A Story of Brief and Big Friendship

I refuse to be small or embarrassed

The last I saw of him he was heading out the door.

It happened just that way.

I'd been putting my jacket on, and before he could even be there he was already gone. From then on that ending felt pretty apt, I couldn’t really imagine it happening any other way.

It wasn't a surprise when he left—other things surprised me more. And the surprise felt strange I guess because it was both obvious and shocking. The way a prophecy feels shocking when it comes true. It's not about what was always going to happen, it's more about the fact that it really did. Anyway, that's how friendships sometimes feel to me. Like knowing something all along.

What I had known when we’d met was that I had found something pretty good. I remember the relief of it, when they told me he was gonna show me my way around. It was like arriving somewhere I had been trying to get for a very long time. I’d come into my adulthood very lonely. I spent a lot of the time feeling around the many ages I saw out ahead to see if any seemed to hold the weight of friendship in their grasp. That I had survived the barrenness of my early twenties was only possible because I had sensed everyone I would come to know. The lines of fate were already decided, I was already headed their way. So in some ways, it seemed to me, I already had everything I really wanted.