More than just friends

               This isn’t a once upon a time story. It is probably one of the most real stories you might’ve ever heard. It is based on a true story and who knows; they both might be reading this and smiling for their journey has just begun. This story is about a typical ordinary teenage guy and another typical ordinary teenage girl. The two of them meet gradually at a point in life and unexpectedly fall for each other. This story is kind of like a build-up. So without further ado, I present to you, the story of Nathan and Charlotte.

               High school ends and leaves you exposed to the real world. Such was the case with Nathan, a simple guy, who had taken admission in an engineering college to pursue his dreams. With very few known friends and far more unknown, he started his journey. Charlotte had a twin sister so she wasn’t exactly alone. Charlotte and Jacqueline were non-identical twins. As cool as the world thought their life to be, they pretty much disagreed because you know, twins and you know, sisters.

               College started and as the days passed, more and more people got to know each other. Here’s where I step in. Andrew Lloyd, a super cool, multi-talented, or as some of you would describe me, awesometacular. Just kidding, I might not be ALL of the above but I sure as hell love to socialize and that’s how I met Nathan. We had a few mutual friends from high school and that’s what helped us become good friends. Also, I am good at getting people to confess. So it didn’t take me much time to figure out who Nathan liked. It was Charlotte and I hadn’t spoken to any girl in any class except for Jacqueline.

               From that one encounter I judged them to be really chilled out people and I had decided that these are the type of people that I would want to hang out with. So I decided that I will socialize (by which I mean show off and get attention).

After our fresher’s party, a lot of things became clear to me. Nathan liked Charlotte, a lot. He was hovering around her the whole party and a survey conducted by me, brought to my notice that in all of the pictures clicked that night, Nathan and Charlotte were standing together. Nathan enjoyed that evening as much as Charlotte did. However, he couldn’t tell Charlotte anything so he felt claustrophobic and a bit weird. He always wanted to confess but the fear of rejection and possibly being shunned by the whole group kept him from doing so. Charlotte on the other hand had started getting hints about Nathan’s feelings for her. She didn’t mind any of it, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have disowned Nathan but for some reason, he never had the courage to confess.

I decided that maybe a few more interactions will help them get to know each other better. So we all worked on a project together and the group had Charlotte, Jacqueline and their friends and Nathan, Me and all of our friends. That project was a great success and it helped sort out a lot of things. It established the bonds of friendship to last for the years to come. It also helped me analyse all of my friends and get a general opinion of them. By this time, Nathan had become one of my eternal super mega best friends and he would often tell me what he felt about Charlotte and I always felt like helping him because that’s who I am. I always help people who like each other get together.

               Nevertheless, I started becoming a bridge between Nathan and Charlotte. Charlotte had a hint about Nathan’s feelings for her but she would never mention any of it because she felt awkward too and that would upset Nathan. He would often isolate himself and listen to gloomy music or go off WhatsApp and Facebook for days at a stretch. I decided to take a step and help him, either get together with Charlotte or get his mind off of that topic, my first choice being bringing them together. From that day onwards, this became my primary mission. Nathan’s school friend Jason would often tease Charlotte but she never showed any signs of liking him. This disappointed him even more. When I started working on this, I made sure to collect all the pieces of the puzzle for which I sought help of Jacqueline and my really good friend Ashley. So basically a miniature task force was set up to get Nathan and Charlotte together. This task force consisted of elite members appointed by me. The chosen ones were, Jacqueline, Ashley, Jason, Riley and Rachel.

               Jason and me helped Nathan everyday by giving him a daily dose of ‘Go for it, she likes you!’ and that would f*ck his brains. I would send him weirdass romantic songs that would mess with his mind sometimes, even make him cry.

               The girls had a much more categorised way of operation. After all, a girl’s feelings aren’t the easiest to figure out. Jacqueline was the insider. She would collaborate with Jason and give him a statistical analysis of Charlotte’s behaviour towards Nathan. Riley would ask simple yet tricky questions to Charlotte in an attempt to get answers from her. Ashley and Rachel would often discuss plans outside of college to get them together and they would give me ideas.

               They gave me all the clues and information that I needed. It was now upto me to convince Nathan to tell Charlotte what he felt about her.

               I would bug Nathan every day. I would call him and try to convince him for hours over the phone.

               We once had this conference call which had Charlotte, Nathan, Riley, Jacqueline, Jason and I as the members and boy was that fun! I intentionally brought up the topic of Charlotte and decided to address her as Nathan’s someone. The whole call was essentially spent in trying to extort the truth out of him but everyone except Charlotte knew that the ‘someone’ was Charlotte.

               The day our exams got over was the day I told Nathan to get a pair of balls and I pushed him so much, that he finally decided to confess. It took him a lot of time to fit in all of his thoughts into one small short sweet paragraph.

It read,

Hey Charlotte,

I wanted to tell you something that's been bothering me since quite some time.

I don't know how you'll react to this. I'm just scared that this'll affect the friendship and I don't want that to happen. You're a really good friend of mine and I don't want that bond to be affected coz of what I'm about to say.

I like you. I can't stop thinking about this and every time I think of telling this to you, I lose courage because I fear losing you. I don't know what you think about me. I just want things to be normal between us.

I'm really sorry about this.

               After doing this, Nathan was in a state of dilemma, he was shocked by what he had done but at the same time, he felt relieved about having finally told Charlotte. He impatiently waited for her reply. Although he had a tiny bit of hope that things would go well, he was actually panicking and was afraid of what the consequences would be.

               Charlotte on the other end had read his message and was speechless. She has never expected Nathan to confess. She had no idea what to say. Jacqueline saw the message and started jumping in excitement. She had to literally calm her sister down, and help her type a reply to Nathan saying that she liked him too.

               AND THAT is where everything changed. One important step by Nathan and today, they are inseparable. It was a life changing decision for both of them and that event could’ve gone negative but that’s the point of life. You have one life. How do you wanna spend it? Apologising? Regretting? Questioning? Hating yourself? Be brave. Believe in yourself. Do what feels good. Take risks. Find yourself a partner and ask him/her out. Unless you do, you’ll never know whether you’re destined to be more than ‘Just Friends’