When you meet, it's an awkward greeting interspersed with silences and confusions.
Slowly but surely, conversation follows. You bond over obscure topics you were sure only you had passion for, giggling over inside jokes and laughing over your new bond. Days pass. You now seek them out, your new friends, a proud badge of honor. Sit with them at lunch, construct inside jokes of your own making, and walk together. Take selfies together to post online, unapologetically obnoxious and no longer caring.
A simple greeting, a simple hello, turns into deep conversations you have late at night, through text and in person, sharing secrets you never knew you had, thoughts you hid deep below. Slowly but surely, you open up, and it's a feeling so vulnerable and fantastic that you hear your heart flutter, if a heart can even do such a thing. You stare at the clock as the seconds pass like hours, waiting to see them again.
You hug, you laugh, you smile. You're together, one cohesive unit, with funny stories to tell and a lingo only the two of you can understand, and it's great and strange and fantastic.
And then, one day, you have to leave.
In your heart of hearts, you knew it would happen. Life goes on. Milestones pass by and everybody moves onto the next stages of their journey. Even your lovely friends. You promise to text, trying not to cry as you exchange Instagram, Snapchat, and GroupMe handles. You promise to call, knowing that conversation just isn't the same unless it's voice to voice.
Maybe you'll visit one day, and because you're friends, because you have that strong, unbreakable bond, because you knew each other, conversation will flow like it never stopped, and time will cease to matter.
Because if you love something, truly and purely and simply, sometimes, you have to let it go. And if it's destiny, if it ever meant something in the first place, they'll come back.
They will.