The neon buzzed and flickered against the wet asphalt, and Martin watched it pulse with the steady determination of a fading heartbeat. The sign was old now. Everything was old here. He stood in the rain and listened to the sound of water hitting his shoulders and thought about how time moves in only one direction.

Inside the Main Street Diner, chrome surfaces reflected fractured light that danced and spiraled across the walls like lost memories seeking their owners, while the linoleum floor bore the patient scars of ten thousand footsteps, each one carrying its own story of arrival or departure or both. The bell rang when he entered. It was a clean sound. A true sound.

Tommy sat at the counter. His shoulders were broad and heavy with years of manual labor, and his hands were scarred from wrenches and engines and the countless small betrayals of mechanical things. He did not turn around.

"Figured you'd show up." Tommy spoke to his coffee cup. The coffee was black and still steaming. "Read about your mother in the paper."

Martin sat. The stool creaked. It was the same sound it had made twenty years ago, when they were young and the future was a bright coin they thought they could spend forever.

"Hello, Tommy."

The waitress came. She wore a nametag that said Dorothy, but she was not the Dorothy they had known. That Dorothy was dead now. Everything dies eventually. Martin ordered coffee because it was the only thing to do.

"Still drinking it black?" Tommy asked, and his voice carried the weight of decades spent watching others leave while he remained, anchored to this town like a ship that had forgotten how to sail. "Some things don't change."

"Some things do."

Tommy's laugh cut through the diner's measured silence like a blade through old rope. "Yeah. Like you becoming the big Boston lawyer while I stayed here fixing engines that keep getting older while the parts get harder to find."

The coffee came. It was hot and bitter and true. Martin wrapped his hands around the mug and felt the heat seep into his fingers. The diner's air conditioning hummed with mechanical persistence. It had always been too cold here.

"You chose to stay," Martin said.

"Did I?" Tommy turned then, and his face was a map of years spent wondering about roads not taken. "Or did you choose to leave?"

Outside, the neon sign kept its vigil against the darkness. Pink light, then darkness. Pink light, then darkness. A rhythm as steady as regret.

"Remember that summer we were going to drive across the country?" Tommy's voice was soft now, dangerous with memory. "You had that AAA atlas. All those red marks showing where we'd stop. Like droplets of blood on a paper dream."

"We were eighteen."

"And then Harvard called, and suddenly the whole world got bigger for you and smaller for me at the same time." Tommy's fingers traced patterns in the condensation on his coffee mug. They were a mechanic's fingers, thick and strong and honest. "Funny how that works."

The silence between them grew like shadows at sunset, long and deep and full of things that could not be said. The coffee grew cold. The neon kept its rhythm. Pink light. Darkness. Pink light. Darkness.

"I never meant to leave you behind," Martin said. The words fell between them like autumn leaves, beautiful and dead.

"Doesn't matter what you meant." Tommy's voice was flat and hard as the surface of the counter. "You left. I stayed. The rest is just details."

Martin remembered summer afternoons in Tommy's garage, the air thick with motor oil and possibility, their hands black with grease as they rebuilt engines and futures with equal determination. Now the air smelled only of coffee and time.

"I miss you sometimes," Martin said.

"Miss what? The kid I was or the man I became?"

"Both. Neither. I don't know."

Tommy nodded slowly, understanding everything and nothing. "That's the thing about ghosts. They're always what we need them to be, not what they are."

The bell rang again. New customers entered, their voices carrying the light certainty of people who had never lost anything that mattered. Martin reached for his wallet.

"Don't," Tommy said. His voice was gravel and rust. "This one's on the house. For old times."

Martin stood. The vinyl seat exhaled beneath him like a final breath. "Take care, Tommy."

"You too, Marty. Try not to wait for the next funeral."

Outside, the rain had stopped, but the sidewalk held its wetness like a memory. Martin walked to his rental car, each step a small betrayal. Through the window, Tommy sat motionless at the counter, frozen in time like a photograph of permanence, his hands still cupped around a coffee mug that had grown cold with waiting.

Pink light. Darkness. Pink light. Darkness.

The neon kept its rhythm, and the night held its secrets, and some things changed while others remained as constant as gravity, as relentless as time, as eternal as regret.

As brilliant a wit and writer as was Wilde,

Why did he see friendship

As “far more tragic” than love?

Was he just being facetious

Or making a glass-half-empty fuss,

Simply because friendships endure

Longer than love? And there are more

Friendships than loveships?

But Mr. Wilde seems concerned

That all relationships will ultimately

End in tragedy. So why bother rating

What is worse: friendship or love?

I much prefer the words of an optimist

Like screenwriter Frank Capra,

Whose angel in “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Said, “Remember, no man is a

Failure who has friends.”

Or the hopeful Tennyson who said,

“Better to have loved and lost

than never to have loved at all.”

It’s all about trying to forge

Relationships with a spirit of hope.

All is fair in love and war.

To have that friendship,

grow into more—

kindles what is easiest.

Setting fire to any chance—

of it normal,

when moving forward.

In most matters it’s evident,

to loose a friend—

you can gain them back.

On your way,

to be on the mend.

Until you face an act of love.

Romantic feelings will take that bond.

A bond for hostage—

unwavering ransoms that are never met.

Leaving time then leaving love,

to make our beds.

What’s far more tragic,

is a friendship over love.

There is one thing that is far more worse.

It’s to fall for a friend.

Then to thiwwi

if it all goes wrong—

you’ll have your friendship.

Once that love is gone.

Ever wonder why there's more chemistry between friends than between lovers? Or why you started to realize that your best friend is actually your type versus the person you started to date a week ago? You'd never tell them though because you're afraid it would jeopardize that friendship, but secretly your best friend might feel the same way. Only until one or the other confesses will they both be in pain while watching their best friend fall for someone they don't have as much chemistry with. Yet, they're both stuck in the "friend" zone.

Greg pulled ahead, finding not only her completely unharmed but also Coulter and Wayne.

Of course the latter down a hand and with a sheen of sweat and unhealthy paleness.

Coulter hadn’t fared much better with his creepy cricket limbs splintered in clean smooth halves of meat. Blood pooling from multiple bite wounds, his bare leg washed in red.

And of course growls began to approach.

“The cars?”

“Nah magic based,” Mario reported. “Can’t pick or force.”

“Shit,” Coulter hissed.

“Well over the fence now!” Wayne insisted. “We can figure out transport and stuff later.”

Their resources were essential. Thus Greg tossed his bag over first, before cupping his hands to support Mario.

Beside him Coulter handled Wayne and Talia and undoubtedly had room for him too.

The sight of the gleaming leg intact and stretching him to nearly eight feet tall was in a way infuriating. An ever present itch at his eyelids he could never explain and had to shove aside NOW.

He rolled his eyes at the professed hand.

Still he said nothing.

On their ascent Coulter began to quake.

Not only was he off balance but he’d summoned three more legs, tearing out of his back to kick out at the goons snarling their frothed mouths.

Three whimpered at the savage whips they received.

Greg clasped the fence, face set in grim resolve.

He climbed the links, scuttling with all his speed and skill.

The tangles caught his sock tight, twisting and turning but refusing to yield.

Coulter grunted. “Greg! Oh good God,” he said looking so pale as if he weren’t being set upon by literal wild animals. “I should have let you go first.”

“Whatever it’s fine!”

“Just be quiet,” argued Wayne.

“No,” he argued just as heatedly, chest heaving in the blinding heat of righteous mania.

Long as some survived, long as their map survived and they escaped they had won today.

Only Wayne wouldn’t have it. He had promised after all.

With a terrible jerk and almost crack his now red, bleeding foot was left bare and free.

He flipped over the chain link, helped along by a thrust.

Until he realized what that meant.

The wolves knew it too, Wayne knew it as he smiled.

Now shielded in a hexagonal barrier they were massacred.

Someone, Talia, realized he had had the sense to cover his eyes. Bone parted from flesh and something rolled.

Coulter was flat on his side, all his limbs torn. Pain exuding from his expression, gritting his teeth against the awful claws digging about on his spine.

Not even his finger moved. He was completely paralyzed.

“Run,” said a voice. A voice much stronger and richer than his own.

Red hot coals stroked at his insides.

“Run unless you’re such a sadist.”

“You’re a sadist!”

“Sick freak.”

“Sadist!”

Greg ran. Oh he ran alright.

He ran hard and tirelessly screaming to the blue sky and air smelling of wet earth, honey, and lavender.

I'm scared to lose my friends;

Always have been, always will be.

But something has changed recently.

A realization, that maybe it's not my friends who will leave me,

But that I might leave my friends.

And that scares me even more.

I don't want to lose my friends,

But lately, I haven't been connecting with one of my oldest friends.

She's been with me through thick and thin,

For the past ten years and counting.

And I don't want to lose her.

But each interaction, each conversation,

I feel like I'm getting further and further away from her.

We've always been very different from one another,

A fact that I used to respect, cherish even.

She exposed me to a whole new world,

One I wouldn't have been aware of without her.

But at what point do differences tear apart a relationship?

We seem to argue over the simplest things,

Can't come to an agreement, just agree to disagree.

We've had different experiences,

So I can't blame her for not understanding my perspective at times.

But lately it feels like I can't even share my opinion

Without her getting defensive, ready to fight me.

We're both too stubborn for our own good,

Her even more so.

And honestly, I'm getting tired of it now.

Tired of the arguing, the battling.

I hate that we're so different from each other now.

The fact that we've both changed, but in different directions.

The things that used to hold us together are fading,

And I start to wonder,

"What's the point of us anymore?"

Is it desperation that keeps us connected now,

A longing for the past and what used to be?

Or hope that we can reconnect,

When all signs are pointing to the negative?

I don't want to leave,

To lose connection with her,

But I'm scared that the thought has even crossed my mind.

That I might not want to continue this friendship with her,

That some day, I might decide that it's not worth it anymore;

A tragedy that's been in progress over the span of ten years,

Is there a happy ending to our story together?