Aria – From where do you get such funny memes?

James – Ha-ha, I know how to make you smile, Ria.

Aria – You sure do, Jamie. Love you, “platonically”.

James – Even otherwise, it would be great.

Aria – Shut up!

The little chat lightened Aria’s mood. The message on her phone was of a male friend she made in school. So, her first and only boyfriend, Oren, in her teenage years, who was now her ex, used to go to play football in a team which had students of other schools as well. That team used to represent their town, Toronto, in intercity football matches.

Aria used to go to the stadium where Oren used to go, and wait outside for him to get done with his practise. Out of love, she used to carry a protein bar and water for him. She had always been such a dedicated girlfriend to him, but destiny had other plans. And because they were both dependent on their parents because they were young, no major decision could have been taken by them.

It was then that Oren introduced many of his friends to Aria and also showed off his girlfriend to the people he used to play with since not many of them were in a relationship. He would rather flaunt her and feel proud about having a girlfriend at that age. It is quite a thing for teenagers when they try to act like adults and even with their maturity level.

Among the many friends of Oren that Aria met, one such was James. He was studying in a different high-school then, but because they did not stay too far away from each other’s house, they would usually cross each other’s paths often. Sometimes in the theatre, sometimes in the mall, and many times in the supermarket as well.

Initially, they talked about Aria’s relationship with Oren and about the crazy things he did with his friends. It continued for quite some time and then as Oren moved to another country with his parents, Aria and James also stopped talking to each other. They did not even happen to meet outside in any random place coincidentally. It went on for a little while.

One fine day, Aria had just been promoted at work. She was hosting a party at home for becoming a Social Media Manager when all of a sudden, her phone buzzed. She was not high enough to ignore it because she was kind of getting bored with her friends being sloshed. She was hoping for it to be a fun message as she had been getting many compliments for her promotion.

It was more than a pleasant surprise as she saw the name of someone who she had completely stopped talking to after her break-up because he was Oren’s friend. It was James. She quickly unlocked her phone screen to read his message which mentioned that he would like to meet her some time as it had been very long, and that much time was enough to get over Oren.

From then on, it was a very smooth ride for them as their friendship grew stronger and stronger each day. Aria knew about all his girlfriends, and almost every time he would first let her know about the latest developments in his feelings before asking his crush out. It was a very weird friendship that they shared. They were there for each other but never thought of building anything more than friendship.

With that being said, the story brings us to James at present. He is a consultant at a leading IT firm. His dad runs a family business which provides cars for rental purposes with a driver and also self-drive ones. Fortunately, he has an older brother, Merwin, who helped his dad in business right from the start, and that gave James the leverage to do whatever he was interested in doing.

Aria and James have been friends for more than a decade and never did they ever cross the line between them except for that one single time when both of them were drunk. This was six, seven years ago when James had just broken up with a girl who he claimed to truly love. He had just moved out of his parents’ house and was living with his college-mates in a flat that they rented near the college.

He wanted to experience the adventure of living alone and managing everything on his own. That was when he called Aria to the flat for a little party which they had organized. It was just a house-warming party with a lot of alcohol. Aria reached there and probably was the only girl invited to that party.

Instead of leaving it and spoiling everyone’s mood, she decided to be on the balcony so that the boys could have their time in the living room with their games, dirty jokes, vulgar dancing and making fun of each other. As she stepped out, James accompanied her, and both of them had a blast. They continued to drink and talked about all kinds of things.

During their conversation, something about Oren turned up, and Aria got very emotional. Her eyes got filled with tears, and James gave her a shoulder to cry on. In no time from then, they were both smooching each other. It was the first time after breaking up with Oren she was kissing another guy.

Their lip-to-lip kiss was intense and went on for some time. But as soon as Aria realized what she was doing because she was intoxicated, she immediately backed off, apologized and left his flat. They did not chat or call for many months together, and then they met at the supermarket when James was with another girl.

His ex-girlfriends were trouble-makers who would every time cause some or the other problem, and most of them cheated on him as well. Having experienced so many relationships and so many break-ups, James was now at a point where he was sick and tired of falling into love. He termed it as crap and never in life could see himself getting married.

Given the circumstances, there was no chance for Aria and James to ever fall in love and get married, but the choices that they were making were leading them on the same path. It was only a matter of time to see when they would realize it.