“How do you know you’ve made a friend?” he asked.
She smiled as they walked musing airily on the question.
“Behave as if you have,” she answered. “Give. Share. Show. Be vulnerable. Be open. Express what it is you want known and to say. Offer. Give,” she said again. “If you’ve made a friend, it will be received, honored, and in time and trust—reciprocated too.”
“And if not?”
“Why overthink looking first for worst? If not, then you don’t have to wonder, and the loneliness is not on account of fear or the lack of ever trying. It simply wasn’t right. Why trouble with further worry?”
She smiled still as they walked on trail through open of the park. Through gray of sky, sun shone through in flame of white light halo burn-opening to the blue.
They passed beside a row of sycamores, tall and white in their strip of bark, with its large amber leaves piled neat in mass and windbreak of the row. The sycamores made him think of the countryside, planted windbreaks in fence lines of fields when farming was still small. He imagined the park as then and so—before city surrounded and enclosed; when its modern heart was still a hinterland in first settlement and founding.
It was a simple thought—common and plain—but, still, he wanted to share and for her to know but lacked the words just then.
He would put it in a story, share for her to see in way that, when right, he would give in free and open offer.
He enjoyed her presence. He enjoyed her time; the way when, with her, he wanted to offer, share, and be seen—to no longer guard and hide himself away.
He hoped he’d found a friend, and in the hope and halo light, loneliness departed.