Lara had long learned to love Ethan quietly. It was easier than shattering twenty years of friendship with one clumsy confession.
Only once did she catch something new in his eyes—not the usual warmth of friendship, but something deeper, restless, almost painful. She felt it instantly; they’d always understood each other without words.
“Everything alright?” she asked, setting aside her book.
His lips twitched—like he wanted to say something, then thought better of it.
“Fine,” he muttered, turning sharply toward the window.
Silence hung between them, thick and uncomfortable.
“Right, I’d better go,” he finally said, standing.
She didn’t stop him. Just nodded. What was there to say? Back then, neither of them was free.
***
They’d known each other forever.
At fourteen, they swore to be friends until death. At eighteen, they laughed at lovestruck classmates. At twenty-five, Ethan was the best man at her wedding. At thirty, Lara dragged him out of a pub after his divorce, drunk and furious.
Their first meeting—she was seven, he was nine. The neighbourhood kids were playing cops and robbers, and she, the smallest, tripped and fell. The older boys jeered: “Crybaby! Crybaby!”
Then Ethan, usually quiet, punched the ringleader so hard he landed in a puddle.
“Don’t touch her again,” he said, wiping his bloody lip.
They’d been inseparable ever since.
Backstreet scraps, their first cigarette behind the garages—it was all part of their shared past. Then school, sneaking off to the tuck shop at break, and later, different unis but the same habit of calling each other in the middle of the night to share something—anything—important.
They were proper friends. The kind who don’t disappear after first romances, or weddings, or even rows.
Lara had a decent, steady husband—Daniel. He and Ethan never clicked. Ethan’s wife was Sophie. Clever, gorgeous, but she only met Lara once, at the wedding, and decided: *This girl’s not from my world.* So no family BBQs like they’d joked about as kids.
But they stayed each other’s *person*. The one you call at three in the morning with, “I’m a mess,” knowing they’ll listen. And if needed, show up with tea—or something stronger.
That kind of friendship is priceless.
When Daniel left Lara, taking half the furniture and her faith in “happily ever after,” Ethan was there. Stopped her from drinking alone, put up with her tantrums, listened to her endless, “How did I not see it?”
Daniel had left her for a junior intern. Cliché, but Lara was the last to know.
“You really didn’t notice?” her friends asked.
No. She hadn’t. Because while Daniel was “working late,” she was having dinner with Ethan—laughing at his jokes, moaning about work, feeling like… herself.
Ethan heard about the split first. Showed up straight after her choked, “He’s gone.”
“I’m so tired of pretending to be happy,” Lara sobbed, staring out the window.
“I know,” Ethan said.
And she realised—he *did* know. Always had.
With Sophie, it was different.
She left Ethan abruptly, slamming the door: “You’ll never love me like you love *her*!”
He didn’t argue.
When he told Lara, she scoffed:
“That’s ridiculous! We’re just mates!”
“Just mates,” he repeated, his eyes saying something that made her chest tighten.
“She didn’t know the real you,” Lara said, pouring him another whisky.
“Do you?”
She froze. Remembered scribbling in her diary years ago: *Imagine telling him. Imagine him pulling away. Polite texts once a month. Avoiding eye contact at parties.*
She was terrified of losing her childhood friend—the one who’d seen her at her worst and never walked out. Not when she was in a foul mood, not when she was unbearable (and, let’s be honest, she *could* be). She owed him everything. Or nearly everything.
But… friendship wasn’t love. What if it didn’t work? What if there was another intern? Could she survive losing him? How did people even *live* without someone like him?
“We’re nothing alike,” she’d think when he argued with waiters about steak doneness. (He was picky to the point of madness.)
“She’s too good for me,” Ethan thought, watching her roll her eyes at his favourite action flick.
Neither noticed how their arguments bred inside jokes no one else got. How their clashes sparked something their “proper” relationships lacked.
They loved in secret—as if breaking that childhood promise was forbidden.
***
The moment of truth came at Heathrow. Lara was flying to Paris—new job, new life. Maybe forever.
“You forgot this,” Ethan said, holding out the scarf she’d left at his flat.
“Keep it,” she said. “A souvenir.”
His eyes flashed with something she’d seen a hundred times but never let herself name.
“I don’t want a souvenir,” he said suddenly. “I want *you*.”
Two words. Twenty years of waiting. One life finally making sense.
“If you get on that plane,” he whispered, “I won’t survive it.”
Not “I’ll be sad.” Not “I’ll miss you.” *Won’t survive.*
She smiled, slow and sure—because she’d figured out that look. Or rather, *let* herself figure it out. Then she realised—she was happy.
“You know,” she said, “some things are worth missing a flight for.”
“So you’re staying?” He pulled her close. “Really?”
…On the way home, she thought: *I once had everything—a husband, a home, security. But not the one thing worth burning bridges for, worth risking it all… Not love. Without it, nothing else matters.*
