“I remember everything,” she said. Her fingers tightened around the paper cup, and I watched the lid shift under her thumb. I could have rescued us with a joke, could have made the morning easy enough that the real question slipped out of reach. Instead, I stayed quiet while the refrigerator hummed behind me and she gathered the courage I should have given her years earlier.
“Am I really just your friend?” she asked. This time she was sober, looking directly at me, with no wine to blame and no version of the question I could politely misunderstand. I took one breath and said, “No.” Her lips parted, and I realized that honesty could be a single syllable and still feel like stepping off a roof.
“You’re my best friend,” I continued, before fear could edit me. “That part is true, but if you’re asking whether that’s all I feel, it isn’t.” Maya stared at me without moving, her coffee forgotten between her hands. For perhaps the first time since I had met her, I had said something she didn’t have an immediate answer for.
