“No. If she cared about me, she would have loved me for whomever I was, not just who she wanted me to be. What she maybe thought I was. Relationships are always made up of these little perceptions of relationships, you know. What you think is friendship is something else so to someone else. You can never really know what's in someone else's mind, no matter how much you love them."
I nod, then say, "Yeah," because I realize she can't see me. I think of the distance between us, and how maybe there's that distance between all of us, because she's right, I can't know what's in someone else's head. And just like that, I can feel the distance close—snap like a rubber band. We were never really far apart, maybe. It just looked that way.”