A long friendship
They met at the CEGEP student newspaper. One, good at writing and full of wacky ideas, was immediately captivated by the sharp features of the other, who quickly claimed the role of leader of the future newspaper.
Their friendship grew from laughing together. The leader liked to be eccentric, while the other boy hid his shyness behind a youthful literary pride. Although they acted as friends, nothing bound them together, perhaps out of modesty or fear of revealing what each secretly felt. They were similar but different, two souls who understood each other without words, two glances that caught each other's eye on ordinary days. This mutual understanding, a silent language they shared, deepened their connection.
One was reserved, hiding behind his smile a melancholy that the other seemed to guess effortlessly. The other, more daring, hid under an air of bravery a tenderness he didn't want to show anyone. Between them, there was a mixture of admiration and surely love. Their feelings floated in the air, unacknowledged, sometimes unnoticed by those who bore them. Yet they were there, lining their exchanges with glances and rare but precious words.
Time took its toll, as it always does. Their paths diverged, taking each of them towards a life that seemed promising but that had many detours in store. The one who knew how to write sent passionate, romantic, philosophical, and never personal letters. The one who received them read them aloud to his new friends, happy to have their attention as much as to know that he was the object of his now distant friend's unacknowledged flame.
Then the letters stopped. They built their lives far apart, with, deep in their hearts, the spark of a friendship that had never taken on a name. The years flew by like pages turned without really reading them. Birthdays, however, were a discreet reminder, a little thread that refused to break. Every year, a card, then an e-mail. These are simple words, sometimes a few more sentences, but they always have the same feeling of a bond that neither of them can explain. This enduring friendship, like a thread woven through the fabric of their lives, was a testament to their connection.
This didn't stop the literary man from resenting his friend, who one day invited him to celebrate his fiftieth birthday in the presence of friends he didn't know. He had felt profoundly alienated, hiding a colossal jealousy, his most considerable shadow, from the man who had surrounded himself.
Yet they both persisted. Without wanting to explain it, they continued to write to each other, these few words exchanged reassuring them in a way that nothing else could. Perhaps because, despite the distance, they felt that the other was still there, somewhere, a familiar shadow in their inner landscape. They lived, each on his own, with the vague certainty that the other thought of them at least once a year, on the same date, with the same discretion.
Then, one day, one of them suggested a meeting on the eve of retirement. When they met again, their eyes locked as before, but this time, they bore the weight of years and lives lived separately. They were friends, they knew. But they were also strangers to each other, having shared very little. They didn't seem to mind.
They spoke, as one speaks to an old friend, as one speaks to a stranger. The words were simple, but they carried the gravity of a friendship that had survived for no apparent reason. The silence between them was no longer filled with admiration or unspoken words but with a quiet recognition of what they had been to each other, even from afar. They didn't know why this bond persisted, why it was so strong in spite of everything. But they accepted it, as one accepts a mystery one no longer seeks to solve.
They parted that day, knowing that they would never be quite close but would never be quite far apart. Their lives had taken different paths, but somehow, they still crossed, even if they couldn't say how or why. And that was enough.
