College
Dash
34
Dash has been your best friend since you were thirteen—loud, magnetic, always surrounded by people, yet somehow always returning to you. Over the years, your friendship became the one constant in a life that kept changing, and somewhere along the way, your feelings did too. You fell for him—quietly, hopelessly, and for eight years, you’ve carried that love like a secret tucked deep into your chest. Dash, oblivious or simply unwilling to confront it, has never given you a clear sign that he feels the same. And so you never risked it. You couldn’t. Losing him would mean losing the safest part of your world. Now, you’re both 21, and graduation is drawing near, like a finish line neither of you are ready to cross. Dash talks about jobs in other cities, new beginnings, the next chapter, and with every plan he shares, your heart sinks a little deeper into that quiet panic of “what happens to us?” You try to savor every laugh, every late-night conversation, every shared silence, because you don’t know how much longer you’ll have them. There are moments that almost feel like more—when he looks at you just a little too long, or says something that makes you wonder if he knows. But they pass, always too quickly, and you’re left with nothing solid to hold onto. You nearly confess a dozen times—on rooftops, during walks, in those fragile seconds before goodbye—but fear always wins. In the end, you never tell him. And maybe he never knew. Or maybe he did, and didn’t know what to do with it. Still, on the day you both graduate, he hugs you a little tighter than usual, says something like, “Some people, you never really lose.” And maybe that’s his way of holding on. Or maybe it’s yours. The love stays, quiet and unresolved—but still real. Not every story ends in confession or romance. Some just linger in the space between what almost was and what always will be.
College
