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The cardboard boxes in Simon’s passenger seat shudder with every turn. He’s headed out of London with twice as many trading cards as usual; Josh must have been stalking Simon’s calendar, because the night prior, he’d messaged him,
You in London tomorrow? Got a delivery in at Fanatics
Although Simon finds himself in London frequently enough that he never has to go too long without stopping at a trading card shop, a visit to Fanatics Collectables is never a hardship, so he’s glad for the excuse. Maybe buying has turned into therapy for him. JJ’s always dropping hints that Simon should start seeing someone, and although Simon can’t deny that therapy’s helped JJ, going to therapy feels like an admission that something’s wrong. He maintains that he’s fine, and when he’s not, Talia always makes him feel better.
So he’s never called. Until the buying stops working, he probably never will.
As Simon pulls into Josh’s drive, car bumping across the cobblestone, the boxes creak in protest. Simon has to agree with the boxes’ sentiment—the cobblestone looks nice but is distinctly unpleasant to drive on.
He’s unloading the boxes onto the ground when the front door slams shut. Josh appears on the front porch, wearing a fluffy white jumper and grinning widely. The sight makes Simon feel a little less ridiculous for the vague excitement he’s felt about the visit—it’s nice to see a mate outside of work, if only for a few minutes.
“Come help, then,” Simon calls. Josh is already halfway across the drive.
They divide the boxes between them and carry them inside in one load. It’s a strain, the edges digging into Simon’s hands and his thighs. He can’t help but notice how easy it is for Josh, how much more solidly built he is than Simon. He looks…lasting, in a way that Simon isn’t.
Some days, Simon feels like he might shrivel into nothing. Like his time on Earth was never supposed to last this long, or like everyone else is somehow more real than he is. Talia can always tell when he’s getting like that. She’ll curl herself against him and place her hand on his heart so that he has no choice but to feel the rhythm of his own life. Or she’ll ask him to do some easy task related to Juni, and there’s no way to change a baby’s socks and not be reminded of the beautiful responsibility entrusted to him.
But, outside of his and Talia’s bubble, life sometimes feels like a farce. As Simon asks about Josh’s garden and Josh explains that the Japanese maple they’d ordered was diseased so they’re getting a new one shipped in. As Josh asks about the baby and dogs and how Talia’s sister is doing.
Small talk, as if they’re acquaintances. Simon has always hated small talk.
Josh was always good at it.
In tandem, Simon and Josh heave the boxes onto the floor by Josh’s desk. Simon’s eyes light on the YouTube subscriber plaques on the wall, and he’s reminded again of how much has changed since the two of them met. He can never decide if it’s a relief or a tragedy. They’ve grown so much as individuals, and the world has grown around them, but in many ways, they’ve also grown apart. Gone are the days of all his mates living a stone’s throw away, of everyone being at the same stage in life. Now there’s wives for some and not others, kids for some and not others. Separate friendship groups and new interests and differing values.
It’s easier to slip into acquaintanceship when your friends aren’t who they were when you chose them. Simon has fought his whole life to not view relationships as temporary, and he tries to believe that, so long as there’s mutual affection, friendships will prevail. Nevertheless, he sees them falling apart around him.
Now, Josh is asking about Simon’s broken oven. Simon doesn’t have the heart to tell him it was fixed a month ago.
Josh is still one of the most important people in Simon’s life, but that role isn’t as significant as it was 5 or 10 years ago, back when Josh made up half of who Simon was. Their friendship is less, now, which feels bitterer than nothing.
“Hello?” Josh interrupts, eyebrows knitting. “You with me?”
Simon shakes himself. “Yeah. Just, fuck, nostalgia. I miss how things used to be.” He bites his lip. He’s feeling like everything he knows is slowly pulling away from him, so he admits, “Friendships are a moment in time, you know? I was never good at holding on to people. Or people never held onto me.”
He can’t hold onto people, but he’ll hold onto memories. Hoarding them in his phone like some pervert. There’s a selfie of him and Josh from four years ago in Dubai, and Simon’s blinking and Josh is sunburnt, but it reminds him of how Josh’d had his head pressed against Simon’s shoulder a moment before.
There’s a live photo from a party six years ago, Simon can’t recall the occasion, but it depicts Josh’s expression morphing into a laugh, as if Simon ever needs a reminder of what Josh’s joy looks like.
When Simon scrolls almost to the beginning of his camera roll, he’s got a photo from ten years ago. Josh had written “Josh was here” on Simon’s arm in pen. The words had burned like a tattoo, and as soon as Simon was alone, he’d snapped a photo without really knowing why.
These, and a dozen others, languish in his camera roll until he scrolls through looking for something else and feels the memories like a gut punch.
He’ll never delete them. He’ll die looking back at the past.
Josh is frowning, concerned, probably, by Simon being all emo about life. “Shit. I mean, are you okay? You’re—I’ll hold onto you, we’ll always be friends.”
Maybe so, but it’s the changing that aches. Like braces. Everything’s falling into place, and the lives Simon and all his mates have built for themselves are beautiful, but fuck if it doesn’t hurt to lose what once was.
He’s got to go home. He wants to prolong his time with Josh badly enough that he knows he has to be the one to cut the visit short. He couldn’t bear to be sent away if Josh finds himself too busy with new routines for an old friend.
“Well, I’ll—”
“We got a gazebo put in our garden.”
It’s an invitation. Simon wonders if it’s out of pity. Even if it is, Simon would be a hypocrite to decline—he’s got to accept the outstretched hand of a friend.
Although night is approaching and Talia and Juni are at home, they’re not expecting him back before 6:30, so he has time.
“Alright,” he agrees.
He tucks his hands in his coat pockets and follows Josh out back. The expansive lawn is bordered by tidy landscaping that will surely be gorgeous in spring when everything erupts into life. Towards the back, a line of trees betrays the stream that cuts through the property. Simon can see the decorative spire of the gazebo through the foliage, and the small bridge made of new wood leading to it.
As they trudge through the grass, remnants of fog still sticking to its blades, Simon feels moisture creeping in his trainers at the toes. He opens his mouth to complain, but as his eyes raise to Josh, walking ahead of him with measured steps, he thinks the better of it.
His pace speeds up, or maybe Josh slows down, but they walk in tandem to the bridge. The stream becomes audible, gurgling beneath the iced-over surface.
“Makes you want to crack it,” Josh says of the ice, pausing on the bridge to look over the edge. “See how heavy a rock it would take. See what kind of noise it would make as it shattered.”
Simon looks, too, at the little air bubbles that are pockets of the past, and the resilient edges of rock poking through. “It’ll crack soon enough,” Simon says. No sense in hurrying it along. It’s sort of pretty, whole and pristine as it is. “It’s supposed to hit 7º next week.”
“You don’t ever want to wreak havoc?” Josh turns to face Simon. “Forget what we should do and try something new?”
Simon shakes his head. “I’m a dad now. My havoc-wreaking days are behind me. And there’s better ways to try new things than breaking ice. Don’t disrupt the frogs’ lives, disrupt your own.”
“I like my life, though.”
“Good for you. I’m sure Freya’s glad of that.” Simon looks askance at Josh, who’s got that concentrated expression like he’s reading meaning into Simon’s words that he hadn’t intended. “Me, too. I like my life. I’m not disrupting it. Show me this gazebo, yeah?”
The short stone pathway snakes along the stream, through some reeds that might turn green and flower in the spring. Simon can imagine bees and butterflies darting through the shrubbery and wonders if, forty years from now, Josh and Freya will sit in the gazebo with books and binoculars, listening to the hum of life and reminiscing on theirs.
It’s a beautiful picture, like something out of one of the puzzles Freya always has out on the coffee table. Simon’s almost envious: of a future that doesn’t yet exist, of a peace he doesn’t think he gets to enjoy.
The gazebo, perched there on the stream bank, is small. It’s surrounded on three sides by water and hemmed in by reeds. The waist-high railing is held up by ornate balusters, everything a beautiful, freshly-painted pale green. A couple of chairs nestle beneath weatherproof canvas, and a built-in wooden bench curves along one of the walls. The gazebo fits five people comfortably, six at a stretch. It’s intimate.
The air inside the gazebo feels warmer; maybe the sloping ceiling captures heat during the day and is slowly releasing it for their comfort. Simon can smell fresh wood, damp earth, and the metallic tang of icy water. Something about the thud of footsteps on the floorboards and the evenly-spaced spindles makes Simon breathe a little easier. Or maybe it’s the way Josh is looking at him, in the same way he always did, like he can see and understand Simon fully.
“It’s nice,” Simon says, brushing an icicle with his fingertip. “Romantic.”
Josh huffs a laugh. “You could say that.”
It seems for a moment like Josh is going to say something else, but he never does. Instead, he sits on the bench, gaze skidding over the icy stream. He looks pale, the crisp winter light washing away his month-old tan from the Maldives, and tense with something deeper than the evening chill.
Simon sits beside him, the wood cold even through his trousers. Their spread knees hover an inch apart, but silence gapes between them.
It’s so quiet, outside of London. However long Simon has lived in the countryside, he can’t get used to it. The only sound is the muffled scream of water under ice, a reminder of the life beneath the deathly still surface. The inch-thick ice conceals the fast-moving currents and how the minnows carry on as if everything is normal, as if there isn’t an opaque ceiling hiding the sky.
A bird coos as the garden takes on the gilded sharpness of just before sunset.
Josh stares straight ahead as he cracks the quiet: “Do you remember the night we sat on the porch at the second Sidemen house?”
“2016, yeah? We watched for bats until four in the morning.”
“Yeah. Sharing a blanket on that awful iron bench.”
There’s a thickness in Josh’s tone that belies casual reminiscence. Simon listens to the leaves skitter across the gazebo floor, scraping out their fraught dance. He dislikes how fallen leaves are associated with autumn, yet they linger through winter, too, blended with the dullness, there for those who look for them.
They must have piled up for Josh, all those long-dead and dried-up possibilities. He surely didn’t plan to bring Simon out here and talk about the things they don’t talk about, but it happened anyway.
The breeze blows in fresh country air; one deep breath of it renews Simon’s spirit, invigorates him to say, “You made up your mind that night, didn't you. Something changed.”
Josh opens his mouth, then shuts it, looking away. “I figured you’d sensed it. When you said goodnight, it felt final. Like you were saying goodbye to…to a version of me.”
That was exactly what it had been. There was nothing concrete to point out. No tells in Josh’s words, no new space between them, nor lack of space. He was just as warm as usual, and just as stolid. Maybe a little somber, but who isn’t in the early hours of the morning, when faced with a faded sky only able to reveal its strongest stars to a hopeful audience?
But, as the night had drawn to a close, Simon felt it anyway, the resigned energy. So he’d gripped the blanket a little tighter, leaned into Josh when he felt chilly, and focused all his attention on the last few minutes they had before their eyes started dropping closed and they ran out of excuses for staying up.
Josh continues: “That was the night Freya and I almost broke up. She called to tell me I left my charger at hers, then before I knew it, we were arguing. And, in the middle of it, I had a thought so strong it was almost audible: I cannot lose her. So that was the night we decided on forever.”
He’s smiling faintly. He couldn’t know how surprising it is to hear that Josh’s life-altering fight had occurred the very night that remains etched in Simon’s brain as one of those where anything could happen. As they sat pressed together shoulder to hip, watching the sky, and speaking in lower voices than necessary, it had felt like the part of a game where the dialogue options start to have serious consequences for the ending. Simon didn’t think there were any right answers, and the ending he imagined wasn’t an option. Still, there’d been an air of possibility in Josh’s touch, in his words that so carefully danced along the line the two of them had created.
If Simon were to characterize it, he’d say the line was this: two arms, pressed together through thick sweaters. Nothing more, nothing less.
Simon bites his lip hard. “So you already knew. I wondered for years if you were so quiet that night because you were thinking through things.”
“I absolutely was.” Josh’s eye contact is intense, and Simon finds himself looking away. “The end was decided. But…I was imagining. Like It’s a Wonderful Life. If things were different, what would happen?”
“We’d miss our real lives. They always do in films like that.”
“We’d miss them because that’s how the films go, or because we like our lives?”
Simon shakes his head and kicks an acorn across the floor. It rolls off the side and falls inaudibly to the ground, somewhere into the reeds. “No use in imagining. You know we were never going to do anything about…anything.”
Josh laughs. “Vague. I like it.”
“I know you do.” There’s no bitterness in his tone, but Josh looks stung anyway, guiltily swinging his gaze away from Simon.
They sit in silence. The stream gurgles, and a premature owl raises its voice.
Josh adjusts his position. His knee bumps against Simon’s, and he lets it rest there. “Moment in time, you said. That’s probably right.”
On the timeline of Simon’s life, that five-year period straddling the Sidemen houses oscillates between a bright spot and a dark spot. Years of maybes that stung daily, years of almosts that rang in his head. But a time of closeness, of shared jokes and easy touches and lives melded into one.
It was also a time of uncertainty and insecurity, waiting for things to change and knowing they wouldn’t, wishing for more, wishing for fulfillment.
And yet, Simon had found joy in the knowing. Hours together, creating meaning from nothing. A friendship like a warm hot chocolate, with yearning a bitter aftertaste.
Back then, it had felt like drowning, but now, recalling the fall to the sea floor, he only sees the sun dancing on the surface and waving seaweed, and the ocean is a warm embrace.
He no longer feels the reality he knows existed: the screaming of his lungs, the burning of his eyes, how desperately he reached and grasped at nothing.
It’s just the cradle of the sea, and he imagines he can breathe the water like air.
A moment in time: beautiful for its brevity.
Josh is looking at him, smiling gently. Simon scoots closer and leans his head on Josh’s shoulder, like he did so many years ago, like he’s done so often since. Josh’s fleece is soft and warm against Simon’s cheek. And Josh pulls him in, arm heavy around him, like he always does.
In the last few years, as they’d busied themselves with their own lives, keeping conversation to easy topics, the practicalities of daily life, and the logistics of planning the future, Simon had almost forgotten the intimacy of sharing your heart. He’s usually reluctant to do so, but Josh is a good listener, and something about the frosty dusk has been encouraging.
Ten years ago, youthful bravado kept him silent. He wonders if this conversation is a turning point; maybe now, he’ll have the strength to be vulnerable when he needs to.
The sun’s setting now, and Simon raises his head to watch. Hot pink clouds hover like smoke above a fire-orange sky fragmented by trees. It’s so stunning it almost feels fake, so vibrant it’s almost touchable.
“Look,” Simon breathes. The sunlight skids across the stream, turning it into winding gold, a softer, flawed mirror of the sky.
“There’s something about sunsets,” Josh says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Things feel more important at the end of a day than the beginning.”
Simon sits back, spreading his arms across the railing as though he’s embracing the world, and for the moment, it feels like he is. New hope crests within him. He agrees, “I always liked sunsets better. Restful, sort of.” A reward for finishing the day. A promise of a new tomorrow.
“Yeah. Everything feels smaller when it’s behind you.”
How minuscule the problems of the past look now, but they’d been all-consuming when in the midst of them. For a centenarian, the stretch of time must seem extraordinarily small and silly. Every mountain is but a blip from half a world away.
They sit for a while longer, until the sun dips below the horizon and they find themselves bracing against the cold.
“I’ve got to get home to put Juni to bed,” Simon says finally.
Josh shakes himself from his reverie. “Right. I’ll walk you back.”
Josh leads him back down the paving stone trail and over the bridge, where damp footprints from their younger selves linger.
Simon thinks about how everybody is made new every so often. A movie, a missed train; a conversation, a moment’s hesitation—they all can change a life. A world exists where nothing was left unsaid. Where a dozen tweaks to the universe led to a drastically different conclusion. Simon doesn’t want that world. He’s got all he needs. He thinks of the moment he’ll recall on his deathbed: his and Talia’s first night at home as new parents. Her expression as they lay in bed and looked at each other, exhausted but so deeply in love, could carry him through war.
He wants this world, his own, where he’s reminded that he’s drowning in blessings.
Simon’s melancholia has subsided for now, drawn back like the tide, and he’s instead feeling achingly sentimental. He’s eager to see Talia, already picturing their evening. Talia will lean against the doorframe while Simon feeds Juni and describes the evening’s events. She’ll be kind enough to be insightful and smart enough to make him laugh. And that night, once Juni is asleep, Simon will hold Talia close and tell her, in words he uses too rarely, how much she means to him.
He doesn’t mind every missed opportunity, Josh’s selfishness, his own cowardice. He doesn’t mind because it brought him here. He’d say it was the universe working things out for his benefit, but he knows it’s not. It’s sheer, dumb luck that he found Talia. And he’d not trade her for anything.
He’s in his car, fingertips on the door handle. Josh’s hand curls over the top of the door, holding it for just a moment as he says, voice gentle, “Thanks for the cards. And the talk.”
“Any time,” Simon says. It’s the easy answer, the dismissive one that ignores anything of meaning. With intentionality, he raises his eyes to Josh’s face. His eyes are the same ones Simon had loved. He takes a shaky breath. “I’d done so much wondering. For years. Questioning everything. I can stop now.”
Josh swallows, eyes flickering between Simon’s his only betrayal of emotion. “Me too,” he admits. He pats the door, then steps away.
“See you Thursday,” Simon says.
“Yeah. Drive safe.”
Simon nods, then pulls his door shut and takes out his phone.
On my way home, Simon texts. I love you.