The Goalie and The Topper
I never planned to fall this hard. Not for her. Not for anyone.
Back in twelfth standard, I was the school bully—Ali the Goalie, loud, crude, the one who made psych students cry and called girls “tota” just to hear them flinch. Shreya was the quiet topper whose mother taught physics two classrooms away. I watched her from the corridor the day she dumped her toxic boyfriend—the rival I hated more than anything. She stood alone after that, the girls who used to sit with her slowly peeling away because she refused to join their gossip. She never complained. Just kept her head high, wrote in secret notebooks, and walked past me like I was background noise. Sometimes, I’d catch her looking back, her gaze too analytical for a teenage girl, like she was cataloging my every outburst.
I told myself the crush was stupid. Dangerous. Her mom could end my school life with one phone call. So I stayed silent. Watched. Respected her from afar in the only way I knew how—by not ruining her.
Six years later, at the reunion in Bangalore, everything changed.
The hall smelled of cheap perfume and spilled whiskey. Everyone was in bodycon dresses and fake smiles. Then I saw her—standing near the dessert table in a simple georgette saree the colour of twilight sea, gold border catching the fairy lights, hair loosely pinned. No heavy makeup. Just her. The same small, real smile she used to give when someone actually said something worth hearing.
My chest tightened like it had in school corridors. I walked over.
“Hey, Shreya.”
She looked up. Eyes met mine. No fear, no old resentment. Just quiet curiosity—and a strange, focused stillness that I should have recognized.
We ended up on the balcony. The sea breeze carried jasmine from her hair. She told me about Inkitt stories written the night before our English boards, about burnout, about parents still hunting “same-caste” boys. I told her about therapy, boAt, the appreciation letter signed by Aman Gupta. She leaned in to see the photo—top of her head brushing my chin—and I almost broke then and there. Wanted to pull her close like a tiny, fierce doll and never let go.
She kissed my cheek before curfew. I melted.
Then the DM: “hi goalie..” from @shreyagk231.
Late-night video call. Her in that black ink-splatter pyjama shirt, no pants, hair open, creamy skin glowing. I froze in my towel. She laughed—“oye pagal.. bhoot dekh liya kya?”—and we talked till 3 a.m.
