You didn't announce yourself. No dramatic music, no title card. Just an afternoon, like any other. Grey sky, light jacket weather, and the kind of quiet that doesn't feel ominous.

Yet.

We walked from the drugstore to the bowling alley to the pizza parlor that night, holding hands in silence. At that time, my grip was different—like I could stop the world from turning if I just didn't let go.

We weren't doing anything special. Just killing time. Hanging out. Just existing together in the same soft pocket of the universe where your smile still had energy and your eyes didn't look so tired.

I remember the warmth of your palm in mine as we crossed parking lots under flickering street lamps. You pointed at someone's broken Halloween decoration and said it looked like how we both felt: held together with tape and barely hanging on.

And we laughed.

We laughed so much that night. But it was the kind of laughter you ration when you're afraid it might run out.

We leaned on each other while playing arcade games like we did when we were kids, even though the doctor had already said the words we didn't want to bring into our night.

We shared pizza at a red vinyl booth and I watched you fold your napkin a hundred different ways. I could feel it—an unspoken agreement between friends to keep the illusion going just a little longer.

Because we knew. Of course we knew. We were smart. We were tuned into the frequency of each other's hearts.

We just didn't want to say it out loud.

You were the last ordinary night. The last time I got to see her as herself. Before the hospitals. Before the fundraisers. Before the wig. Before the kind of silence that lives in white-painted hallways.

Just her. Just us. Just a Friday night.

And I've carried you ever since. Not in sadness, not exactly, but like a pressed flower in the pages of my favorite book: fragile, fading, forever beautiful.

This has been a love letter to a forgotten thing.

And though I've kept going, I can't shake the feeling the world has been cheated. That you were meant to keep making it softer, brighter, more bearable.

The years that fell through your fingers brushed mine—quiet reminders of what we all lost.