The Rajkot sun was beginning its slow descent. Long amber rays filtered through the bustling street outside "The Roasted Bean." Inside the coffee shop, the air was a thick blanket of ground Arabica and the sweetness of hot milk.
Kiana sat in the corner booth, her eyes illuminated with the reflection of her laptop monitor's blue light. As a computer science major, her life had been defined by code, defined by semi-colons. But today, the code that swam across her monitor appeared like gibberish. The semi-colons threatened to escape her mind as she stared blankly at her keyboard, her eyes squinting through her glasses as she gazed intently at her monitor. The hum of the air conditioning in the coffee shop was all that filled her head.
The bell over the doorway jangled out—a soft and pleasant sound.
Kiana didn't look up. Until a shadow was thrown across the polished wood of the table she was sitting next to. She did glance up, and there were intentions of going back to what she was supposed to be doing. But.
There was a guy standing on the counter who looked like the epitome of "straight off the covers of an editor's spread". He was tall, handsome, with sharp features and an intelligent glint in his eyes that spoke of the "determined cute guy who was somehow 'clever cool' within", the type who was constantly working on figuring something out within their minds. He was wearing a button shirt that was rolled up on the sleeves – the very essence of the successful Dhruva that she imagined in her mind – albeit "grown-up", "mature", and "incredibly sexy", of course.
Is that. Dhruva? she thought, her heart doing a frantic little somersault. The Dhruva from Jetpur?
She observed him for a while, walking confidently, a confidence that could only derive from a life spent as a chemical engineer, reconciling volatile substances in Bhuj. It'd been years since his school days, years since "the incident" that somehow distanced them from each other.
With a deep breathe, Kiana closed the computer. She stood up, feeling a little jelly in her legs. Approaching him, she spoke very quietly.
"You. are you. Dhruva?
He spun around, and his dark eyes met hers. A slow smile crept across his face, a smile that said he had remembered none of it.
"And I think that you are Kiana," he replied, his voice deeper than she had ever recalled.
Kiana quickly noticed how heat was rising to her cheeks in an instant. Her cheeks took on a deep blush of red because of it. He knows me! He recognized me instantly!
The Vanishing Afternoon
They went to a small table near the window. What began as a 'hello' soon became a floodgate of words. They discussed the change from the dusty roads of Jetpur to the technical labs of Rajkot and Bhuj. There were the logic of softwares from Kiana and the magic of molecular bonds from Dhruva.
Outside, the bright colors of a Rajkot afternoon were giving way to a bruised purple twilight. No one had even noticed the golden hour.
The quotation, "I didn't realize how time passed," they both said simultaneously.
They laughed, and their laughter was genuine and shared and rang out through the years of silence that had separated them from each other. When the clock struck 7:00 PM, Dhruva got up from his chair, looking regretful.
'Okay, I have to go, but I'm coming back to this same place tomorrow.' He moved a little closer. 'Will you meet me? Will you be meeting me, Kiana?'
Kiana pressed her lip between her teeth as she carried her heavy load of incomplete Java assignments home. "I. I have a lot of assignments, Dhruva. I'll have to think about it."
Dhruva was not giving up either. He took out his phone instead. "Fair enough! But I want your phone number anyway. Just in case you 'think' your way to convincing yourself to say 'yes.'"
Kiana smiled, her eyes sparkling with playful intent. "No. I'll give it to you if I walk out to meet you tomorrow. Then it will be a bonus, a reward for your patience."