It’s been years. I’m so tired. I haven’t done anything significant with my life.

  Lilia became my only hope. Papa still calls but we grown distant or at least, that’s what I felt. But I can’t do it anymore.

  It starts small.

  A book I love that I’ve read twice. I wrap it and bring it to coffee and tell Lilia she’d like it. She accepts it with open delight, no reason to read anything into it.

  Then a small ceramic thing from my apartment I’ve had since I was sixteen. I tell her it reminded me of her. She puts it on her twindowsill immediately.

  Then a photograph I printed of the two of us from a trip we took last spring. She frames it.

  I watch her receive each thing and I tell myself it’s just what friends do.

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  You’re saying goodbye.

  I know.

  I tell her one afternoon that I’m thinking about going away. Somewhere far. Still figuring out the details.

  Lilia looks up from her coffee. “For how long?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Like a trip?”

  “More than a trip probably.”

  She’s quiet for a second. “Are you okay?”

  No, I think. I haven’t been okay for a long time. I’ve just been very good at hiding it.

  “I’m figuring some things out,” I say.

  She looks at me. The same look from the bench. Patient and direct, waiting for something real.

  “I’m here,” she says. “Whatever you’re figuring out.”

  I look at her face. This face with some of the same shapes as mine, the same quality of attention in the eyes that I have spent six months wondering about without letting myself know why.

  “I know,” I say. “Thank you.”

  I love you like a sister. I love you exactly like a sister.

  “I love you like a sister, you know,” I say. “Like genuinely. You’re my best friend.”

  She smiles. Easy, uncomplicated, the smile of someone who has always been safe to love and be loved.

  “I love you too, you weirdo.”

  I laugh. It comes out completely real.

  Hold onto this. Remember this exactly.