I really need to get this out of my system. Last couple of months, have been full of sighs for me. The guilt keeps filling me for something that happened on my birthday. Just as regular birthdays, I invited some of my friends over. We had a blast! We danced, singed and ate good food. One of my friends, stayed for the night because it was dangerous to go back alone at night. I really liked this friend. Whenever we were together, I had this strong urge to kiss him but I could never initiate. One day, when I was at his house, I asked him to kiss me after I replayed the line for 3 hours in my mind. He kissed me on the cheek and I gave him a disappointed look.
Noah: On the lips?( paused for a nanosecond ) My lips are dry now.
He came to kiss me. I pulled away saying "no need ". He started giggling.
When I was leaving his house, he said "I will talk to you about it on the phone." I kind of pretended that I ignored what he said while in reality I was so nervous. But he is a kind of person who doesn't ask much questions. He understands. He did ask me about it but when I said it was nothing, he didn't ask anymore.
He gifted me so many presents on my birthday. One of his gift was handwritten cards. It also had a lot of letters and one of them read "Read now". I didn't read it in front of him. But I kept it out and when he went to the bathroom to change, I read the letter. It was a beautiful letter. It was a long letter.
"Dear ... ,
(A lot of nice stuff about me and our friendship)
...
Now are you gonna kiss me or not?"
When I read that last line, I was surprised. I was in an awe. When he came out of the bathroom, I didn't say anything about the letter at the time and we went for a walk. It was freezing outside and I was just in a tracksuit without much clothes to warm me.
Noah: Are you cold?
Me: Yeah, I didn't wear much.
Noah: (holding my hand) This will help. Better?(Looking at me with those pretty eyes of his)
Me: hmm (smiling in my mind)
We walked to the park in my neighborhood. We completed two circles of the park while holding hands and in my mind I was trying to come up with a way on how to bring up the letter.
Me: So, I read your letter and there was this line that said something about kissing.
Noah: (little panicky) Oh! So you read it. I thought you didn't, as you put it away. Well, I wrote it because I can't say it out loud. Would you please understand that?
I took him to a place where it was a bit dim, away from the bright park lights.
Me: So do you want to kiss me?
Noah: Yeah.
Me: Then kiss me.
Noah: (a little surprised) Really? Are you sure?
Me: Yeah (nodding my head).
Noah: Okay. Close your eyes.
I closed my eyes as I waited for him to kiss me. I literally stood like that there for 5 seconds when suddenly, I felt a pressure on my lips. He finally kissed me! I kissed him back. I wrapped my arms around his neck. I took my body close to his. I wanted to kiss him for so long and now it was happening! That moment we shared was so beautiful and full of love.We kissed for some time and when we opened our eyes, he couldn't see me in my eyes, blushed and hugged me. He acted like a baby about it! Then we went back to my house.
However now, I felt this strange feeling that what I did was wrong. I shouldn't have done it even though I wanted to. When we entered the house, I was trying my best to stay calm and not be awkward. We went to the T.V room and sat in complete silence, as we stared at the screen. We went to my room and watched netflix and then went to sleep. While I was lying on the bed the strange feeling didn't go away. I felt odd. I couldn't sleep well that night. In the morning, he went back to his house. And I never texted him until his message came.
Noah: Is everything okay between us?
Me: Yeah. Why do you think that something isn't?
Noah: No, just because we haven't really talked much.
Me: Well, we don't have to talk everyday. You know.
Noah: Yeah, I know that we don't have to talk everyday. But I just have this feeling that something is not right since I came back from your birthday.
When I saw this text, I felt like he just read my mind. He addresses the elephant in the room. Still I resorted to pretense.
Me: No, everything is fine. You don't have to worry about anything. How is the admission process going for your college?
Noah: Okay, if you say so. It's going good. I got the admission.
Me: Good👍
Recently, I met Noah, after 2 months, at one of our mutual friend's birthday. I arrived at the party as he was about to leave. We met for a brief period of time, clicked a photograph with the birthday girl, his cab came and he left. We haven't really talked much since then. I used to be on phone with him for 5 hours talking about literally nothing, just useless stuff and now I just don't have a reason to call him.
After that night,all of my days are filled with brief moments of feeling guilty of kissing him and how I handled the situation. I can never go back to "being just friends" with him. Now I understand the meaning of the word 'complicated ' and the phrase 'We can never go back to the way we were'. I think, there will always be this feeling of awkwardness in me, whenever I will reminisce that moment, because my naive self didn't know how to process all the things that happened that night. I also don't know if I should talk to him about this, but again what will I say to him? I just want this thing to disappear and the one to blame is, my inability to handle it. I never thought about me and Noah being anything than friends and when I started to get close to Noah, wanting us to be more than friends, this thought became a little hard for me to digest. I feel guilty of ruining our friendship and losing a friend in him (because I can never talk to him as a friend again), whose presence only used to make me happy. We would walk for hours in complete silence and I would still prefer that over anything else. I wish me and Noah had met at some other time and space, where we were not friends and maybe then our story would have had a different ending to it.
Written by - Anushka Kaushik
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