Half-Known

They met on the 5th of July, and by autumn, had fallen in a strange rhythm: sharing a bed and kissing at night, all under the label of friendship. He’s going out with another girl now, and they’ve started a strained, limited friendship since, with minimal physical contact. He misses their emotional closeness and connection and she misses his arms around her at night. It’s her birthday and they’re on a ski trip with some mutual friends. 

“Hello,” he says, stepping into the room, one hand behind his back. 

She sits up in bed, tossing the blanket off her legs. 

“Hi,” she replies, lips turning up. “What have you got for me?” 

Walking over to the hotel’s dressing table, she perches on it, looking expectantly up at him. 

Stopping just short of her, he hands her a small, thin book. 

“It’s a collection of poems I found that I thought described you. Since you like poetry.” 

She freezes, gingerly taking it from him, eyes welling up. She flips through the first few pages. Some poems she recognises, most she doesn’t. They talk about beauty, goodness, and a special kind of friendship. 

She closes the book slowly and walks over to lay it on her bed, pausing for a second with her back to him. There’s an apprehensive air about him, like he’s waiting for her to say something, or fighting the urge to say something himself. 

After a beat, she turns around and walks straight to him, slipping her arms around him. He responds immediately, enveloping his arms around her in a hug they’ve done a hundred times before. It’s the first time they’ve made physical contact in months, and they’ve both missed it so much. 

The familiarity, and reminder of what once was, is overwhelming. He wraps his arms around her tighter, one hand coming up to cradle her head. She pulls back a bit to look up at him, to thank him, to tell him how much it means to her. 

But the moment their eyes meet, one damp with tears, the other soft with emotion, it is a forgone conclusion and he kisses her and she kisses him back and it feels so right and so familiar like coming home after being locked out. And it’s a salty kiss because they can taste her tears streaming down faster than before because she knows it’s wrong but she can’t stop, won’t stop—

She turns her head away, eyebrows pinched in pain. 

He’s holding her face, swiping her tears, only for them to be replaced within the second. She’s holding on to his forearms, nails digging in slightly, as she tries to control her breathing. 

“Where did we go wrong?” he asks quietly. He’s talking about their friendship. She can hear the sadness in his voice, and she knows what he's thinking and feeling. But it’s not what she’s feeling. 

Quietly, she tells him, 

“I can’t give you the kind of friendship you want.” 

Not the kind of friendship where she needed him too much, thought of him too much, gave up her principles for him. Except he would and could never know. 

“Why not?” He asks, longing lacing his voice. 

“I care about you too much.” It’s something she said before, a long time ago, when they were on another trip together. Too much and it scares me, she said then. He pauses too, eventually saying, 

“I care about you too, you know. You can ask me for anything.” It’s also something he said a long time ago. She was drunk the night he said it, but it remained one of the few things she remembered. 

She’s shaking her head now. 

“I’m sorry, I just can’t give you that anymore.” That kind of emotional closeness borne through nights in each other’s arms and kisses in the dark was too draining, too heavy a burden for her to carry anymore. 

She takes a deep breath and drops her hands, taking a small step back, and he immediately pulls away as well, understanding and frustration playing out over his face. 

“Okay then,” he says, searching her face. “If you’re sure.” 

She nods, and there’s a pause. 

“I guess I’ll see you later.” He says it with a slight question at the end, as he moves towards the door. 

“Yeah, of course,” she says, watching him go. “See you.” 

They don’t text over the rest of the Christmas break, and when they see each other at school in January, exams and society work and life keeps them busy. They smile and wave in passing with promises of hanging out later. 

She yearns for the day she can see him and not miss him, when catching sight of him for the first time in a few days isn’t a quiet, unexpected blow.

He once told her, it’s going to sting a bit when I see you after this, when all I want to do is pull you into a hug. 

Turns out he was right. 

Her mind keeps replaying their last night together. He was trying to tell her something, soft hints that they shouldn’t fall asleep next to each other anymore, but she was drifting in and out, warm and exhausted, missing the meaning behind his words. Perhaps it was better that way. 

She remembers the way he kissed her that night, unhurried and familiar. I miss this, he murmured. What? she asked, reaching for him again. Kissing you, he said. 

In the early days, he used to tell her he missed her. After a long days, nights out. Sometimes in the dark, half-asleep. Sometimes she wonders if he misses her now. She knows he does, but not in the same way she misses him. 

He would also tell her he thinks she’s a good person. That stayed with her. For some reason, it mattered to him, and so it mattered to her. On one of their last nights together, she asked him if he still believed it. She wondered if he would think less of her for giving so much of herself to him. He told her no, he hasn’t changed his mind. 

He doesn’t remember their first kiss. Which annoys her, because it was her first kiss ever. He was so drunk that night. She remembers looking up at him, remembers him asking how much more complicated it would be if they kissed. Before she could process the question, the woodpecker kiss took her by surprise. It wasn’t something she thought would be in the cards for them, though she definitely didn’t mind it. 

She could always read him. Sometimes she joked that she could hear him thinking, that his thoughts kept her awake at night. He’s always visibly taken aback when she always gets it right, and she enjoys that she can still catch him off-guard. 

There was once she didn’t get it right. They were on a trip far away, waiting for the people ahead of them to shuffle up the stairs. He was looking at her when she caught his eye, and she raised her eyebrows in query. Later, outside, he asked What did you think I was thinking? She laughed nervously. I don’t know. It took a while, but eventually he told her. I thought you looked really pretty in the stairwell. 

She still has a cup in his room—the one he asked her to buy because she was over so often. She wonders if it’s still there. She wonders what he’ll do with the pink toothbrush she left in his bathroom, the twin to his black one.

At the very beginning when they were just friends with all the possibility in the world, he’d help her set up her room. Now when she sees the fairy lights on her curtains, or the LEDs under her bed, she is unwittingly reminded of him. 

At her lowest, she misses the nights she’d wake up wrapped in his arms, the instinctive way he pulled her closer in his sleep. She misses the unthinking sense of belonging—lips brushing in the dark, breath mixing, their favourite sleeping positions fitting together with practiced ease. Those were moments soaked in oxytocin and reassurance, moments that made the world feel quiet. 

She knows a time will come when he returns to her life as nothing more than a casual friend, a familiar presence without the weight of what they once were. The past will always tug at her quietly, but life moves forward, and she must move with it.

BIO 

E.Q. Lean is a recent graduate and writer based in Singapore, focusing on poetry, short fiction, and academic essays. Her short stories asdf. She is currently developing a poetry anthology, Unscripted, along with a short story collection.