The scratch of my brush on the canvas is as soft and subtle as the sun that warms my skin and as pleasant as the wind that caresses my cheek and the birds that sing away in the trees. Me and my canvas, Emi and her calming presence, us in her back patio in the early morning light, and all of those things added up together... They're what makes this moment paradise.

I pause, let my brush dip into the cup for dirty paint water, let the handle rest against the rim as I pause, look at my finished picture and then look at Emi, who is is still dutifully hunched over her own piece, which is undoubtedly going to end up better than mine. But she's companionship, not competition, so it's nice not to feel as if I'm less adequate—that Emi will never think me less because of it.

Emi, who has dive bombed into my life and proclaimed herself my best friend a mere three years ago. Emi, who I've always told everything and have never been judged because of it. Emi, who chooses me first, and is with me through anything and everything. Emi, who is a solid piece in my wavering life. Emi, who I am wondering if she'll be the first thing to be constant or if she'll drift off, too, taken by the tide of growing up.

My life has always been made up of inconstants.

A myriad of things slipping in and out and in and out over and over again. Always leaving, never settling, constantly wandering. Things only ever the same in the sense that things are always different.

The only thing that had only ever felt like a true constant was the feeling that I'd always be alone—just not in the sense of physicality. It felt as if I went through every event and emotion and moment of life singularly, like me and everyone else existed on different planes of the same universe. Sometimes people crossed over to mine, but mostly, they didn't.

I'd never particularly understood, as if the whole thing was a mystery to even myself. How could it make sense? To feel so singular when I was surrounded by people, dozens and hundreds to keep me company, to keep a conversation.

Sometimes I think that makes me greedy, because that alone has never felt enough.

What I wanted was an anchor, someone to keep me grounded when I floated off to places I couldn't find my way back from. I wanted someone to stay and who wouldn't take a piece of me when they left. Because that—choosing to let someone in—had always been a gamble. To try and grow with them meant to be cut down to the root when they no longer wished to be connected.

But I'd gotten used to it after all this time, to never wrap myself around someone too tight, to make sure I could always let go before they did, to make sure I kept whatever pieces of me that were left. 

I'd learned at a young age that life was fickle. Nothing ever seemed to stay the same.

Friends changed as schools shifted and people came and went like the summer breeze, slipping past me like they were pulled along by the strings of a universe who seemed to ignore me.

Boys and girls were all the same, and attractions were never solid, never real enough. Love was always a phantom concept, untouchable and elusive. Bonds were always so easily snipped away.

Passions were always like flames, put out as time went on, no matter how brightly they may have once burned. The things I loved as a kid were almost never the things I loved now, and while I often missed them, I could never seem to find it in me to reach back into my chest of old treasures and blow away the dust.

It's a disappointing notion, but the surprise wears away when it happens often enough. I suspected for awhile that it must've been me, something in me that had never been worldly enough to hold people down, as if my soul had never held that kind of gravity in the first place. My presence had never been enough; would never be enough.

Emi's groan and grumble of self accomplishment knocks me out of my reverie, and she looks up to meet my eye, blowing stray strands of her jet black hair from her face. "Wanna go in for some food?" She proposes, already pushing back her chair because she knows my answer before I even bother voicing it.

It's almost sort of weird how she does that. How she can know me and pay attention to me and give a single fucking damn about me.

It's something foreign, but it's not a terrible thing.

"Definitely," I say, following her in as she slides open the screen glass doors, padding to the kitchen because she knows I'll close the screen behind me. I know the system her house follows just as she knows the one mine does, like our homes could be interchangeable if we so wished.

"Do you think we should eat something light? Or have lunch early and flick on some movie while the paint dries?"

I shrug, because I've never been particularly good with making decisions that aren't that important to me, especially when both of the options seem to weigh equally. She knows this but she asks it anyway, because she's the good kind of friend who tries her hardest to give me a option because she knows how it sometimes feel like many of the choices in my life really aren't mine at all.

"Up to you," I say distractedly, opening her pantry for an idea of what we might eat. "Do you want to cook something, or order? I'm hungry enough for a bigger meal."

"Ooh, there's leftover Alfredo pasta my mom made last night, want some?"

I nod at her enthusiastically, knowing her mother's pasta is to die for, as is everything she cooks. "Totally down," I say, and she starts to ruffle through the fridge.

"When we become college roommates, I'll have my mom make us enough food to last a month, and then we'll come back for more, because lord knows we can't do any of it ourselves," she mumbles, loading the pasta onto plates.

I make a noise of agreement, even though I don't know what college I'm going to and there's nothing solid about us being able to room together during our university years because, as with most things, I have no idea what direction I'm heading in.

I am the owner of a map with an indecipherable key, and haven't been able to crack the code just yet.

But it's nice, to imagine a life without my mom's presence constantly looming and Emi's soothing presence as a fixation of my life.

I wonder if that's what my future will be. It's definitely not the worse thing.

"So," Emi says, her tone playful as she quirks an eyebrow at me. She's got one hand on the handle of the microwave and the other propped on her hip. "When do I get to meet the hospitalized boyfriend? Talk about a meetcute."

I laugh, shaking my head as I slide into a stool at the kitchen island. I roll my eyes as I spin, avoiding the eyes that know me too well for my own good. "Not my boyfriend," I say first, because that's probably what she's most curious about anyways. My best friend has always been an incurable romantic, and sometimes her interests expanded from her own love life and into mine.

She hummed dubiously, making me glare before I continued on. "And honestly? I don't know. I've been meaning to ask him when he gets discharged, but I've always forgotten. I think soon, though. His injuries don't seem all that bad, you know? I think they're watching out more for observation at this point."

Emi didn't find that an acceptable answer, her tongue clicking in disapproval before she waved her fork at me menacingly. "You forgetful child," she chastised, shaking her head in mock disappointment. "You and your weird, selective memory."

Emi wasn't wrong about the memory part, or the oddness of what I tended to forget. I was good on most things: birthdays took awhile but stuck, tasks were always accomplished at one point or another, and I could even recall little things someone had mentioned from months ago without meaning to.

But it was always in the moment that I tended to forget the things that troubled me, like my heart had looked out for me in some sort of way. Enjoy this moment, it seemed to say, and I'd always listened without a second thought.

"It's whatever, Emi," I murmured, using the legs of the stool to halt my spinning as the microwave dinged. "I barely know the guy."

Emi gave a long suffering look. "That might be true, but you sure are spending an abundance of time either with him or talking about him."

I froze, frowning at the words. I hadn't really noticed, though I could clearly recall it now that she'd pointed it out. Guilt swept over me like a tidal wave, my heart thumping at the thought of having tossed her away for something as fickle as a boy. "I didn't mean to ignore—"

"I'm not complaining, Lia," she said, rolling her eyes at me fondly, and my anxieties drifted back down. "I was reciting evidence to back up my claim. Just admit that you like the boy and it'll make up for all of it." She'd turned away at that, checking the leftovers to see if they were actually warm. That they weren't warm on the outside and cold on the inside like the fakest assholes around town.

"You know," I drawled, leaning forward onto the marble surface, "you have a tendency to conjure up a whole love life for me out of thin air and a strong willed imagination." Emi knew, better than most, just how much I didn't care for the boys our age. Mostly because of their immaturity and lack of commitment, and partly because I was fairly aware of how much I was to handle, and to dump that onto someone under the guise of a relationship seemed like cruel and unusual punishment no matter how Emi put it.

"I don't imagine things," she grumbled, slightly sour. "I just like to stretch things out a little. Out of optimism."

"Optimism sets you up for failure," I said, taking the fork she extended as she took the seat beside me and slid me a plate.

"No," she countered, giving me her attention instead of the pasta before her. I didn't deign to do the same thing, immediately working on my food in hopes she'd drop the topic.

"Yes," I said anyways, because there was always an inner child inside of me that wished for fights and petty arguments just so I could win.

"Optimism pushes you toward success," she claimed, and while there was the smallest part of me that understood and agreed and even longed for the way she saw it, the greater part of me knew it would be disastrous of me to do so.