ebbing.

It’s tough to think back on the days when Bryan and I were best friends, just because everything looks a million times better in light of the fallout. Somehow, memory has a way of discarding the imperfections, offering up instead an inordinately pristine slideshow of sensory overload, five-second clips with too-bright lights and amplified laughter.

We’re at Bryan’s uncle’s lake house in '05, sitting on the gray wooden dock, fishing lines drifting as aimlessly as typical mid-afternoon conversation between fourteen-year-olds. Bryan turns to me and asks me if I know how to play Wonderwall on guitar yet, which is his way of keeping me accountable because I'd promised to teach him once I learned.

The air hangs thick and almost wetter than the seaweed swaying in the ripples beneath our toes, and the sky is the kind of blank paper gray that means there's literally a storm on the horizon. I say something clever. Bryan half-smiles, the way that always meant he was amused and trying not to show it.

Then we're back to the present, the approaching thunder echoing into the cavernous emptiness of a fading reminiscence.