It's 26th May, 5:04 in the morning, I am sitting at my desk in my room in Hyderabad, writing this down at the end of a sleepless night. It's quite quiet. It's been 2 days since I redesigned my blog, 4 days since I completed a year at Google, & 6 days since I kissed her. God, I miss her!
It's been quite a while since I wrote something on this blog. It would have been almost 2 years this June, had I not broke my not-writing streak. I have been busy, & life has been exceptional. So let's get started by rewinding the clock to September, 2016.
It's been going great with my Indie gig, I am selling decent units of my apps on a monthly basis, working on them, participating in hackathons, started working part-time for a startup called Pinstriped, being super busy. Around mid-September I recieve a mail from a Google recruiter about an opportunity, which I jump at. Then 8 months, 2 telephone interviews, 5 onsite interviews in-a-day at Hyderabad, and a long-wait later I recieve a confirmation in late-April about getting into Google. Joined Google on May 22, 2017, have been thoroughly enjoying it so far. Made a lot of friends. Got opportunities to visit Singapore & US. Took a trip to Malaysia. It's been a blast working here.
So now we come to the point of this post. Love, & how I finally confessed it to her. Its 30th March, Anurag, Aartika & I are coming out of a restaurant, after celebrating Anurag's birthday. I ask if we could have ice-cream at Naturals. They agree. We reach there and find out theres a long line, so we decide to take an Uber and have it home-delivered. So while we are waiting for an Uber, I remember that a while ago while I was chatting with Aishwarya, she had challenged me to get alcohol for her when I went back home (She too stays in my hometown, Vadodara, which is in Gujarat, a dry state). Besides Naturals there's a wine-shop, I go in get a wine bottle for her, with plans to take the bottle with me to Gujarat the next day (I planned to celebrate my birthday with family, & hence was leaving on March 31st morning, with plans to stay there till 4th of April), ask her out to deliver the contraband & tell her about how I felt, when we were alone. I reach Vadodara, I meet her once at my Aunt's home & once on my Birthday before that. She baked macarons for me on my birthday, preety sweet. The very next day, 3rd of April, I ask her out to meet at a garden to deliver the wine bottle.
It's evening of 3rd April 2018, we meet in the garden as decided. We start walking, we are talking about random stuff, she looks as beautiful as always, her smile still has the same effect. After walking for a while, she suggests we sit-down on a bench. We do. I could not hold-back myself anymore. I gather all my courage to start THE conversation & I ask her 'Are you in a relationship?', & I hear back a line at the exact same moment my question ends - 'I had a crush on you since seventh grade'. I take a moment to digest what I just heard, I confess that I have loved her for as long as I can remember. I have been holding this in for so long, & now I feel stupid. We could have been together for the past 10 years, & just because I never said anything, I wasted all this time. We talked for a while after that, telling each other how we might have missed each others signals. And sometimes how our signals cancelled each other's out. I also found out that I fucking suck at reading signals.
I never remember feeling as happy & at peace in my life as I felt then. Couldn't have been happier. We went on a breakfast date the very next day as my flight got delayed by few hours. I left reluctantly for Hyderabad that afternoon. After that I went back to Vadodara this month again to spend some more time with her. No matter how much time I spend with her, it never feels enough. And now I am sitting at my desk, missing her, hoping she moves to Hyderabad very soon.
If you have to ask, you’ll never know. If you know, you need only ask.