There’s a bit of blue up above, just past the awning, but also reflected in the bedrizzled tarmac all around, fizzling past the orange-brown trailblazers of autumn, crunched up and sleeping in little puzzling puddles, who went too fast and too hard this summer and said, you know what, that was a great time, I’m done, let’s give September a whirl.

It’s August 5th and you have one headphone on, the other tucked behind your left ear. There’s a vague natter dribbling in from happy hour locals. And in your right ear something shimmering and infinite.

It was absolutely ages ago.

A caveman, maybe a neanderthal? stood at the edge of a rocky cliff, at the border of a forest, overlooking plains painted by the sunset, with little meandering (actually the technical term here) rivers snaking across them like those shitty marble paintings you did as a kid, which hadn’t been invented yet, and neither had you.

He stared into the distance. He didn’t have any headphones in and didn’t have any sunglasses on, which was fine by him because neither cataracts nor eye cancer were a thing at that point, and Spotify subscriptions hadn’t been invented either.

He was all alone because he’d gone off in a huff, because his mate pissed him off by hogging all the mammoth steaks. But he was feeling a bit calmer now and decided that he might forgive him, although he couldn’t really articulate it because both language and therapy were still in their infancy. So he sighed and said “ug”, and perched himself on a little rock to watch the last of the light.

Gary tried. He really tried. I loved him anyway and I love him even more for trying. But he never got it quite right. I guess I knew what I was getting myself in for, choosing to let myself love someone from Grarslap 5! It was all in all quite a nice birthday. And yes the cake was full of lamb’s liver. But it also had chocolate in! Genuine human-edible chocolate! And mandarins. Last year it was rocks and raw sewage. So he’s getting better! He’s getting better. I love you Gary.

On Saturday he stayed in. He made an omelette and watched a VHS of Blind Date from 1995. There was a couple called Jo and Karl who really hated each other and there was chorizo in his omelette. He sipped on his too-fizzy soda-streamed ginger beer. There was an advert for Radox. A secret blend of thirteen herbs. From outside a cat, who had not been alive at the time of filming, watched Cilla curiously through the cracked-open blacked-out window.

Sometimes I press delete too many times.

And then I realise that I’ve run out of time and I can’t really fit anything in at all.

A column of hot wet rain shook itself over the city as we dipped below the clouds. I watched it through the little porthole window as I nibbled on my soggy croissant and rehydrated orange juice. Watched it as it licked the tiles of the rooves, of the cafes and the clubs and the homes and the hospitals and the fire stations. And it didn’t come to us yet, it just hovered there, fat and methodical, wiping the dirt off the towers and feeding the window boxes. Until we got a little bit closer and it started to spit and spatter on the windows and say, hi, good to see you again, come join the party. Everything’s going to be fine.

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I’ve never seen anyone light anyone up the way you two do each other. I didn’t know people could smile with every muscle of their faces all at the same time. As if every fibre is electrified. Like you’ve been tasered in the cheek. By each other. I guess that’s why you’re glowing. Bright and strong but fast and fragile. Like the light bulbs I got from Tesco last week. I don’t know what wattage I’m meant to get. Does anyone? Last night I cooked a lasagne at 10 o’clock but it might as well have been daylight. And then the bulbs broke and slivers of glass went all over the floor. I ate my meal in the dark with my feet covered in blood. I wonder if that’s what you’ve got to look forward to.

Three blocks away, a small woman in an orange dress tied up the laces on her new trainers. On her lap was the half-eaten croissant she’d been nibbling on, wrapped in a flyer for a one-woman comedy show about subsistence farming. A fine mist of grease was soaking through the paper.

The boy with the keys checked his watch. He was pretty early so he had no grounds for complaint. He watched the cars zoom by to the left, inspecting the drivers and the passengers and wondering where they were going and what they’d had for breakfast. And then he looked to the sky and watched the clouds floating gently to the right, and wondered where they were going, and what they’d had for breakfast.

On Thursday, for the sixth time, they decided that, from now on, they would be just friends.

Just.

They have loads of other friends. Most of them are friends. That’s it. A few best friends. Some old friends, a couple of oldest friends. Some family friends. If you’re a friend, it can be anything. It can be wonderful. Rosé on the beach. Late night phone calls. Or it can be not much at all really. A hug and a chinwag at a birthday party once a year. Just friends. Is a special kind of nothing at all. Where it’s actually everything, put in a little drawer and locked with a key.