Familiar Strangers

For more than a decade, they circled each other in silence. At family gatherings, their eyes would meet in lingering glances that said everything words never dared to. He’d refill her drink; she’d pass him a dish. Always polite, always distant—yet beneath each trivial gesture pulsed a forbidden knowing.

Years slipped by. They both grew into their separate lives. Yet the strange gravity between them never weakened. And then, on a blistering afternoon in a nowhere town, her phone lit up with his name. It had been years since they’d done more than murmur greetings, but suddenly his voice was in her ear, warm and familiar.

She sat by the window watching heat waves dance off empty streets as they talked. He was thousands of miles away, shivering in a city blanketed by snow. Their conversations turned from awkward small talk to hushed confessions under midnight skies. They spoke of everything and nothing, as if they had all the time in the world.

And then, inevitably, the question that had always lurked unspoken arrived. Could this be something more? They both knew the answer before they asked. Yes, it could. But it mustn’t.

Their love was a landmine. The thought of stepping beyond words felt dangerous, monstrous even. There was too much at risk—family, expectations, the thin thread of friendship that had kept them connected all these years. And so they hesitated on the precipice, knowing they could never jump.

After that, things began to unravel. Some days they’d talk for hours, as if nothing else mattered. Other days they disappeared into silence, ghosting each other in a desperate attempt at self-preservation. It became a cycle: collide, retreat, repeat.

In the end, they drifted apart, not with a dramatic farewell, but through quiet avoidance, each conversation more strained than the last. Until one day, they were simply two perfectly familiar strangers—forever haunted by what might have been, but never daring to find out.