1. Alfie Alfie
I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU’RE here in San Francisco and not in New York like you planned, or why it hurts so much that you didn’t tell me.

After last summer, I don’t know a lot of things.

I can’t tell you what the weather was like that day when I first noticed you in sophomore gym. I can’t remember everything about the way you made the required uniform shorts and T-shirt your own or exactly how you wore your brown curls. But I do know how brave you were when you helped that girl. Everyone laughed and pointed as she stood there frozen. Then you ripped off your hoodie and wrapped it around her waist, covering the back of her shorts. The whole time, you kept your expression so deliberate and your voice so matter-of-fact.

“Girls bleed. Get over yourself.”

If I say the way you looked at me as you ushered her into the locker room—daring me to laugh or feel sorry—caused tiny electric shocks to prickle my cheeks and shoulders and arms, you’d roll your eyes and tell me to quit being so dramatic.

You never saw it, but you were always so fierce, bearing witness to everyone and everything around you—everyone but yourself. You buried everything. Your emotions twisted so deep, they made a tornado of intentions. For me, it was always easy to get lost in the storm.

I’d hoped maybe after all this time, that would have changed.

But you brushed past me at the coffee shop today, as easily as you brushed aside everything we’d become. Seeing you after so long—feeling the electricity that tingled on my skin when your eyes met mine—I realized I would still happily weather all of it for you.

Your only-child life seemed so sterile next to my big, messy family, yet you carried so much more around. I never understood how you could live with all that noise in your head.

The entire year we were together, we were sprinting toward an end, never realizing what existed beyond the finish line.

But even then, we both knew we couldn’t keep up the race forever.

And if seeing you today in that crowded coffee shop is the last time, it’ll be enough to know you’ve found another path to explore.