“Hello?" A familiar voice said over the phone.

“Yes, it's me. Quite a long time." I replied lightly with complete dispassion.

His voice didn't change much over these years, although the magic has gone.

“So…how are you?" he was saying.

    I heard myself replaying, “Fine, just the same, not change much." Suddenly I got a feeling like we were reciting lines from a play. The 10-year-gap is at its widest. We used to be such close, now we were nothing but two strangers.

    There was a noticeable pause. Then he gave out a brisk laugh. It's not a laugh of joy, it's a laugh you used it to cover up the embarrassment when you tried to find a conversation but failed. Really it's not a right time for picking up old friendship. I was in the office, and the boss was around the corner. So I came to his rescue with this excuse. I heard he was saying “Ok, I will call you later. Well, you really don't change much…. sound just like the little girl I remembered". His voice broke off, and I hung up the phone.

    One thing for sure, his last phrase was a big lie. I certainly was not the same girl he met 10 years ago. 10 years turned out to be too long for anything to last. Everything has changed. I was not the same girl who would lay awake a whole night waiting for his call. 10 years ago, I was so young, so vulnerable, and so blind with love! Absurd now, to think about that, a man, an ordinary, a perfectly ordinary man----should have such a power for me. That the mere look of him should set the world spinning, that his voice should make me want—just a little---to cry. I guess it's the maturity, the sureness in him that appealed to me so. He is 5 years superior to me. And the years had stamped maturity on him that I couldn't have found from the boys around me. At that time I tried so desperately hard to be very matter-of-fact and unemotional with him. Because it was so very obvious that he, although he was fond of me, didn't feel about me the way I felt about him. So I had to be extremely careful to be off-hand and casual about it all. It was difficult time with nobody to consult with, with nothing to carry me through but my own natural pride. But now think of that layer of the past, I am totally dispassionate, as if I am looking into another life, another world.

Nothing lasts forever, really.