The girl from school

Chapter 1

I recognised her instantly. Sure she had changed a bit, but her defining features were still there. She had grown out her hair a bit more, she had short hair when I knew her, but I still liked it.
"Hey, Bella" I say happily, "do you remember me?". I approach her slowly, smiling in an open, greeting way.
"Oh my god... Mark I haven't seen you in ages!" She ran over to hug me. "How have you been? God it's been forever."
"Aha yeah... I know right, I missed you."
"Haha yeah, it says here your in my physics class, maybe we should sit together sometime?" She said, asking politely. We used to do everything together, we were so close before she left, we did everything together. Even though she was a girl and I was a guy, we were both open about what we talked about, who she liked, who I liked, and almost everything.
"Yeah sure," I replied, realising I had been daydreaming.
"Anyway, I've got a class now so I've gotta run, I'll see you this afternoon, bye" she said all the while slowly walking away to her next class. I forgot how good it was to see an old friend.

I could barely focus the next class, I continued to recall upon when I was friends with her in high school. I remembered just before she left, how I started to have feelings for her just before she left. It hit me real hard realising my best friend at the time would be leaving me. I managed to recover, and slowly over time forgot about her, but all the memories began flooding back in. Good memories, memories of a pivotal person in my life, memories of a friend to reside all my secrets in, memories of a true friend, and now a days, sometimes a true friend is all you need to get you through the day.

It eventually came to the physics class, and we found each other and settled down. It was the first day of university, and while I was very nervous and worried, being next to an old friend seemed to calm me down a lot. Our new professor started to explain to us who he was, what would happen this year, and a bunch of other stuff we should've listened to, but it wasn't more important than seeing a best friend. We used an old trick we always used to do in classes, her mother was deaf, and my grandmother was deaf, so we communicated by sign language and I asked her many things.
"How have you been?" I signed
"Great, I graduated the high school I transferred to after I left ours." that's another thing we always used to do, refer to the school we went to as our school, because it was the only place we tended to see each other.
"What happened at school since we stopped talking?" She signed to me, and put a questioning look on her face. I explained to her all the news from our school, giving details for certain stories when she asked for them.
"Haha... sounds like you had a great time there without me." I looked up and noted a hint of sadness in her eye, even though she tried to hide it. I knew her so well, even though it'd been so long, and in some ways she hadn't even changed at all.
"No matter how much fun I had there, you would've made it infinitely better, we could've done anything toge..."
"Hey! You two love birds, stop I'm trying to take a goddamn class over here." interrupted the professor. most of the class laughed, we just blushed.

We hung out after school, and I found out the apartment I was staying in was in the same block as her house, because I had moved abroad to get to a better university that specialised in what I wanted to learn. Since it wasn't far from the university, we walked home together and talked about how our lives had gone since we separated.
"So how have you been, boyfriend wise?" I asked, inquiring.
"Apart from the one I told you about, nothing much really," she answered "and you? You gotten with any cute girls?" She asked, and by the look on her face I could tell she was interested in this. We always enjoyed talking about these things, even if it was relationships that did not involve us, or who would look good together.
"No-one actually, living the single life" I said as I began to swing my arms more and strut with each step. She laughed at this, I always enjoyed making her laugh, she had the cutest laugh. "You know, one of the biggest things I missed about you was your laugh, just making you happy would make me happy." I said, smiling cheekily.
"Aww Mark, I missed how you used to make me laugh all the time." She said, blushing. I blushed as well, and we walked silently for a few seconds, before bursting out into laughter.

Along the way, she showed me a nice little café she found, and stopped off for a drink, I ordered myself a macchiato and got her an ice coffee with extra cream, even after all these years, she still liked the same coffee, the same way, and to be honest, so did I. We talked some more over our drinks, we had so much to talk
"That'll be $6.30 please." said the cashier, in a nice tone.
"Hey, this place does good coffee and it doesn't cost you a fortune, might have to come here more often." I said cheerfully, and after much negotiation, I shouted for Bella's drink.

We walked home, and talked more about stuff, and when we eventually had to part ways, we said good bye with a hug. we were always good at being able to converse without the needs for words, and while we did say goodbye, out hug did most of the talking.

When I got home I started to realise, how much I'd truly missed her, and this feeling of seeing her again, it felt like I wanted more than a friendship.