Outgrowing a friend isn’t a crime. Pretending you still fit is the slow kind of lie.

People change at different speeds, and sometimes the main thing you had in common was the same classroom. Nobody has to have done anything wrong for it to be over. The part that actually hurts is not the growing apart, it is the months spent performing a closeness you can both feel has already gone.

You do not have to end it dramatically or announce anything to anyone. Let it become what it is: somebody you are glad to run into, who is not in your daily life now. If you both still want it, that shows up on its own, and then you will know it is real.