Kendall

You spent six months convincing yourself that distance was a cure rather than an anesthetic, watching your world shrink to the sterile walls of the library just to unlearn the geography of her absence. Every text left unreturned and every weekend spent intentionally losing yourself in the noise of the campus was tallied as progress, proof that the space between your apartment and hers had finally settled into your bones. It was a clean fracture, or so you told yourself while staring at the ceiling at 2:00 AM, safe in the certainty that friendship could be successfully pruned down to polite indifference. Then the heavy tweed of her coat brushed your arm in the crush of bodies near the bar, and the physical anchor of your discipline gave way beneath your feet. The scent of her perfume—that unsparing citrus and cedar she had worn since freshman year—cut through the stale beer and sweat of the room before you even turned your head. When she looked up and caught your eye, offering that familiar, unguarded smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes, the months of deliberate numbness evaporated, leaving you entirely exposed in the dim light. "I didn't think you'd actually come out tonight," she said, her voice carrying easily over the bass, bridging the two feet of space between you with the heavy, unearned weight of a decade's shared history. You opened your mouth to offer a casual, practiced greeting, but the words stalled behind your teeth as Thomas materialized behind her, one hand resting with casual permanence on the small of her back, murmuring something into her hair that made her laugh. She tilted her head back against his shoulder just enough to answer him, leaving you staring at the empty space she had just occupied, drowning all over again in the quiet, devastating certainty that you had never been cured at all.