The Luxury of a Morning

Some friendships don’t announce themselves.
They arrive quietly—between long days and shared jokes, small victories and mutual exhaustion—and one day you realise something has shifted. A colleague has become a friend. And neither of you remembers exactly when.

We hadn’t met in eight years.

Back then, we spent a lot of time in the same professional universe—different cities, same rhythm. Somewhere between travel days, team dinners, and trying to make sense of everything we were building, friendship slipped in. Not deliberately. Just naturally.

I remember the last time we met then. A day with no real plan—wandering through shops, hopping from place to place for drinks, laughing about things we probably shouldn’t have, confessing what we loved and what quietly frustrated us. It ended the way good days often do: with one drink too many, and the feeling that something good had happened, even if you didn’t yet know what to call it.

Then life rearranged itself.
I stepped into something new.
She stayed, grew, and claimed something she’d waited a long time for.

We kept in touch in that gentle, intermittent way adulthood teaches you. Across oceans. Across time zones. Long-distance friendships have their own grammar—you don’t speak often, but when you do, nothing feels missing. And you learn that meeting again, in person, is no longer ordinary. It’s a luxury.

So, when her brief visit appeared—barely half a day in my city—we planned our two hours months ahead. An early Thursday. 6:45 in the morning. Because when time offers itself like that, you don’t negotiate – you take it with both hands.

It turned out to be the best way I could have spent it.

We talked the way people do when they already know how to listen to each other—about families, the lives we’ve built, the parts of ourselves that surprised us, the things we’re still chasing, the ones we’ve made peace with. The years folded neatly between sentences. Some friendships don’t need easing back into; they simply continue.

It ended the way such meetings always do—quickly, followed by a long goodbye. At least four lingering hugs. Because you never know when the next one will come.

I used to be the child who begged relatives to stay one more day after week-long visits, to my parents’ quiet dismay. I thought I’d outgrown that part of me—become steadier, more composed.

But that morning softened me.

There was no ache in leaving. No heaviness. Just sweetness—the kind that stays with you while your coffee cools, the kind that makes you replay conversations while driving, that nudges you to tell a friend later, I met someone today, without quite knowing why it feels important to say out loud.

We parted the way old friends often do—with hope. Of seeing each other again sooner than last time. Of finding our way into the same room once more, for reasons that now feel less about work and more about finishing a story we once started together.

And afterward, I wished—softly, without urgency—for more time.

And then I wondered if that wishing was exactly what made it perfect.

Maybe the rarity is the point.
Maybe the effort is part of the gift.
Maybe knowing how fragile these chances are is what makes you hold them so carefully while they’re happening.

Maybe the magic isn’t in how long we met.

Maybe it’s in recognizing how much it took for those two hours to exist at all.

Some mornings aren’t meant to change your life.
They just remind you who matters in it.