Cork’s been pissing rain for what feels like a century. The kind of drizzle that seeps into your hoodie, sticks to your bones. I’m seventeen, nearly failing maths, and everyone thinks I’m riding my best friend.

Her name's the kind of sunshine in a school jumper. The kind of girl who actually does her homework, whose mam packs her lunch and puts little notes in her bag like: “You got this, sweetheart!” I tell her it’s cringe and she just grins, like it’s a compliment.

We’ve been best friends since junior infants, back when I pissed myself on the first day and she still hung out with me. Haven’t been able to get rid of her since.

Everyone thinks we’re together. Teachers give us those sly looks. Our mums swap knowing smiles like ‘oh young love.’ She laughs it off. I lean into it. Mostly for the craic.

“You’re basically my wife.” I say, lighting a joint behind the bike sheds.

She rolls her eyes. “You’re an idiot.”

But she doesn’t pull away when I throw my arm around her. She never does.

Nights with her feel like that moment... where you’re not quite drunk, not quite sober, just floating in the space between childhood and whatever the hell comes next. We lie on the roof of my estate’s garage sometimes, smoking and talking shite about moving to New York or London or anywhere that isn’t fucking Cork. She always smells like strawberries and notebook paper.

I make rude jokes, she laughs even when she shouldn’t. I tell her I’ll marry her if we’re both still losers at 30. She tells me she’s holding out for someone who doesn’t call tits “norks.” Fair enough.

But the truth is, we’re not together. Never kissed. Never tried. Maybe 'cause if we did, it’d ruin everything. Or maybe we’re just scared shitless of changing what’s always been solid.

I think about it sometimes. Usually around 3AM, when I’m stoned off my face and she’s texting me some quote from a book I’ll never read. I stare at the ceiling and wonder if I’ve already had the best person in my life and been too much of a coward to tell her.

But we’re seventeen. We’re still stupid enough to think nothing ends.

We don’t say I love you. We say: you’re such an idiot and text me when you get home. We don’t talk about the future unless we’re high. And even then, only in jokes.

She's sunshine. I’m the fucking cloud. But we orbit each other like it’s inevitable.

Maybe that’s enough. For now.