The Awkward Silence

There's a cafe on the corner of the street I live in, which is my favorite haunt. So, as usual, I sat at the corner table away from the window and allowed my eyes to adjust to the dim light above before taking out my pen and paper to start working upon my next story. After a few minutes, I was already drowning in my thoughts when a woman came in and stared at me for a while and then shouted my name: 'Heyy, is it you, Kiara ?' I stared at her for the next few moments trying to recollect who she was and then finally broke the silence by saying: yeah, I am, so sorry but didn't recognize you? I saw the disappointment as well as a sense of acceptance in her eyes as she said: 'I am Siya, your childhood best friend!?' 

How could I forget her, we had endless memories together, I apologized and asked her to sit down while we chatted for a while. There was a casual conversation about our families, children, and work, after which, a sudden awkward silence surrounded us and that was when all the memories came rushing by. The first thing I remembered was the way we used to sing songs together, with no sense of tune or rhythm but it sounded so good because our hearts synced together and with every synchronized beat, we shouted every word out of love. I remembered our playground rivalry and how it never came in between our friendship, those revenge were so innocent, I started to wonder about the rivalries and revenge we now know, as adults, purely driven by ego and selfish motives. My mind raced back to the time when we used to walk on the streets, complaining about our problems, failures, and then laughing it off. 

She had a twitch in her muscles and I could feel it in my arms too, we had a strange symmetry in every posture, every gesture we made. I remembered the day when she lends me her arm to cry without caring about her tear-stained t-shirt or the story she would cook for the people passing by so that they don't know how hurt I was after my first break up, the day I didn't sleep well cause we had a terrible fight and I never said sorry because we gradually started talking and the day she looked gorgeous in that peach saree, but I never said that cause it would sound too cringy and I was a bit jealous too. These unarticulated sentiments suddenly hit upon me, there was only one emotion which I felt, remorse. 

At last, the memory of that day came, the farewell, when we lied about staying in touch, when we didn't know that our own egos and ambitions would distance our bond, when we didn't hug even once, so that both of us always have that feeling of incompleteness without each other, and we meet again, to hug, to feel each other's presence, but then, I remembered how we didn't have a single pause between our conversations, how we didn't let each other speak because we had too much to share, so many words to express, and that's when the realisation hit me, and now, the awkward silence between us seemed so painful, full of regrets and guilts. That awkward silence still rings in my ears, still haunts me, and reminds me of how we never kept our promise and killed our love.