"Epic Friendships" is one of the March Writing Challenge entries that was chosen to be a featured story.
You recommend the books you like. The ones you love, you keep to yourself.
Your favorite books are filled with stories about friendship. You like the idea of everlasting, all-conquering bonds of love. You find that kind of love more interesting than the type of love couples share, which people seem to obsess over.
Those books are your treasures. They are a gateway into your own thoughts. You wouldn’t give the manual to your mind to just anybody. You’re saving it for someone especial.
Those epic friendships. You see them more in fiction than in real life, so you decide that they must be fantasies, part of the marvelous worlds that your favorite writers create.
But you are hopeful. You long to find someone to have that epic friendship with. You’re devastated when every new person you meet disappoints you. You become frustrated with your perfectly polite but empty acquaintances.
So you keep to yourself. You’re content to just walk around, making up stories about the people around you. You sit in the darkness, thinking up thoughts that spiral into your dreams. When you first get your car, the freedom suits you. Your wanderings start to go farther and farther. You even drive to the sea once, waves crashing all around you. You like to sit at cafés and write in legal pads with bright yellow paper. People watch; they aren’t used to seeing someone alone, writing. That makes you feel smug, like you really are different, like you are special. You want to share it with someone, but you can’t.
Then you meet me. You feel drawn to me. You realize we have so much in common. For months, there is this pull in your stomach that urges you to talk to me, but because you are frightened, you ignore it. Until you don’t anymore. You step out of your comfort zone for a moment, and I smile at you. You find your comfort zone expanding, the space stretching, until I am a part of it.
We talk, we laugh. It’s so effortless. You have never felt this comfortable before. I try to impress you, but after a while, I don’t feel like I need to anymore. We walk together, making up stories for the people around us. We sit in the darkness, speaking thoughts that spiral into our dreams. You tell me how smug you feel when you sit at cafés and write. I call you sophisticated, and join you sometimes. I accompany you in your wanderings, and I show you new places to wander around in. We even drive to the sea once, waves crashing all around us.
You reminisce about epic friendships, but you find that we are better; we’re real. You share the books you love with me. I love them too.