— MIA —
Driving home, six years earlier in mind
I remember everything.
That's the problem with happy moments—you remember them too clearly. Every detail remains imprinted somewhere deep, like a photograph that does not fade. And then, when it's all over, those same photos hurt in a way that nothing else hurts.
But then—that Saturday in October, when I was sixteen years old—I knew none of that.
We were in Ryan's and my apartment, all three of us on the living room floor, surrounded by leftover pizza and empty soda bottles. Ryan was nineteen, which meant that the apartment looked like it had been in a storm—but a storm with a soul, somehow warm and alive in a specific way that was only Ryan's and mine.
There was a movie on the TV that none of us had watched.
"This is the most boring movie I've ever seen," I said, throwing a peanut in the air and trying to catch it in my mouth. I missed it. The peanut flew somewhere under the sofa.
"You weren't even looking at him," Ryan said without looking up from the ceiling.
"Neither do you."
"Exactly."
To my right, Damien quietly turned the page of the book. I noticed because I had been watching him out of the corner of my eye for about twenty minutes—discreetly, the way you watch something that annoys you, that interests you. He was reading some thick thing with a cover without a picture, completely uninterested in the movie, in the conversation, in the peanut.
What are you reading?" I asked.
He looked up. Dark gray eyes, flat and calm, like the surface of a windless lake. At the time I still didn't know what to do with that look — now I know I should have gone to the other end of the room.
"Dostoevsky," he said.
"Is that a first or last name?" A hint of something—perhaps amusement, perhaps just tolerance—passed through his expression.
"Surname."
"And? Is it a good book?"
"Depends on what you want from a book."
Ryan threw a pillow at Damien, who caught it without looking. "Don't philosophize to my sister. She's sixteen."
"I'm sixteen, I'm not a baby," I said automatically.
"You were just throwing a peanut in the air and catching it with your mouth."
"It's a sport!"
Damien looked back at the book, but I saw—or thought I saw—the corner of his mouth quiver slightly. Almost a smile. Almost.
Late afternoon turned into evening and none of us mentioned leaving. I loved those moments — when time stops measuring and you simply exist somewhere, between one moment and the next, with no obligations and no future.
Ryan fell asleep on the sofa around seven. No warning, no ceremony—he simply closed his eyes with his hand over his face as if he was shielding himself from the light. He always slept like that, as if sleep caught him unprepared.
I stayed with Damien in silence.
There should have been an awkward silence. He was older, different, someone I only knew through Ryan—but the silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was... calm. It was as if we agreed that we didn't have to say anything.
"Why are you his friend?" I asked at the end, quietly so I wouldn't wake up Ryan.
Damien closed the book. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"You don't look like someone who has friends."
This time the smile was real—short, asymmetrical, but real. "And what does someone who has friends look like?"
"I don't know. Different from you." I stopped. "That was a compliment, not a criticism."
"I know," he said.
I watched Ryan sleep. I watched the way his chest rose and fell, and I felt that specific form of love that has no name—the kind you don't say out loud because you don't know how.
"Take him to good places," I said quietly. "I know he hangs out with some people he shouldn't be with. Take him to good places, please."
The silence lasted a little longer than I expected.
"I'm trying," Damien said.
Something in the tone of those two words—something I couldn't read then, but now I would recognize immediately—made me look at him. But he was already looking back at the book.
If I was older, I might have asked what it meant.
But I was sixteen and Ryan was sleeping soundly and the day was beautiful, and I didn't ask anything.
It's a mistake I carry with me.
If I had asked, maybe everything would have been different. Maybe it wouldn't. But I wish I had asked.
✦ ✦ ✦
— DAMIEN —
Driving home, that same night six years ago in mind
I left around midnight. Ryan was still asleep. Mia fell asleep half an hour after him, curled up on the floor with a pillow under her head, a handful of peanuts she'd never caught scattered around her. I didn't wake her up. I grabbed my coat from the chair, turned off the kitchen light that Ryan had left burning, and walked out quietly.
Cold air greeted me outside. October in this city always smells like wet asphalt and something you can't name — some kind of end, some kind of beginning.
I lit a cigarette and started walking.
Ryan was the only person in the world that I knew for sure didn't have an ulterior motive, he was honest. That's rare. In the world I grew up in—the world I learned to function in—every man wants something from you. Every smile hides something. Every hand dealt has a price.
Ryan just came into my life like he didn't know the rules. Crazy, loud, no filter. And somehow — that remained.
But I knew, even then, that I couldn't protect him forever.
I was already deep in things that you can't get out of so easily. Ryan was teetering on the edge—getting involved with the wrong people, taking money where it shouldn't be, thinking he could walk between two worlds without being pulled by one of them. I was talking to him. I told him several times, in different ways, as much as I could without saying too much.
He didn't listen.
Ryan never listened.
I thought of Mia's words as I walked through the night city.
"Take him to good places."
Sixteen years and she looked at me like she thought I could do it. As if I am someone who leads people to good places, and not someone who comes from a place of no return.
I should have told her then. I should have said: I can't be his salvation, no one can be salvation to someone who doesn't want to be saved. I should have said that Ryan is a good man but that good people can make bad choices and no one else can change that for them.
I didn't say any of that.
I said: I'm trying.
And that was the truth, as far as it was possible.
I stopped at the corner of the street and looked up. The sky was clear, as full of stars as you can see in the city—not many, but enough to know they were there.
Ryan will take a wrong step one day. I knew it the way you know things you don't want to know—quietly, surely, somewhere in the pit of my stomach. The question was not whether he will do that. The question was when he will do that.
And the question was: would I be close enough to catch him?
Or will I be the reason for the fall?
I threw the cigarette on the asphalt and continued walking.
I had no answer that night.
Years later, I learned I never had one.
✦