Just friends ?

She had not come home yet........

Her mom was glancing through the window now and then anxiously. Her dad was getting the " you have given her a lot of freedom" stares from his wife. He was constantly trying to avoid the stares.

Her dad had never questioned his daughter on her decisions in life. He knew she had inherited the good looks of her mom and was making a lot of eyes turn in college. But he was also confident that she had the level headedness and decision making abilities that he possessed. He had given her a free reign to lead her own life.

But today a bit of anxiety was visible on his face too. It was her birthday. More importantly she was going abroad in a couple of days to pursue her graduate studies.

The sound of a vehicle was heard. Her mom leaped to the window with her dad following. She had arrived. There was a guy with her. They stood facing each other for half a minute. The conversation of course could not be heard.

Then they hugged each other.......

Her mom was speechless. Her dad had never given her daughter's private life a second thought. He knew she had a lot of friends who were guys. But he had never really felt that she might be in a relationship with any of them. He now had hundreds of thoughts in his head and was not in a position to comprehend them.

They hugged each other for a couple of minutes ( or at least it seemed that long to her parents) and then moved apart. She then walked towards the house. They had not given each other a second glance. She could see her parents standing at the window. They had not moved a bit.

She walked in. She knew her parents would never ask her for an explanation. But she said.......

" We met in college. During the first few days it was just a hi-bye thing but soon we began interacting more. Quite a lot of our thoughts and ideas matched and we were beginning to feel comfortable in each others company. And one such thought, thought not explicitly mentioned, was that we would just be close friends. Both of us did not believe in the " I am in love with you " thing. We would just make fun of the various 'couples' in college and always feel relieved that the words commitment and responsibility didnt exist between us.

Then there came a point when I started feeling that I was slowly developing feelings towards him. This roughly translated to the fact that I was having a crush on him. This actually could have been the effect of the movie Hum Tum that we watched together. But I tried hard to conceal these feelings as I knew that I would soon get over them.
As I had predicted they didnt last long. A couple of months back I had totally got over these feelings.

Today as it was my birthday we had gone out for dinner. On the way back I told him about the crush I had had on him. He took me totally by surprise by telling that he too had a crush on me at the time we met in the beginning but had never acted on it.

Both of us looked at each other and immediately knew we still wanted to remain only friends. But we had learnt the thing that a guy and a gal can never be "just close friends"

Her mom was still speechless. Her dad just smiled.

She is my daughter...........