My Best Friend

1st place £200

CONTENT ADVISORY: SOME ADULT LANGUAGE

‘Let my native American name henceforth always be coffee-shop-crying-wanker’.

She texted me later that evening, apologising. Somehow, I think she felt that she had hijacked our long planned catch-up, that she had no right to be in pain. I can’t remember what I replied, probably don’t be stupid, you complete wanker. Or something like that.

We laugh when it’s sad, of course we do.

But really, that’s why we meet up. To let out the stuff we must sit on, now that we don’t see each other for weeks and weeks; now that we are making mistakes with kids of our own, now that we have to be sensible. Our feelings have been trained to run in such straight lines these days. Like seedlings in trays. But we both know it’s just for show. Underneath, the roots are still a tangled mess in the soil of our lives. So, we let it out in irregular bursts, like a pump of arterial blood. A gush here, over coffee. One there,