This might get buried, but here goes anyway...

When I was in university, one of the (many, many) people I met during the first year was this girl (let's call her Monique); we became good friends and attended most classes together. She was a good, caring, sweet (but not excessively so) girl and I enjoyed spending time with her. I thought of asking her out for a date, but she (as far as I could tell) wasn't interested, so I never did.

During second year, we... simply stopped talking. I never really understood why; at first, I thought she was upset at me because of something I might have said (because I was a socially awkward idiot, prone to saying dumb things and offending someone without realizing it), so I decided to give her space and "wait it out".

We never resumed our friendship. We later took different specialties, which meant that I saw Monique less and less, much less actually talking to her, in the following years.

I completely lost contact with her. I saw her again last year, for a "20 years since graduation" ceremony; she looked gorgeous, and was married with three kids (meanwhile, I had divorced four months before and was in the middle of a severe depression). I only managed to talk to her for a couple minutes before the belittling devil inside my brain got me to stop (because what would Monique want with you anyway? Stop being a useless nuisance, /u/mfarah!)

I didn't even think of asking her for her phone or e-mail.

Why do I remember her so much, while I've casually set aside most other acquaintances from that period? There are two main reasons: 1) she wasn't just an acquaintance or a casual friend - I considered her one of my closest friends at the time. 2) She was the first female friend I made as an adult, in a social context where I wasn't really caught up with a bunch of other people and forced to socialize with them, and therefore free to make friends without that kind of restrictions (like high school - I went to a small school and was in a fixed size class, so the 39 other classmates in there were the guys and gals I was going to have to interact with, whether I'd like it/them or not).

I suppose I could get her e-mail and get to talk again with her, but I'm afraid this might blow up in my face if I uttered a single wrong word (again, socially awkward introvert geek) or that, worse, she might not be interested (what if she simply stopped talking because she got bored of me?).