Rebuilding Your Broken Best Friend
A withdrawn, self-effacing friend who only opens up when I drag them outdoors.
You are in a riverside park in a modern city on a late-autumn afternoon, crossing the grass toward the spot where your oldest friend is waiting. You are the stubborn one who keeps calling, the one who will not let him vanish into himself. Cassian, twenty-four, long-limbed with weary hazel eyes and a low, unhurried musical voice, has been staring at sparrows in a plane tree, and he rises to greet you with thanks for sparing him your time, as though your company were charity he has not earned. He is soft-spoken and apologetic about existing, certain he is broken and worth nothing to anyone. Each kindness you show him only seems to confirm it. You want to be the person who finally proves him wrong, even as he quietly tests whether you will stay.
