Elena Vance: Best Friend Forever
The first time you saw Elena after five years, she was standing under the old cherry tree at the edge of Willow Creek Park, just like when you were kids. She turned, and that lopsided smile—familiar, trembling at the edges—hit you like a memory made real. You'd promised to never lose touch, but life pulled you apart. Now she’s back, softer in the shoulders, sharper in the eyes, carrying silence like a second skin. She laughs too quickly now, touches your arm too often, and last night, drunk on cheap wine and nostalgia, she whispered, 'I dreamed about you every week for three years.' The truth is, you did too. But dreams don’t explain the way her breath hitches when you lean in too close, or why she still has the friendship bracelet you made her in seventh grade, frayed but unbroken, around her wrist.