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I was awoken today by Shane’s gentle knocking on my bedroom door. I’d given her a key ages ago and she had used it more in these past couple of months than in our whole eight years of friendship. She sat on my bed slowly, knowing I was awake and refusing to look at her, not because I was depressed but because I just really fucking hate mornings, especially now. I remembering hearing her pick up one of my books, kick of her motorcycle boots, swing her legs on the bed and start flicking through the pages. For some reason it was a comfort just to know she was there even though she said nothing. I admire that. Her innate ability to just shut the fuck up and listen, you hear far more when you learn to stop talking. I dunno, I just remember Shane telling me one day that you can tell far more from what people don’t say than from what they do. She’s right. I have a reputation for being a motor mouth but I never really talk out my problems like I should. I tried therapy once, it didn’t go down too well, I ended up having a whirlwind romance which created more problems for me when I left the room than when I had gone in. Either way I knew she was letting me decide when I wanted to talk to her.

I asked her why she wasn’t cutting hair as I rubbed the morning crust from my eyes and stretched. She shrugged and said that she would rather hang out with me. I looked up and smiled gratefully and then it happened. We locked eyes and all this pent up emotion just burst out of me in a sudden gush of extremism. I wasn’t just sobbing I was howling. Shane grabbed my torso and held me so tightly it hurt and I needed it. I needed to feel like I wasn’t going to be sucked into this vacuum of betrayal and loneliness forever and if in that moment her strong grip did that so be it. We must have sat like that for a good twenty minutes before I calmed down. My eyes stung from the crying and my throat was hoarse. Shane went into the kitchen and retrieved a glass of water, she looked pretty shaken actually, I don’t think any of my friends have seen me fall apart. Sure they’ve seen me cry over trivial things but not like I had just done. I felt raw. Shane cleared her throat and handed me the drink carefully. She watched me sip slowly before she spoke. ‘I think you need to start talking about this fucked up situation Al and not to one of us, an outsider’.