Not my expectation...

I expected that he would be vacant and rude; ignore me, mock me, refuse to talk.
I rather hoped that he'd be civil, but that I'd be having too much of a good time to notice.
It didn't so much as occur to me that he might be friendly and that I might respond and that we (despite being sat opposite one another around a very large round table) would have animate conversation across everybody else; would defend each other in debate; would reminisce about him teaching me to eat with chopsticks or a particular training session from our first year.

But that's what happened.

There was a long time when I hoped that whatever issues he had could be resolved, our friendship ressurected to some point. After a while I concluded that this would never happen and I... got over it. It's taken me the better part of two years to stop being so much as nostalgic but I finally achieved it. So it came as quite a surprise to suddenly find myself back where I was two years ago. Actually two years in fact... it was around this time in 2006 when it all went wrong.

I'm ... perplexed.