I never thought I’d see Krish again after high school, let alone pretend to date him. Yet here we were, sitting across from our mothers at my family’s dining table, his hand casually resting on mine as if we hadn’t spent eight years apart.
“See, I told you they’d find their way back to each other,” his mother gushed to mine, while I fought to keep my expression neutral. The whole charade had started three weeks ago when we literally bumped into each other at a biomedical conference where I was presenting my research. Krish, now a successful software engineer, was there developing healthcare applications.
One coffee led to another, and somehow we ended up confessing our mutual predicament – the relentless pressure from our families to get married. The fake dating scheme was his idea, though I’m still not sure why I agreed.
“Remember when they used to study together?” my mother reminisced, making me cringe inwardly. What she didn’t know was that half those “study sessions” were spent arguing about whether science fiction movies got their facts right.
“How could I forget?” I caught Krish’s eye, and for a moment, I saw that same mischievous glint I remembered from our teenage years. “Krish was the only one who could keep up with me in chemistry.”
“And Shree was the only one who understood my terrible coding jokes,” he added, squeezing my hand. The gesture felt too natural, too real.
Over the next few weeks, our pretense required regular “dates” and family dinners. We fell into an easy rhythm, perhaps too easy. Between my lab work and his software development, we found ourselves talking for hours about everything and nothing. It was like the eight-year gap had never existed.
One evening, as we walked through the park after another successful performance for our families, Krish suddenly stopped. “Do you remember the last time we were here?”
I did. It was the day before he left for university in another city. We’d made plans to stay in touch, but life had other ideas. “The ice cream stand is still there,” I noted, trying to keep my voice light.
“You never let me finish what I wanted to say that day,” he said quietly.
My heart skipped a beat. “Krish…”
“I had this whole speech prepared about how we could try long-distance, about how I’d liked you since seventh grade when you corrected our science teacher about DNA replication.”
I stared at him, memories flooding back. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because you were so excited about your scholarship to the biomedical program. I didn’t want to hold you back.” He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit he’d never outgrown. “And now here we are, pretending to date to avoid other relationships, when all I can think about is how much I wish this was real.”
The world seemed to stop. All these weeks of pretending, of ignoring the flutter in my stomach when he smiled, of telling myself this was just like old times – it all crystallized into perfect clarity.
“Who says it has to be pretend?” I whispered.
His eyes widened. “Shree, if this is just part of the act…”
I cut him off by standing on tiptoe and pressing my lips to his. For a moment, he stood frozen, then his arms wrapped around me, and everything felt right.
When we finally broke apart, he was grinning. “You know our mothers are going to be insufferable when they find out this is real.”
“They’ll never let us hear the end of it,” I agreed, laughing. “But maybe they were right all along. Some things are worth waiting eight years for.”
Two months later, when we announced our actual engagement, our mothers exchanged knowing looks. They’d probably planned this all along, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Sometimes the best relationships start with a little pretense, especially when the feelings behind them are anything but fake.
As Krish likes to say now, we were just two scientists who needed empirical evidence to prove what our hearts already knew – that some childhood friendships are meant to become something more, even if they take a detour along the way.