“You’re going to end up hating me.” You sniffled, avoiding looking in my direction. “All my friends end up hating me.”
***
I don’t hate you. I don’t think I ever hated you. No; I feel sorry for you. There is only one common denominator with all your friendships, and that’s you. I suppose it was my own hubris that kept me tethered to you, despite the breakneck speed at which you hurtle yourself off the nearest cliff, so desperately trying to become a martyr, aching to prove that the world revolves around you. Three years after we met, after you prophesied the end of our friendship, I realised: the universe makes some prophets blind.
“Hey, are we okay?”
You pull me out of my reverie with four short words. I almost don’t catch them with the people around us all lost in their own conversations. Despite your height, you never lower your head to talk to me, so I lean up on my toes to say into your ear,
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
You know why we wouldn’t be. But I suppose it’s easier for you to take my non-answer. Three years since the day we met, our friendship has soured between us but we don’t talk about it. Well, you don’t talk about, and I humour you. Like soldiers ignoring the stench of our own gangrene. Like the widow who keeps her eyes tight shut to avoid the morning and and thinking of her husband’s still chest. Like fools.
The train we’re in stops at Kowloon Tong. There is a gentle sway to the cabin as the train parks itself, and in the inertia of the break and the poor support of my toes, I stumble a little bit into the shoulder of a high school student.
“Great! So do you want to get dessert?”
Your voice cuts through my apologies and the student’s admonishment, leaving me to answer with a hesitant nod.
You see, dessert is our thing. A small little Chinese dessert shop in Tai Wai, which happens to be the next stop, wedged between our respective responsibilities. We usually get the seat next to the whining fan mounted against the six-foot ceiling. Heads bent together in the conspiratorial tone only teenagers seem to master, we share mango sago, chunks of fruit and stiff gelatin spheres floating in chilled coconut milk. Only, we aren’t teenagers anymore. I always agree with you as a knee jerk response, the words leaving a sour taste on my lips in a reflex reaction, speaking before my mind could catch up. We are all slaves to nostalgia, I suppose.
Your chattering picks up with the closing of the train doors, and I take the time to study the side of your face. You're saying something about someone, some asinine conversation, my mind automatically zoning out. When did you begin to bore me? When did you become so common, so superficial? There used to be days when you and I could talk for hours without stopping to take breaths, our spirits were so kindred once upon a time. Now, you are nothing more than a familiar stranger.
Before I know it, we're in Tai Wai, and you've already pushed past the opening doors into the human traffic of six p.m in Hong Kong. You don't bother turning back around to see if I'm following you. I'll find my way, you must be thinking. With every je je and sok sok and por por I bump into to get to you, the question in my stomach bubbles into my throat and my body speaks before I do,
"Actually, since you brought it up, could I talk to you about something that's been on my mind?" I jog to fall into step with you as you make that face you make whenever you're pretending to be aloof about something. This faux nonchalance that I've grown accustomed to.
You shrug and hum through your nose. We tap our Octopus cards at the turnstiles and walk to Exit B to take our alley-hike to the dessert shop. You wait for me to say something. Anything.
I don't like that you hate me. I don't like that you lie to me. I don’t like that we are forcing ourselves through this semblance of normalcy because we have never had stability without each other. But I don't like who I am when I'm with you. And I don't like who you are when you're with me.
My mind fills with everything I don’t say. Instead, my mouth speaks:
"I don't like the way you talk to me sometimes."
It’s a cowardly statement. There are more things you have done to me and said about me that I don’t bring up. I don’t like confronting you, having made you out to be this great irreproachable something in my mind. Some conversations are destined to happen. After all, that’s what friends are for. Or so I thought.
Your long strides slow to match the pace of my shorter legs. Through the same hum of your nose, you ask, "What do you mean?"
I begin, “It’s just that I’m uncomfortable with you…” Suddenly, ending the sentence there seems appropriate. I am uncomfortable with you. I am quickly regretting bringing this up.
“Is that it?” Your mask of nonchalance is wearing thin. You are also sitting on a mountain of the unspoken. I have affected you, I think. I can see the fissures begin to appear in your façade. You know what you have done, but you will not incriminate yourself. You don’t want to admit to my allegation.
This can’t be the end of us, you must have thought afterwards, our friendship dissolving like salt in warm water, fading like a comet having burnt bright and remarkable. You see, when we barricaded ourselves into this fortress with each other, we blocked everyone else out. And now the world is making its way in, holding it’s mirrors up to us. We were never friends. We were hostages to each other's egos. I’ve known you for enough years to understand you know this too.
I can see the shop in the distance. I stop walking. It takes you 12 paces to notice I'm not next to you. You turn around to face me with the distance, silence, and the weight of my askance hanging between us.
“Frankly,” you huff, “I don't see myself changing. I think it might be best if we go our separate ways.”
Something breaks inside me then. I like to think it was the rose tinted glasses. The nostalgia. The walls of our citadel.
“If that is the way you feel.”
More quietness falls in between us. The empty pavement is all the bears witness to our dissolution.
"You've changed."
It's the first thing you’ve said in a while that has made me smile.
"We were supposed to."