I’m sat cross-legged in the tea house, alternating between iced raspberry mint tea and piping milky chai in a frantic attempt to get the best of both worlds. We pick apart the salami and pickles, along with the intricacies of whatever dilemmas we’re facing at the moment. She catches me up on the latest trials and tribulations and all that makes a life nice and full. I try to time my silent, gluttonous bites from our assortment in an effort to uphold the unspoken rules of sharing.

If I was a good liar, I’d dig up a story to tell. I’d dig up something juicy; I’d dig up something I’d need a jury for.

I’m watching the pita chips get plucked from their arch; she loves me, she loves me not. Red pepper dip scooped up and waved in the air like a torch. To be seen is to be loved; the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach. The mind comes before the body in our world, though, where we thrive on talking, talking, talking, until early morning. Just another minute, baby—it’s not a good night until my lips are dry, my eyes are heavy and bloodshot, and we run out of words to say. Perfection does not exist, so we often settle for good and reluctantly rest.

If I was a good liar, I’d let her follow her first instinct. I’d let her reap more stories at the cost of sorrow; I’d let myself be free of the shackles of being the rational friend.

The prosecutor, the perpetrator, the judge. I know too much about this city and it knows too much about me. What story would I dare hide behind my red curtain walls? What morsels could I possibly conjure up in my mind that wouldn’t find their rightful place on the sequined cushions in the teahouse? What hasn’t already been said to the strangers at the philosophy group, to the owner on a slow afternoon with the doors closed, to my dear friend with the coveted last pickle in her hand?

If I was a good liar, I’d be away longer. I’d be gone further; I’d be a nomad.

We wipe our platter clean and lean back, hands resting on our stomachs, admiring a job well done. I had to leave twenty minutes ago, yet we’re still sipping our just-about-lukewarm chai with all the urgency of the spoon of honey we licked silver. I see doe-eyed versions of ourselves in the shining dust by the barred window, leaving tea rings and scuff marks in their wake. She wore those low-top Doc Martens as her uniform some years ago, the same ones I saw splayed across her dorm room floor some weeks ago. There’s whispers in every corner of this place. We settle up.

To tell the truth, I love this small town disguised as a city. I love the way it cradles memories in a golden warmth;  I love that I can’t seem to hide from home.

She lights a cigarette; I elect to walk her back to her place. It’s a nice evening and we know that when summer gives way to the cold, and we leave each other again, we’ll wish we took the longer route. I’m addicted to honesty in the way that it draws a laugh, a sigh, a tear in the last squares of pavement. Honest to God, the light comes in when the walls come down, but why ever have them up in the first place? A glow emanates from the high school across the way, where we snuck in after hours some few years ago after a night chatting Nietzsche. 

We sat there for hours, and it was the first time in my life I had felt someone else understood what it meant to love—what it meant to live as I did. The way I would burn up in conversation. I’d talk at a pace as quick as my city dweller walking; I’d speak with my hands when my throat would choke up. I’d lean in to hear and shiver—not at the feeling of hot breath against my ear, but at the chance to glimpse into another’s mind. She is in love with knowledge, but I’d name it an infatuation with the unknown. We sat in the stairwell and dissected ourselves again and again, and I walked out knowing I slipped my old self off in a coat of dust illuminated by the fluorescents, encased by the bricks we were never prisoners of.