Honeydew

When I was 13 months, I said my first word. It wasn’t momma, or dadda, it wasn’t a semblance of either, it was his name. It was that little boy across the room: stubborn, building block houses with the skill of an architect in the making, little eyebrows furrowed in concentration. But I said his name, or something that sounded just like it, and those dark eyes met mine and he smiled, all teeth, all freedom, all joy. My mom and dad laughed, his mom did too, then they cooed at me softly. When I was four, we fought for the first time. It was over something small; a playground ladder that he deemed too tall. I climbed it anyways, jaw set, little hands unsteady, but he didn’t get to decide what was safe for me. So I climbed and I climbed and then I slipped and he caught me. Six years old and he’d already decided he was my protector. When we were in grade school we made a vow that neither of us expected to last us through adulthood. It was simple, it was stupid, and it made zero sense but it was ours, it was true, and we stuck to it like breaking it meant the difference between breathing and dying. “Rough times getting real thick,” he’d said. I’d laughed, it was comical. It made no sense and all the sense at the exact same time. “Our bond is thicker,” I’d said in return, and he’d grinned. That was us. It was unmistakably us. Bent, a bit uneven, thumb prints all over the place, but it was us. When puberty hit, things shifted. The little crush I’d had on him developed into full blown feelings. He wasn’t just my best friend anymore. He was the guy I compared every other guy too. He was the guy that no one was able to hold a candle to. But for the sake of us, our relationship, the friendship that had been constant and safe, I’d never said a thing, never made a move. I refused to lose what I had with him. But that’s where this all started. We weren’t kids anymore. We were grown, we were in university. We didn’t live with our parents. We had jobs and lives and careers that we were moving towards and we had family in the back of our minds; relationships, intimacy. The dynamic between us shifted in high school. Neither one of us said anything about it, but things were different now, the energy had changed. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I know that something is coming, changing, I just don’t know if that change will solidify our bond more or if it’ll break it entirely.