(And don’t try to convince me you don’t conduct academic research to solve your relationship misalignments—I know everybody secretly does that.)

See you in fiction two Wednesdays from now!

Cheers,
Lena

And he did. Aslan always starts fair.

Since he can remember, people have told him how close they feel to him. They’d easily call him a friend, claim “a connection,” “something special.” He understood where this was coming from, of course. Aslan once spoke emotions so fluently that almost everyone felt welcomed and appreciated around him. Then there was his art—he channeled his passions and struggles into intimate paintings, and suddenly whole crowds of complete strangers swore they knew him on this uniquely personal level. What they saw on his canvas was relatable to their deepest fears and unaddressed desires. He portrayed love, pain, the kind of imperfect honesty that would shame most Insta selfies (bikini pics included).

There’s a big difference between choosing which truths to share and actually letting someone see inside your soul. Aslan spills thoughts that once lived in him but have long since become souvenirs—valuable, yes, but no longer breathing in his chest.

True intimacy isn’t the intrusion of mixing these thoughts with another person’s own experiences and calling it a bond. It’s the moment they want to understand more, dig deeper, when they say, “May I come in?” and you crack that door wider—wide enough for them to step through.

So despite the crowd’s disagreement, he’s always claimed the introvert title. Until life events turned him into a proper recluse.

Still, to this day, when getting to know someone new, he always tries to start fair. He leaves the door ajar and observes what will happen.

If no one asks to come in, that’s it. If no one pushes the door open with honest curiosity, that’s it for him.

He doesn’t care about being fair anymore. Knowing all about second chances and the illusion of first impressions—he has every right to guard his soul, and he doesn’t mind if they have the most genuine intentions but missed the moment.

Life is about not missing the important moments.

He never slams the door in anyone’s face. He doesn’t get mad. He doesn’t take offense. He doesn’t dwell on it. No. Aslan leaves his heart entirely and closes the door behind him. From now on he always greets that person in the corridor. From there, he can still visit their world: spend time with them, help them through stuff, listen. He always listens and is there for people (if he doesn’t mess up, he’s only human, after all). Every ounce of effort he shows is real. Everything they receive from him is authentic. But he never takes anything back. So it isn’t love. It isn’t friendship. It isn’t “something special.”

It is just him in the corridor—his door closed behind him, their world ahead.

They may get curious eventually. They may say they want to look inside again… no. And it’s not because he’s a jerk. It’s because they don’t want him. Not really. They just want more of what makes them feel welcomed—more of what he’s already given them: the feeling of acceptance and understanding. Not him.

They stay, grateful for the welcome, not the host.

As Aslan’s thoughts wander, Kovu takes his last generous sip and returns to preparing the café for tomorrow’s morning crowd: the half‑asleep casual step‑ins, the grumpy regulars, anyone who needs a cup of clarity.

A soft buzz interrupts the quiet. Aslan’s phone lights up: Tina calling. He watches it ring through the steam on the counter—and lets it go to voicemail.

He started fair.

“I didn’t need you to weather the storm,” the woman says. “All I wanted was for you to help me find my freaking raincoat.”

How men believe they can actually change the weather never ceases to amaze Kovu. He knows that feeling, of course—when the need to erase every possible (and impossible) harm from her path consumes him until he can’t hear her actual needs and wishes. When keeping her safe and comfortable somehow becomes an ego-driven pursuit to secure a few moments of peace of mind. He knows what it is to love someone too much to see straight. No, not too much, just not right. He nods to himself in quiet acceptance: love can be learned poorly. Especially when one binds it only to feelings instead of treating it like a skill that requires constant practice, development, and a hell of a lot of focus.

And those two, sitting in the corner? Kovu has watched them for years, and they have unquestionably been meant to be. But even faith is helpless when you’re determined to mess things up. A man in love is like a superhero in a Marvel movie’s opening scene: he has all the powers, but no idea what the world is about.

The girl, woman now, Samanta is a very familiar face at Secret Life Café. Kovu has learned a lot about her through small talk and a few accidental deep conversations. Mostly, though, he knows her the way he knows all his regulars: by observing and discreetly eavesdropping. From what he’s pieced together, she was born with privileges she never asked for and doesn’t particularly care about. But the things she truly wants… never seem to find her. She’s very familiar with rejection for a person loved and desired by so many.

Kovu knew her even before the guy came around, and she had a parade of admirers circling that same table she occupies for hours every other day, silently sketching her next illustration. On times when she glanced up from her drawing pad to meet eyes with another hopeful suitor—like she’d immediately knew he’s not the one she’s expecting—Samanta seemed even more disappointed than the poor fellow left with nothing but an uninterested half‑smile and the freedom to watch her for a while longer. She’d never looked up again until he’s gone.

Then she brought up the guy who’s sitting across from her now. Kovu has never seen someone change so completely. Samanta was on autopilot before, and once she met the guy, she was finally learning the amazing art of breathing deeply and experiencing the world’s beauty.

So Kovu hates the guy. No, not because Samanta chose him. With all the sympathy for her, he’s already destroyed by someone else. Thanks, but no thanks. He hates the guy’s sense of entitlement: natural expectation that things will go his way. The belief that life is easy enough and anything difficult is solvable. Kovu would trade both hands for solvable. This fellow has comfort handed to him—probably born and raised with the mindset that everything is going to be okay. The world spins in sync with his footsteps. But for Kovu, the world always spins against him. Even when he tries to mind his own business and avoid trouble, the wind still blows straight into his eyes.

So Kovu hates the guy. And yet, from what he’s seen, and from what Samanta has shared at rare moments, the guy has actually put in effort to get to know her. He learned she loves comfort and detests luxury. Every time they went to a restaurant or on vacation, he made it his mission to find the perfect balance: high quality without extravagance. He created an environment where she could be fully herself. She began to build confidence in her talent and eventually sold her first drawing to a local gallery. Then another one. Soon, she illustrated a series of children’s books. Samanta is now—true to her nature—quietly pursuing her dream.

Something she would never risk if not for him. Not because she didn’t have it in her, but because she had it tucked so deeply inside. Kovu wonders how many people live their whole lives subconsciously hiding their potential from the world. How much are we willing to sacrifice just to avoid getting hurt?

The guy stands up, leans over, and kisses Samanta on the top of her head, cradling her face in one hand. A final goodbye. Kovu wants to say time stops for a moment to honor this once-beautiful relationship now ending completely. But it doesn’t. A kid drops a teaspoon on the floor with a loud clank. A dog barks outside. One of his baristas pulls a fresh espresso. The doorbell rings. Ding. The guy is gone.

Kovu takes a few long strides to their table and picks up a still half-full coffee mug left behind. Samanta looks up at him—no expectations, no disappointment. Just her.

“This wasn’t meant to be, you know. He just doesn’t know how to love me,” she says, her voice catching just a bit before she steadies it.

“It was. And he could have learned,” Kovu replies, matter‑of‑factly.

Samanta blinks, surprised. Then she straightens in her seat. “Now, after four years of ignoring his existence, you’re suddenly defending him?”

Kovu shrugs. “I don’t know how to talk to people who’ve never had their heart broken.”

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"You stay here. I’ll be back soon."

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

"It's okay," he replied with a small smile. Then came a quick kiss on the forehead, a ruffle of her hair, and swoosh—he gave the Barista one of those fast, quiet head jerks dads do when they’re trusting someone without saying it. The Barista jerked his head back, just a tiny bit, like I’ve got her. Don’t worry. That seemed to be enough. Dad disappeared, leaving only the metallic chime of the café doorbell. And Maja.

She knew it wasn’t true. Just like when she used to ask, "Show me how much you love me, Daddy!" He pretended to measure an itty-bitty distance between thumb and forefinger. Barely enough to fit a Lego man—definitely not her, so big now, almost grown. She'd overheard him telling Grandpa that by her birthday he’d be “a third of the way to not screwing up her childhood.” A third was a lot. Eating a third of a cake? That’s nearly too much at once. He hadn’t screwed up that much yet, she thought, slicing into her caramel tart. And anyway, the Lego thing wasn’t true. Her dad loved her more than all the Lego bricks in the world could ever show. She didn’t know how she knew. But she did. Just like she knew now that things were not okay.

Forkful by forkful, the tart was disappearing. The milk had grown a skin, so Maja pushed the mug to the edge of the table. Yuck.

"Don't enjoy it?" asked the Barista from behind the counter. His mop of hair made him look like young Kovu from The Lion King II. Of course, she only said that to herself. She learned to recognize things you only ever live by yourself. For instance, sometimes she saw different animals in the clouds, but when she tried to point them out to her classmates, they laughed and called her a dumb baby or a "wacko." A loony like her mom. Her classmates didn’t care about rabbits, lions or old cartoons. This guy probably didn’t either. Or maybe?

"Do you know The Lion King?"

"Not personally," he winks. "But lions are just bigger cats. I bet they drink milk."

She made a face. "Even with the skin on top?"

He nodded to himself, as if Maja had just given him exactly what he wanted to know. Then he spun into a blur of barista-only dance: squat to open the fridge, reach up for a clean mug, pour-pour from a carton into a silver pitcher, steam it under the hissing wand. Bubbling. One spoonful of honey and eight moves later, a new, hot milk stood in front of her. No skin. She took the first sip and felt the warmth move through her, from throat to belly. Heaven.

"Bottoms up while it’s warm," Kovu smiled. A small star tattoo sat just by his eye. Tiny, but not so tiny it couldn’t be empty inside. Min-i-ma-lis-tic, she said in her head, slowly, savoring each syllable of a word her dad used for tattoos like that. Maja knew a lot about tattoos. She knew a lot about art in general. She knew a lot of artists too. The biggest one, of course, was her dad, Marek "Aslan" Halber.

A telly lady once told wild stories about him, then gave this look Maja's grandfather called "those damned goo-goo eyes," and said something Maja never forgot: "When the artist's beloved wife fell into schizophrenia, Halber put his painting career on hold to raise their daughter." Sometimes, after a safari game, her dad helped her clean up toys, groaning with every giraffe or elephant he bent to pick up. Maja figured that must be the sacrifice the lady meant. And when the receptionist lady put them on hold, every Sunday afternoon when they called The Place to talk with Mom, she wondered if maybe Daddy's career was waiting on hold somewhere too. She just hoped it wasn't him calling, because the bill for that call would be longer than a toilet paper roll. Well! Wherever the career was put, her dad's painter’s brush was replaced by a tattooist’s needle. Close enough, Maja figured, but grown-ups seemed to think there was a big difference.

So these days, he made tattoos. Sometimes like the ones young Kovu had. He was smiling at her now from across the table. He’d sat down, since the cafe was nearly empty. His shirt—probably white in the morning, now the color of coffee—was rolled up to the elbows, revealing more ink on his tanned arms. Maja took her time studying them, and Kovu looked like he had all the time just for that. Like he’s paused the world so she could watch unhurriedly. When he breathed, his belly rose, but otherwise he didn’t move. No jittery leg. No sighing. None of the things grown-ups did around kids. Kovu was like her dad and grandfather, only more so.

"I think things aren’t okay. And something bad happened to my mom," she said, once she'd memorized the tattoos and the last sip of milk had warmed her belly.

Maybe tonight her words lived in her belly instead of her head. Maybe that’s why she could finally let the heaviest ones come out—they needed the milky way to find their way out into the open. Or maybe Kovu, by just breathing and nothing else, had left so much empty space that the words floated up on their own. It’s hard to know.

"I think you might be right," he said, nodding slowly, his head as heavy as her belly-full words. "I think something really bad might have happened, and no adult is going to want to tell you exactly what."

"Are you allowed to say things like that to me?"

"Like what?"

"True things."

Kovu—who in her mind wasn’t the Barista at all anymore—looked at her for one, two, three blinks. When nothing else happened, he made a face like Grandpa did when he ate licorice. A sort of smile that turned sour at the end. Then he looked away, toward the shelf of books, and when he finally spoke, Maja wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to the spines of The Chronicles of Narnia.

"No. Probably not."

In that moment, Maja felt a sudden, quiet thankfulness for something that squeezed her—tightly but gently, like when dad clicks her seatbelt snugly and then double-checks to make sure it’s secure. She couldn’t quite name what it was.

Kovu, however, understood perfectly. He’d lived long enough to know that keeping kids in the dark doesn’t stop the pain. It just takes away the reasons why and leaves them wondering what hurts so much.

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“So here’s the thing. I need adventure. Movement. Travel, excitement, adrenaline. Like today, what surprised you? Or recently? What’s the last unexpected thing you went through?”

Claire smiles slowly. She hopes it comes off as engaged, though really, she’s just buying time.

She can’t exactly tell him that the most surprising part of her week was discovering that her local pharmacy sells septic tank cleaner but not a single product for cleaning an iron.

She’s crisscrossed the entire neighborhood looking for something, anything, to save her poor iron.

In the end, she took the risk, ironing her dress just before the date. And she almost got away with it. Almost, because now her sleeves are carefully rolled up, hiding the faint scorch mark.

No, she definitely won’t be telling him about irons and septic tanks.

The truth is, Claire’s mind is full of odd, tangled thoughts. She is odd.
And the harder she tries to be “normal,” the stranger her brain becomes.
Any second now, she’s going to give herself away. And this adrenaline junkie will realize he’s on the world’s worst first date.

She doesn’t even know yet if she likes him.
And here she is, cornered into answering a trap of a question.

No time left. She has to say something.

“That’s a really good question,” she nods in fake contemplation, buying another moment.

Claire has long since learned that you have to stroke the ego a little, make someone feel seen, appreciated — before their curiosity flips into something they don’t actually want. Like a pancake on a frying pan where the nonstick coating has already given up. The cook does everything right; the burning smell is just a matter of a bad surface. The problem is the pan.

And today, she is the pan.

“I guess the most surprising thing lately,” she continues, “is how long something fleeting can hold on. Or something that shouldn’t even exist anymore.

I was at the hairdresser’s a few days ago, just a trim, and for a day or two afterward, I kept finding stray hairs everywhere.
Not the usual shed ones, but freshly cut strands.
Little stowaways, still clinging on as if no one had told them they didn’t belong anymore.
It surprised me—how many there were.
Free… and yet still pretending they were part of something bigger.

But—” she breaks off, a little embarrassed. “I guess that’s not exactly thrilling. Not a lot of adrenaline in stray hairs.”

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⇵

Even though she says the last bit with a sheepish laugh, Noah feels his face flush, heat rushing up his neck.

Next to Claire’s gentle melancholy, his own buzzing energy suddenly feels… loud. Pointless.

But he’s not about to tell her the truth: that stillness terrifies him.

That his parents have spent their whole lives tucked away in Willow Cove—a tiny lakeside town swarmed by sailors each summer, only to fall eerily quiet by October.

Peace.

For them, it means more than happiness.

Maybe it’s a generational thing.
Or maybe just the way small towns teach you to shrink.

Noah’s family has owned a sailboat supply shop since the early ’90s, even though they haven’t sailed themselves in years.
Summers are too busy with tourists.
Winters are too bitter and gray.
It’s no longer worth the trouble of getting the boat into the water.

When Noah visits now, there’s comfort at first.
The familiar creak of the dock.
The smell of sunbaked wood.
The chipped bell above the shop door.

But by Sunday afternoon, the anxiety creeps in—sweaty palms, racing thoughts—at the idea that he might get stuck there forever.
That this might be his life: polite nods at the grocery store, the same old gossip about a tourist who drowned in the lake, seasons flying by in a blur of nine-to-five shifts, winters dragging like a bad song on repeat.

One year bleeding into the next until, eventually, you just quietly die there.

Growing up, he watched people come and go while he just… stayed.

Kids from tourist towns don’t really “go away” for vacations—why spend the money? Why leave when it’s right here?

Except it isn’t.
At least, not the things Noah was looking for.

Maybe that’s why he worked every spare hour in city cafés and diners throughout college.
Saved every penny for travel.
Checked off countries like some people check off grocery lists.

Bachelor’s degree. Master’s degree. And then, of course, coding bootcamp.
Because if you’re practical and hungry for escape, you become a programmer.

Now he travels. Fast. Hard.
Sometimes, he can’t even remember where he was last month.
Some places blur together like messy watercolor paintings.

“Forty-seven countries and counting,” he wrote proudly on his dating profile.
It sounded impressive, at least to him.

But he’s not sure it would impress Claire.

Talking to her feels more like navigating sidewalks after a summer downpour.
You think you’re just splashing along, light spray underfoot… and then suddenly, you step right into a deep puddle that soaks you to the bone.
You feel the cold creep up your sock, wrap around your ankle.

And somehow, it’s okay.
It’s summer.
The sun peeks out again, lazy and golden.
You’ll dry.

“You look good,” Noah says, trying to keep his voice steady.

He can feel the warmth on his face sink lower, down his throat, settling into his chest, where it becomes something heavier, softer, less panicked.

“I mean it,” he adds. “The haircut—the bangs. They really suit you.”

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“Agatha!”

We all hear the barista announcing that her order is ready to collect. Agatha. Soon enough she will learn to switch those heels for sneakers and change the footwear only when she’s already in the office. Soon enough she will be taking that coffee away, knowing that getting early to her desk means a peaceful fifteen minutes for planning her day without interruptions made of hey-how-are-yous that don’t carry much of an honest care. But for now, she will stay.

She toys with the bracelet absently, unaware she’s touching the thread of an old memory. The rope, once bright and salt-scrubbed, has dulled to a soft grey. But it still holds the shape of its purpose. Just like Rose.

Rose, who insisted on making lunch in the middle of a man-overboard drill. Who brought her coloring books to the deck while everyone else practiced sail turns. Rose, who couldn’t sense the sharp edges of sarcasm but could feel, like a tuning fork, the vibration of not belonging.

At nineteen, Agatha was barely older than the kids she was teaching. But someone in charge had seen something in her—patience, perhaps, or that quiet ability to read what isn’t being said—and assigned Rose to her boat. You'll manage, they said. Which wasn’t a compliment, just a passing of responsibility disguised as one.

Rose was difficult. Not in the way children sometimes are, but in the way that makes grown-ups quietly dread being alone with them. Hilariously annoying, unfiltered, impossible to predict. She cursed in her sleep. She kicked Agatha while dreaming. She was brilliant at sailing when she remembered to try, and a liability when she didn’t.

Agatha tried her best. Professional, calm, a soft edge only rarely sharpened. But she was nineteen. She was scared. And she was tired. No one wanted to share a bed with Rose on the boat, so they slept side by side in the narrow double, limbs colliding like clumsy punctuation.

The other kids mocked Rose. Not in cruel words, but in performative kindnesses soaked in irony. They thought she didn’t notice. She didn’t get the joke. But energy is energy. And energy always lands. She felt it—being outside, being other.

Agatha tried to defend her, but her heart wasn’t always in it. Fear of responsibility clouded empathy. Resentment crept in like water under the deck. How do you protect someone who keeps putting everyone else at risk?

Then, one night, quiet, sea-lulled, breath-warm, Rose asked the question,

“Why do you like me?”

Agatha didn’t answer. She pretended to be asleep. Because the truth was… she didn’t know. Not really. Not yet.

She thought: You kick me in your sleep. You say the worst things at the worst moments. You test my every nerve.

But later, she watched. And listening became her form of wondering.

She saw the way Rose spoke to herself when no one else was watching—soft little insults, muttered under her breath like prayer. The kind of hatred that’s been learned young and worn like second skin.

And that, Agatha knew. That aching familiarity of being too much. Too loud. Too tender. Too complicated to be easily liked.

So a few nights later, Agatha turned to her in the dark and said,

“Ask me again.”

Rose blinked. “What?”

“About why I like you. Ask me again. I wasn’t ready before.”

Rose stared at her like she was speaking in code. Then, flatly:

“Why do you like me?”

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And this time, Agatha answered.

“Because you know what you want. Because you go after it, even when no one else understands why. Because even when you're being a complete menace, you're honest about it. Because you feel more than you show, and I see it, even when you think you’re hiding.”

Rose didn’t say anything. She just curled in, small and quiet, and let herself fall asleep against Agatha’s shoulder. She still kicked in her sleep. But she never mumbled to herself again.

Because what she had asked wasn’t why do you like me — what she really wanted to know was why should I like myself?

That night, something softened. Not just in Rose, in Agatha too. The kind of soft that doesn’t feel weak, but whole. Like she had touched something raw and real and walked away without turning it into a wound.

Rose began to open up, not all at once, but in clumsy, sincere little bursts. One day, after a rough practice and one too many jabs from the others, she broke.

“I just want to be like them,” she cried, her voice cracking under the weight of those words. “I just want to be like other kids.”

It hit Agatha harder than she expected. She had heard those words before in a different voice. Her own. Echoing inside her for years.

Always too sensitive, too anxious. The worrier. The one who overthought every silence, every side glance. She knew what it was to live in your own head and wish it was quieter in there.

Agatha placed a hand on Rose’s back, gentle and steady.

“At some point, we all realise we’re not like other kids,” she said. “Let me tell you a secret, Rose: other kids don’t exist.”

The next morning, when one of the boys made a joke at Rose’s expense and the group erupted into laughter, Rose stood up, eyes blazing, and shouted,

“You don’t exist!”

It wasn’t witty. It wasn’t strategic. But it was true in a way that startled everyone into silence.

Then someone muttered, “She’s crazy.”

And from behind them, Agatha, who’d been quietly watching, spoke up, calm and clear:

“Aren’t we all?”

The energy shifted again. It didn’t become perfect, but balanced enough. Because Agatha didn’t try to stop the drama, she just interrupted it. Made the group think. She hadn’t been passive out of helplessness. She had been waiting. Hoping they would work it out. And maybe, in their clumsy way, they had.

The sound of a coffee cup meeting the counter breaks the thread. Agatha blinks, refocusing, the memory slipping back beneath the surface like a buoy tugged under by the tide.

“Agatha?” the barista repeats, more gently this time. Her cup waits on the edge.

She walks over, takes it with a nod of thanks. The warmth of the cup grounds her. The smell is oddly comforting, like familiarity. Like belonging. She lingers for a moment longer, watching the steam curl upwards, the barista’s voice mixing with the hum of the morning crowd. Soon enough, when she gets soaked in the corporate life, this might become a transaction, a pitstop. Today, it’s a pause. A quiet, luxurious ritual she chooses to savor. And maybe, just maybe, this part of her life can stay gloriously unchanged.

Some answers arrive years after the question is asked. Others never do. Not because they’re not there, but because we weren’t quiet enough to listen. Or we looked too far out when the truth had settled deep inside our souls.

We spend our childhoods trying to be like other kids. And if we’re lucky, at some point, we learn the untold secret: there are no other kids. Just a hotchpotch of individuals, shaped by their own wrong turns, unfinished thoughts, strange fears, and brilliant flaws. We’re all a little too much in some ways, a little off-center in others. That’s not the part to fix. That’s the part to learn about yourself and hold close.

Agatha sips her coffee, smiling absently. The time took a break, everything around slows down. It will take a few more absent minutes until the coffee will kick in unexpectedly and wake up the freshly hired consultant back to reality. Just like Rose would.

Between long office hours and meeting with one of the few friends she keeps in touch with, Serena allows herself a moment of effortlessness. A moment of not trying to look approachable, attractive, at her best. A moment of not being “perfectly okay”. Of not giving a damn. The tiredness that’s painting dark circles under her eyes is suddenly unapologetic. After a day of shallow breaths, the sigh she gives inhales all the noise of the busy surroundings and exhales the quiet we could only ever dream of getting downtown at this hour. If she had an ounce of energy left, she’d get up and leave this coffeehouse before whoever-she’s-waiting-for shows up. “Escape,” she thinks. “Is it still an option?”

But then someone waves at Serena from the other side of the room and her face brightens with a generous smile. The smile stays there as the friend approaches the table with matching enthusiasm. In the meantime, Serena gains a few inches – her back now straight as an arrow. The coat is gone, carefully folded along with the hat on the vacant chair. The friend reaches out – probably for a hug – but before she gets halfway, Serena gracefully catches her elbows and performs a distinguished la bise instead. She thought no one would notice the way she avoided the embrace. She might not even be noticing it herself.

In the beginning, when feeling lonely, we seek comfort in other people’s touch. Oh, yes, Serena remembers being a little girl; she remembers fitting perfectly in her mommy’s arms. They’d spend every possible moment together. “Us against the world,” they’d shout in unison, running into the lake during hot ‘90s summers. And when mommy was at her evening classes to get a diploma and try for a better job, Serena would pull out her woolen lilac sweater, unfold it on the carpet, and lie down. Embracing herself in it like it were mommy’s arms, she’d say aloud: “Us against the world.”

In the beginning, when feeling lonely, we seek comfort in other people’s touch. Then we realize it’s almost impossible to find the arms that fit us perfectly anymore. We grow in various shapes and directions. The hugs get more awkward and rigid. We get more awkward and rigid, and… distanced. I have a theory that every hug we get puts us a little bit together. And yes, you guessed it, if we don’t get hugged enough, our bodies get more, and more loose. That’s why under-hugged people are very easily spottable for a knowing eye. It takes effort to keep a straight posture. It takes effort to walk or work, or to dial a number to that one of the few friends we are keeping in touch with anymore. At some point, the body starts avoiding what it so desperately needs. Like Serena does now. As if she got hugged a little too tight, she’d either melt or fall apart entirely.

“I’m so glad you finally could make it. I like that sweater too,” her friend says. “The color fits you nicely. Purple.”
“Lilac,” she whisper-corrects.
“New?”
“Vintage.”

They exchange some gossip and the latest news about each other's life. This cheerful, collected Serena is so different from the one I saw moments ago. She’s not faking it, though. She’s not pretending. She’s just putting much effort into being present for her friend. Being happy for that new boyfriend, who comes up with the brightest ideas. Like running her friend a bath on a Friday evening. Or buying her the ultimate combo of chocolate, chips, and sour candy when she gets her period. Or checking up on her when he knows she’s having a bad day. That perfect new boyfriend. Serena is happy he exists. It takes effort, but she’s genuinely glad he exists.

Something changes in the friend’s face. She recognizes a sign she might have missed before. That’s when I realize Serena is not invisible like I originally thought. She’s lightless. Like a tree that’s impossible to notice on a cloudy night… unless you ignite it. But the friend knows Serena exists, as if she knew there is a tree that’s supposed to be in the way and she expects its shape to appear in front of her no matter the daylight of darkness. She knows what Serena’s shape should be like – she sees her despite the darkness. She may not see her clearly, she may not see her at all. But she knows Serena is there. She knows the way through their friendship. So she asks what’s wrong. And then she asks again because some of us need to be asked multiple times. One to feel acknowledged. One to feel cared about. One to feel courageous enough to share.

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Serena still wears a smile as her outwardness hides any trace of anxiety. Throughout the years, she has been conditioned to be okay on her own. Deep down she knows she will be fine eventually. She can manage on her own. She always does. Her mind is sitting on the fence between quiet undisturbed solitude and the not-so-quiet friend inviting her to… “Give me your hands,” Serena hears from the other side of the table. Hesitantly, she listens. A moment later, the undeniable strength and warmth of her friend’s fingers crashes through Serena’s skin straight to bones. Observing as the friend opens their palms, she asks:

“What are you doing?”
“Letting the fireflies in.”

I was taught to help by the open-palm rule. To never miss the opportunity to take my hand out of the comfort of my pocket and help someone who may need me. I was taught that every heart holds a certain amount of light; that mine holds so much of it that I can either empower others or burn myself. But the outstretched hand must be answered by another hand. Another person willing to make the effort. To make a change. I was taught there are people, who may need help but not want it. And it’s not for me to decide that I know better. There is compassion and there is respect for another person's dignity.

I was taught to help by the open-palm rule. But some people need that palm to be opened for a very long time. Some people don’t even recognize the gesture, because no one showed it to them before. There are also people who know it perfectly and desperately want to hold on. But they don’t have any energy left inside to reach out. There is no light in their heart left. Their body is going through motions day after day, year after year; and the soul is lying motionless in the darkness. Maybe that’s the remaining part of the open-palm rule. Maybe – if that’s where you are – all you need to do is to lay down and open your palms. Let the fireflies surround you. Little things. Little lights. Stranger’s smile. Bus driver waiting for you to jump in and not be late wherever-you’re-rushing-to. Your beloved mother’s sweater keeping you warm on the coldest day of the year. Maybe it’s too early for the big guns—the sharing, the fixing, the openly worried friends. Maybe only hold your palms open.

Let the fireflies in.

The world revolves now around your treehouse. Whatever you choose it to become, it is going to be waiting for you outside.

I keep holding your hand as you take a deep breath and slow down your heart. There is no hurry. There is nothing weighing on your shoulders. Another deep breath and you fully embrace the pleasant lightness surrounding you unpretentiously.

Everything you dream of is possible now.

Take your time. —•