into something that it shouldn’t. The thought might have surfaced sometimes, a look that stayed for too long, a laugh that dissolved quickly because he wasn’t laughing– but I’d always known to fold it anyway. You didn’t risk Dhruv. Never.

College split us– which was the right word for it. Didn’t break, just stretched. I left on an academic scholarship, while he joined for a football one. Friend groups changed, socializing methods changed, the city changed, one that I’d only seen in photographs. Travelling from Agra to Mumbai was a long ride, and I sat in the plane with nervous energy, knowing nothing about it. Everything about life changed, but we were supposed to be fine, we were fine.

We made time out for coffee, watched movies together on FaceTime if we couldn’t see each other around campus, but we always made time for each other. Even after the friend groups changed, we didn’t. We swapped voice memos at times, and kept each other tethered to the versions of us that only we knew of.

Then second year, he called me on a Tuesday afternoon, and somewhere between how’s your week and did you eat, he said it.

“There’s this girl–”
I smiled at the ceiling, “Tell me about her!”

He did, and he said all the right things. “Yeah, that’s great Dhruv, I am SO happy for you.”

I meant the most of it. The tightening in my chest was just the adjustment we were going to make, but best friends make room for people. That’s normal. That’s healthy.

“Thank you Meera, you’re the best!”

That was the last thank you I heard. What followed after this was shorter calls, dried-up voice memos, and the silence between us– that was once warm– suddenly felt awkward and hollow.
I initiated the conversation, briefly, carefully.

“I think,” he said slowly as if checking every single word coming out of his mouth. “We should take a step back, out of respect– for the relationship.”

I was quiet for a second, “Yeah,” I sighed, “That makes sense.”

“It’s not forever,”
“I know,”
“It’s just that she’s not very comfortable–”

“Dhruv,” I kept my voice even, “I get it, it's okay.”

It was mature. It was the right thing to do.
I kept telling myself that, for almost a year.

It was three weeks before summer break when he texted, we broke up. Can I call you?

I was on the phone with him in the next thirty seconds; I needed to know why. It was too perfect.

“She was seeing someone else–” his voice lowered with each word. She cheated on me. He didn’t say it. “She has been doing that since forever, basically. I don’t– I don’t know why I am surprised!”

“Hey,” I sat up on my bed, trying not to let my voice break at all. “You’re not stupid for not seeing it, it’s not your fault.” Somebody had to stay strong.

“I feel stupid.”
“I know, but you’re not.” I assured him. He exhaled. “I’ve missed you, Meera.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Something in my chest cracked open, as if a knot broke. We spoke for two hours, and then decided to go to the cafeteria.

Getting outside of my room was like breathing for the first time in the year. We decided to go back home together for the summer break, and it would be good for him to take a vacation.

The first day back home, my door was knocked and there he was with 2 cups of coffee and a messed up hair from sleep. His eyes squinched as if the morning light was personally offending him.

“You don’t have a coffee maker.”
“You have it here,”
“Why did you get one from the store?”
“It’s the thought that counts.”

I laughed. The conversation felt so amazingly easy that I had to look away for a moment to comprehend it. We sat on the couch in the hall and talked until noon. Nothing mattered at that moment, it was just us, the friendship. The friendship which just clicked back from where we left, to where it was, as if no time passed, as if nothing changed. Like the distance made us come back to where it always belonged.

The rest of the summer went similar, same afternoons on either of the couches. Late nights watching movies, and drives to our favorite Delhi Gate and having a cup of chai there. Him stealing my chocolates, and I picking up his vests since I didn’t have a lot of clothes at home.

I told myself again, this was just friendship.
I was just worse at believing it.

We reached back, college starting Monday. Weekend plans– Dhruv’s friend dragging us to the nearest bar, where we all used to chill. I sat there beside Dhruv, on a bar stool, the place feeling safe, familiar. The bar was cute, low lighting, too much noise, and beer that tasted like shit. Typical college student place.

It stopped feeling safe after about an hour in. I was in mid-sentence, saying something when I felt it. Not a sound. Not a word. Just a shift, a change in the air beside me. I turned and looked at Dhruv, his thumb trying to tap on his phone, his jaw tight. I followed his line of gaze and saw her.

She was looking back at him confidently, as if she wasn’t the one who ruined it all.

I didn’t need him to say anything. I could read it in every line of his body– the way his shoulders climbed toward his ears, the restless twitch of his fingers against his phone case, the way he seemed to be taking up less space than he had a moment ago. This was the first time he'd seen her since everything.

I didn’t think about it, I just reached over. I slid my hand into the crook of his arm, the way I always had, and tapped the back of his hand slightly.

He turned his palm over and caught my fingers. Not gently, not like a reflex– he held on, a kind of grip that said something he wasn’t able to say out loud.

His hands intertwined with mine, and it almost felt settled there. It was for comfort, at least that’s what I explained myself that it was.
I was telling myself things a lot of times these days.

For the rest of the night, we stayed connected. His hand in mine, or his arm around my shoulders, or once around my waist. For once, I think I almost imagined his lips pressed against my temple, I think I did just imagine it. It was barely a moment, a small, private thing. But it made me feel like I wasn’t ready for.

I laughed, continued conversations with others, but I was also hyper-aware of the contact between us. The weight of his arms around my shoulders, the way his thumb moved across my knuckles, at one point I forgot what I was saying.

I kinda like it, I thought. This was dangerous, and true.
I’ll just go with the flow, I thought. This was cowardly, and also true.
I’ll let it be for tonight, at least for tonight.

When we finally came out, the cold air hit me stronger than I expected after the warmth of the bar. But obviously, it was for some very different reasons. He walked me back to my dorm, like he always did before he met her. We talked about the classes we have ahead, what all subjects I have, about the night and the jokes– just didn’t touch the topic. By the time my dorm building came into view I had almost convinced myself everything was fine, it was the same.

I had made up my mind until we reached my door.

He stopped at the stairs, his hands stuffed inside his jeans pocket, giving me a look that I could read anytime. He made that face when he was trying to contemplate what he wanted to say, figuring out the right words.

“Meera–” he started, “Thank you, for tonight.”

“I could kinda see you were having some anxiety, so I wanted to–” He cut me off before I could finish.
“You could read me–” he didn’t even say it to me. He said it to himself, as if he was confirming it. Not a question. A realization.

“Yeah,” I shrugged, a small smile forming up on my face. “I kinda like to think I know you better than anyone else.”

“Yeah,” something in his expression changed and he looked up. “I think I know you better than anyone else too.”

I nodded, “You do.” Affirmed.

He was quiet for a moment, just looking at me. The expression, I couldn’t figure out much. “Okay okay,” he reached out and knocked at the doorframe twice, like he always did. I didn’t know what it meant, a punctuation which I didn’t know ended what. He then turned to leave.

“Good night,” I wished.
“Night.” I heard him say.

I pushed the door open, unlocking it. I turned to close the door when a hand stopped it. I looked up, and he was there. He had barely walked 4 stairs down for him to be breathing that hard. His face was doing something I hadn’t seen before– open, and terrified, and resolved, altogether.

“I need to ask you something,” he said. “And I want you to tell me the truth.”

“Okay.” I couldn’t add anything more, my heart twisted.

He looked at me like the question had been living behind his teeth for longer than tonight. Longer than the summer, maybe. Maybe longer than I knew.

“Did you feel it tonight too?”
“Feel– what?”
“Feel like you could finally breathe when your hands were in mine?”

I felt my breath stop. This man here knew the best and the worst in me. He had always been six feet apart, he knew every terrible habit of mine. He had always held my hand, and he did today without a word and now he came back to know.

“Yeah,” I affirmed, “I felt it too.”

He let out a breath. Long. Unsteady. One that he had been holding in for months.

“Thank fuck,” he said and his hand moved up and curved around the side of my face, pulling me. And then– he kissed me. Not carefully. Not tentatively. But the way you kiss someone when you’ve been wanting to for a long time. The way you’ve finally stopped pretending you don’t want them.

I kissed him back. And it felt terrifying and complete, exactly like breathing.