I didn’t know that this was an evening bound to stay in my memory forever. Not when I sat there by myself amidst the crowd. But like another one, nine years earlier, it would stay in my mind.  And both only revealed their true meaning together.

Yes, It started with me sitting alone over a glass of wine, thinking of something my mother had often said, wondering why I had come to this wedding-cum-class reunion. That special celebration, come about because the sweethearts from our high school class, Marek and Ewa had finally tied the knot. Ten years after they started dating, nine years after the end of school. And the whole former class was invited, because it seemed only fitting. Some had come just from this very town, where they still lived, some from farther away.

Like me. Some of us had left the town to study in the capital after our matura (the final exam). Unlike others, I hadn’t come back after university. At the beginning, I had visited my parents every weekend, met the classmates, spent holidays here. But me and the town, we had grown apart. And so had we as friends. The people I had spent years with in school, who seemed most of what our social universe was made of, turned into figures from the past. Not friends forever, but acquaintances you meet on your way for a few miles, and then part.

That is a usual part of life; I already new this at 27. It was a bit melancholic, but normal. What made it a bit bitter was one realization: A large part of our circle of friends had not, in fact, grown apart, but grown closer. Those were the ones who stayed at home or returned home. Only I was not part of it. It was I who was the acquaintance met on the wayside. Sure, there had been some cordial “Nice to see you, Lukas”, catching-up, the susual “so what are you doing now?” – but we all knew the time would not be enough to do much more than that, and would do so from the start in five or ten years, but never more. And I hadn’t even met my former best mate at this wedding. I had been sure it would not be like this with him.

Which made me think of my mother’s words when she warned me against leaving the town for good. “You can never really come back once you tear out your roots”, she had said. “If you do, you will always be just a visitor. And there will be bitterness.” She had spoken from her own experience in moving here, but it had also been a plea of a mother who feared abandonment. But young men do not listen to their mothers, and her words had turned out to be true.

So I was sitting here, it the very dancing hall where a few months before the finals, our big school ball had taken place, which triggered some memories all by itself. I was drinking from them like from wine, and I was drinking actual wine, when I realized my wandering, semi-deliberate gaze had met a very deliberate gaze of a woman sitting on the other side of the hall, looking directly at me. From the expression on her face, I thought I had probably stared a bit too long, so I made a face as if realizing what I’d done, lifted my hands a bit and hoped it came across as “oops, sorry, didn’t want to stare” and started to look away. But she seemed dismayed, and gestured in a familiar “what the …” gesture with uplifted palms.

Now it would have been weird to look away, so, I got up and walked over, and said “Hi! Couldn’t help but notice you looking over. My name is …”

“Lukas”, she interrupted. “It’s been a long time.” A slightly mocking smile crossed her lips, a smile that took a few seconds to really recognize because the person wearing it had changed so much. But it was still the same smile belonging to a person who had made high school bearable for me.

Looking at the blonde woman in front of me, I stammered “Pa …”, and she finished “..vla”, helping me to avoid the old name and elegantly revealing the new one.

“Wow” was all I could say, amazed, but mostly immensly happy to see the person I had missed the most. I had used to know them as Pavel, but that didn’t matter.

“You were always good for surprising me, Pavla”, I grinned.

“It was never hard, with you being so slow, Lukas”, she answered, grinning back.

It was the same grin I had been used to, under the same mischievous glint in the eyes. Some small wrinkles were new, but they told that this face still wore that expression often. Gone was my melancholy, gone the bitterness. I had found my old mate back, and that was what counted.

And immediately, we started joking again, as in the old days. It felt the best thing that could have happened had happened: To immediately continue where we had left off a year after school, when we lost contact due to studying in two different cities. I didn’t yet know there was something even better on the way; something to hit me like a bombshell.

We joked, we talked, we sat next to each other at the wall, looking into the hall, commenting what we saw, like we used to, for which we had gotten the predictable nickname “Statler and Waldorf” in school. We got through the superficial “what do you do now” and “where do you live” out of the way; only it was very surprising. It turned out, Pavla didn’t live over at the other side of the country anymore, nor had she returned home … she actually had moved to the capital two years ago.

After a short time, a few minutes or half an hour (I used to lose track of time with Pavel, and that had not changed with Pavla), a short moment of comfortable silence happened. I enjoyed it for a bit, then decided to get serious and ask what had growingly nagged at me.

“Pavla, you do look amazing. You look really happy.”

“Thanks, Lukas. It means a lot that you say that.”

“I am glad. But … I hope you don’t mind me asking this … how have you been living like this? I never knew about it. And I wonder if I should have. Was I not attentive enough in school? I feel like I maybe failed you as a friend.”

Pavla touched my arm “Oh no, no. Don’t worry. But let’s maybe take the serious topics outside? I need a bit of fresh air anyway.”

We left for the moment, walking outside to the small park next to the building.

Pavla continued, “About your question. It’s been only five years full time. Only a few of our classmates knew about it more than a few months ago. Then I wrote an e-mail to everyone.”

“But not to me?” That stung a bit.

“Yes. You got to understand … “, Pavla said, her face getting very intense and serious.

“Yes?”

“… you got to understand I just wanted to see your stupid face when you realized it.” She let out the laugh she had been holding in.

I couldn’t believe it. It was so Pavla. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” I snorted, and we laughed. God, I had missed this person.

And then she continued, in the way it had always had been with her: Getting to the serious stuff only coming out of a joke. Hesitant. Fighting the urge to pass another joke, and another. That, too, had apparently also never changed. But she got there.

“But seriously, you couldn’t have realized. I didn’t  know it when we were still in school. And I only really began to know it in the last two years we even had contact. I actually had to lose contact with all of you to find the courage.”

“I understand.”, I said. What more was there to say? But then came the bombshell.

“But you were there when my realization started.”, Pavla said.

“I … I was?”

“Yes. We are actually exactly where it was.”

We had reached a small bench. Full of scratched names, a trashcan overflowing with beer cans next to it. Still the place for students to go, apparently.

I looked at the place, and a realization came across me as Pavla said “You probably don’t remember our little talk. We were quite drunk.”

__

It had been after midnight on the evening of the great ball of the final classes of school. Pieces of music still drifted out of the building, and we had drifted through the ball as we used to do – not really participating, but commenting, joking, sometimes talking. Two awkward boys who had felt to be outsiders, allied for protection from the cruelty of fellow pupils, and had grown inseparable friends. One tall and clumsy in speech and movement, one smaller and lanky, too quickwitted for his own good sometimes (Pavel). We had stood for each other, and slowly had found the acceptance of our class as we all grew a bit more mature.

And now we had had enough in beer and punch to get two seventeen-year-olds drunk enough to need some fresh, chilly air. We found the bench and watched the stars (which kept spinning a bit too much), and did what we always did … talk and talk some more. About upcoming exams, about the big final exams, about school being soon over. And about or friendship.

“Do you think we’ll be friends afterwards? I mean, after all this. After school ends. At university.”, Pavel asked.

“Of course”, I answered. “A friendship like ours is forever. We are so close.”

Pavel smiled. “Yes, I think so, too. It’s like in a book. We spend all the time together, but I really like you, man. It’s no wonder our classmates sometimes tease us as being really a couple.”

I chuckled. And then I realized the alcohol must have really screwed over my mind, because I had spoken a thought out loud. What I had said before knowing was: “Oh, yes, I like you, too. And sometimes I wish it could be really like this. I mean, if you were a girl. We’d make a great couple. Even better than Ewa and Marek”. The two had started dating half a year before.

Pavel chuckled. Said nothing for a few seconds, obviously thinking about it. Started to say something. Biting his lips, obviously holding back a joke. And then, in his serious, more silent tone of voice, just said. “Yes, that would be really nice.”

We looked at each other than, looked into our drunken eyes. It was nice. And then, as if on cue, we snorted and laughed.

“We are such idiots”, Pavel said.

“Yeah. And we didn’t even dance.”

“Let’s go in then, shall we?

We still didn’t dance, but the evening was nice.

___

My thoughts found back to the present. “But I do remember.”

Pavla silently asked, “And do you remember that joke you made? About how it would be nice if I were a girl?”

I started to answer. “Yes, but …”

Pavla waved me to stop, biting her lip, and then very rapidly said. “Sorry, I have to get this out in one piece before I get all emotional. It was that moment, Lukas. It was like you had read my mind, that little joke. I had felt so comfortable with you, sitting there under the stars, and I thought once more what I had thought occasionally, but always repressed – that we would make such a nice couple if only we had been different. Only, of course, it wasn’t possible. And then you said the one thing that could make it possible, the one thing that I had never allowed myself to think about. And it really began to break a dam in me. Your joke really set me on my way. I … ” Pavlas voice broke. Wiping a tear away, but smiling, she said “Sorry … it’s a lot.”

I touched her arm. And I told her what I had never forgotten. “Pavla, it was never a joke. I only pretended it was.”

“You mean … you really meant that, too?”

“Yeah”. And now I realized that apparently, it was my turn to have to talk fast before my voice broke. I swallowed. “I always cared for you, no matter if Pavel or Pavla. I felt I could have never survived high school without you. You were by my side, it was so wonderful. I always wanted to tell you everything. And when you weren’t there, I thought what I finally said. It was like ‘if I got granted a wish, anything’, this would have been it. I felt it would be the answer to so much.”

I stopped … realizing something “And maybe I did realize something back then, after all.” I saw the  first of some tears run down Pavlas face, and I felt one running down my own cheek.

“We really were idiots back then, weren’t we?”, Pavla said, and I nodded. We hugged then. We both couldn’t speak, and there was nothing to say anyway. We could have dwelled on talks we didn’t have, on the time we lost. But that hug, it kept us from drowning in those useless regrets. We held each other above the dark water and kept ourselves in the present. And coming out of the hug, we realized there was no reason for regret, only for rejoicing that we finally had broken the silence and spoken what needed to be said.

We looked at each other, smiling. “Let’s go back”, she said. Which we did.

At the entrance of the dancing hall, I suddenly snorted and smiled.

“What?”, Pavla asked, her eyes revealing my answer better be good.

“We are still idiots, aren’t we?”

“Why is that?”

“Like last time – we haven’t even danced.”

Pavla smiled at that. “We can fix that, at least. ” She took a step back, stretched her hand out, and invited me to follow her to the dance floor.

And while taking her hand and following, I realized that my mother had been wrong, after all: Returning is possible. And reconnecting doesn’t need to be bitter. It can be so sweet.

(Originally posted by me on Deviantart, as Ducklingstories)