I still remember the snow.

Not because it was magical, but because for one brief moment everything felt simple.

Your hand was cold. Mine was shaking. The cake fell from the ledge. We laughed.

And for a little while, the future seemed close enough to touch.

I remember ramen on rainy days, records on the floor, long walks through neighborhoods where we pointed at Volvos and Subarus and imagined lives neither of us would ever live.

I remember the painting.

Not because of what it was, but because you wrote on the back of it that you admired me.

For years, I wondered if admiration could become love.

Maybe that was never the right question.

Maybe the right question was whether two people can change each other's lives without ending up together.

I think they can.

Because when I think of you now, I don't think of the kiss. Or the apartment. Or the nights we almost became something.

I think of a younger version of myself standing at the edge of a life she knew she could no longer keep.

You were there when she first woke up.

You were there when she learned that wanting more from life comes with a cost.

And though we never became what I imagined, you remain woven into the story of how I became who I am.

I hope your coffee tastes good in the morning. I hope your work excites you. I hope your sister is well. I hope you laugh often.

And if friendship is measured in years, as you once told me, then perhaps somewhere in the quiet corners of time we will always belong to each other's history.

Not as soulmates.

Not as strangers.