The kindergarten line gave Alexandria a series of firsts; her first best friend, her first love, and her first heartbreak. The small, scrawny boy that eventually shot up to be seven inches taller than her. It was the first day, and they were lined up single file outside of the classroom and waiting to go inside. She remembered noticing that he looked nervous and feeling bad for him, flashing him a smile. 

“Hi,” she greeted enthusiastically. “My name’s Alex. Who are you?” 

“I’m Bishop,” he mumbled. His voice was quiet, but Alex understood him just fine. 

Sometimes, Alex thought back to that first memory of him and wondered how he grew into such a loud, boisterous person. He seemed so scared back then, and now he feared nothing, only the magnitude of his own emotions. She wanted to continue the conversation. She wanted to be his friend, to help him feel less scared. 

“I really like your lunchbox,” she tried. It was green and Minecraft themed. She didn’t know much about the game herself, but she had seen her older brother playing it. They weren’t very close, considering he was about to graduate high school and wanted nothing to do with her. This comment coaxed a smile from Bishop, and Alex’s own only grew at the sight. 

“Thank you,” he said timidly. “Yours is pretty cool too.” 

          Their lunch boxes were polar opposites. Alex’s was pink and covered with sequins, the reversible kind that would form a new design if you flipped them. She held out her hand like she had seen businessmen do on TV and in her father’s office. He hesitantly took it, and she shook his hand with enthusiasm that would set the tone for the rest of their schooling days.

That was the start. A friendship was formed that would still be going strong twelve years later. Alexandria and Bishop only grew closer as time went on and they got older. Of course, they met other people and made other friends, but first and foremost, they would always have each other. On that fateful September morning, Alexandria Bouras and Bishop Boadu became a package deal.

In the blink of an eye, they were teenagers, seventeen and starting senior year. Bishop creeped up behind Alex at her locker and lightly tugged on her ponytail. Despite how much he liked to tease her, he knew better than to actually piss her off. She immediately whipped her head around, and all the tension in her body relaxed when she saw that it was Bishop.

“ATB! What’s cooking?” His smile was audible in his words. 

She gave a reluctant smile at his antics. “I have a quiz after first period and a project due after lunch, so a lot,” she replied seriously, although there was still a smile playing at the edge of her lips. 

He grabbed the majority of her books, as was typical for them when they had classes together. He always offered to grab everything, and she always refused. Regardless, she always seemed to be swimming in textbooks and notebooks and homework, so he wanted to help lighten the load. They set out to their class, talking aimlessly about school gossip. That was what Alex loved so much about Bishop; she didn’t have to try around him. She could just be herself, and it didn’t feel like work. The rest of her life didn’t feel the same, with college just around the corner and her applications screaming at her from her computer screen to just hit submit. But no matter how hard she tried to convince herself that it was fine, they just didn’t feel good enough. She didn’t feel good enough.

“Why are you actually putting a lot of thought into this?” Bishop questioned from where he sat on Alex’s bed. “Just apply to some random schools overseas and call it a day.” She rolled her eyes from her desk, disregarding his later sentence.

“Hm, I don’t know, Bishop. Maybe it’s because these stupid essays determine if I succeed in life and achieve everything I’ve ever wanted or if I become a huge failure.” Her tone was short and clipped, and it was obvious that she wasn’t in the mood for conversation. He furrowed his brows at her words and moved closer to her.

“You know that’s not true, right?” He said seriously. “Alex, I’m being serious. You’ll still be successful even if you don’t get into your dream college.” She rolled her eyes at his words and continued typing.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve heard the spiel from my counselors.” Bishop knew his words weren’t getting to her. 

“Alex, look at me,” he commanded. “Like, actually shut your computer and turn around. I’m serious.” She rolled her eyes again but gave in, spinning her chair around. She looked at him expectantly, waiting for what he had to say. He stood up in front of her and placed his hands on her shoulders, looking her directly in the eye.

“Alexandria Thea Bouras.” She cringed at his use of her full name but continued listening. “You’re insanely smart, and I believe that you can do anything you put your mind to, including getting into whatever school you want. But even if you don’t, that doesn’t take away from how accomplished and incredible you are. Do you understand? Like, are you actually hearing and comprehending and hearing the words coming out of my mouth?” 

Alex sighed and nodded, standing up and wrapping her arms around him. She went up on her tiptoes and rested her head on his shoulder, groaning quietly.

“Thank you,” she mumbled against his T-shirt. “You always know just what to say. I know you’re probably annoyed with me with how much I’ve been obsessing over this crap the past month. Thank you.” Bishop felt like there were gymnasts in his stomach, but he just ignored them and hugged her back.

“Of course I do. I’ve known you for almost too long at this point,” he joked. “Seriously, ATB. Don’t worry about it. You’re okay.”

She pulled away from him and hit him playfully. “You’re so cringy,” she smiled. “I need a distraction. No more thinking about college tonight. I need to live in the moment.”
“Oh, I’m cringy?” Bishop rebutted, cocking his head. Nonetheless, he made room for her on the bed, and they just talked about anything and everything but college until he had to go. Their first quarter of senior year passed by in a flash. Bishop had convinced her to let loose and go to a Halloween party with him. Matching, of course. 

Alex walked into the party arm in arm with Bishop, her eyes widening in surprise as she saw the majority of the room turning to look at them. They quickly became occupied by talking to acquaintances whose company they pretended to enjoy. They were approached by two girls wearing animal ears and not much else.

“Hey guys!” One of them greeted, going on her tiptoes to hug Bishop by wrapping her arms around his neck. He let go of Alex–who sent him a confused look at the action but said nothing–to hug her back. “Y’all look so good! I see what you’re doing with the Beast Boy and Raven. Super cute.” She winked at Alex after referencing their costume. The other girl she was with smiled politely at her and started small talk with her about a class they shared. Before she knew it, she and Bishop were separated, and she was standing awkwardly as the other girl walked away to join her friend. She went to the kitchen to grab a drink, but she was intercepted on her way by a boy she vaguely recognized from her English class.

“Can I get you anything?” He asked, flashing her a smirk. She refrained from rolling her eyes at his smugness.

“Pick whatever you think is best,” Alex responded neutrally. He tossed her a can that she barely caught, and not without fumbling. She took a swig of the drink the boy had given her and set out toward the girl she had chatted with earlier; she looked just as lonely as Alex imagined herself looking at that same moment. Before they could engage in any real conversation, Alex saw Bishop walking downstairs with a girl on his arm. Every inch of visible skin was painted green because of his costume. She had a tinge of that same green paint surrounding her mouth, and Alex wrenched her eyes off the pair as she pressed an innocent kiss on his lips, Bishop turning towards her invitingly. She dropped her drink, the can immediately spilling all over the rug she was standing on.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” The girl exclaimed worriedly, looking at Alex with concern.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Alex responded immediately in as steady a tone as she could manage. “I just might have had too much to drink. I’m going to get some fresh air.” Anyone with eyes and a brain could tell that was a lie. She made her way outside hurriedly, running a hand through her hair. She had no idea where she was, whose house this was, but they had a pool. She sat at the edge of it and dipped her feet in after slipping her heels off. 

The sounds of the party were muffled yet still very audible, but there was hardly anyone outside. She took in deep breaths, still frazzled. Her breath and hands were shaky, and it was scaring her. She didn’t notice another figure making his way next to her until she heard the soft splish of his feet entering the water. He moved her dark curls to one side, exposing part of her neck. She jumped at the motion, standing up and splashing water out of the pool. 

“Bishop, what the hell are you doing?” She yelled, backing further away from him. He only looked at her with genuine confusion.

“What do you mean? I-I saw you out here and you looked messed up. I just wanted to make sure you were okay, okay?” His voice trailed off towards the end of his statement. “I-I’m sorry?” 

She huffed in frustration. “Why are we even here?” she asked timidly. “Why did you take me here?” Her voice got smaller with each word.

“Alex, I’m so sorry, but I really don’t know what you mean,” he repeated, and she immediately fired back.

“Yes you do!” She burst out. “Yes, you do, Bishop.” Her throat tightened at the end of her sentence. Please, not now, she begged silently. Please just let me remain composed, just this once. Bishop just looked at her with those same confused eyes. Those eyes that had grown up with her, that she had stared into for the last twelve years, that usually made all the tension and stress in her body disappear with a simple glance. The eyes that were supposed to be the one constant in her life, keeping her grounded and sane.

“God, Bishop,” she sighed defeatedly, avoiding eye contact at all costs. He stood up and grabbed her chin, pulling her face up to look at him. She avoided his gaze, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Just tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded, his voice small and desperate. “Please, Alex.”

        She sniffled, still using every ounce of willpower to not let her tears fall down her cheeks.  “Why…why would you invite me and try so hard to convince me to go if you were just going to go hang out with some other girl? What are you trying to do?”

         “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would bother you like that. It wasn’t my intention to upset you, I promise. I…I really care about you.” He sounded desperate. “I don’t know, Alex, I-I don’t know.”  

Alex scoffed. If she talked, she would cry. She felt so unreasonable. Something like this shouldn’t bother her; it was so inconsequential and understandable. He was an attractive, straight teenage boy, of course he would kiss girls at a party. So why did she have a problem with it?

“Please don’t cry,” Bishop said softly. Of course, those words were the thing that sent her over the edge. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she tried to keep her breathing as controlled as possible.

“I just don’t understand,” she cried. “Why-” Before she could get another word out, Bishop leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. It was impulsive, thoughtless, and they both knew it. Her breath hitched in her throat. Her eyes remained wide open, completely stunned. She couldn’t kiss back; she couldn’t do anything. Her hands stayed stiffly at her sides. He pulled away and grabbed her face with both hands. She couldn’t stand to look him in the eyes, averting his gaze. 

“Let me take you back to mine. Please.” She nodded slowly, gaining some of her senses back. Her face flushed as she realized the magnitude of the situation and fully felt the rough pads of his fingers against her cheeks and jaw. She followed his lead back to the car and got into the passenger seat. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she felt chillingly numb. As he parked in the driveway after a ride thick with silence and started to get out, Alex put a hand over his. He stopped immediately, turning to look at her expectantly and slightly surprised. 

“I don’t want anything to change,” she said definitively, looking up at him with wide, slightly swollen, red eyes. 

“I know,” he whispered. “I know you, Alexandria.”

Her stomach flipped at his use of her full first name as she got out and followed the path automatically up to the room she had become more familiar with than her own room over the years. The house was comforting in its normalcy and steadiness; it had looked the same since the first time Alex came over in kindergarten. She placed her heels down neatly by the door to Bishop’s room and flopped into his bed. He laid down gently next to her, and there they remained for what felt like forever. There was something disgustingly intimate about how close they had become over the night. Alex felt that something had changed forever, but she pushed it down deep and tried to relish the feeling of his hand on her back.

The rest of their senior year entailed stressful nights for the both of them. Nights that ended in them waking up in the same bed, pressing chaste kisses behind each other’s ears and basking in the glow of youthful joy that they could only feel with one another. They never talked about it, just got up every morning and went about their day as if it was exactly the same as all the days that had come before.

“Do you ever just want to run away to another place where you don’t know anybody?” Bishop wondered after one of those nights as he ran his fingers anxiously along Alex’s thigh. 

“That sounds terrible, B,” Alex muttered tiredly into his bare shoulder. “Why would you want to not know anybody?”

“I think I would like it,” Bishop said. “A fresh start, no one expecting you to be anything.” He hesitated before speaking again. “I think I want that. I’ve been thinking about applying to college in Australia. Melbourne or something. What would you think about that?”

“Do what makes you happy,” she mumbled, closing her eyes and pulling him closer to him.

Their arrangement was strange, but Alex didn’t protest. She needed comfort, and Bishop could provide it to her. She didn’t have the time for nor want anything more complicated to develop. Their senior year passed by in a blur of lasts, and one morning Alex woke up in Bishop’s bed and had to rush home to put on her cap and gown. 

Graduation felt like an official end to her childhood; after that day, she would have to start acting like an adult instead of a tall child. She wasn’t valedictorian, but Bishop’s comforting words had helped her forget how much it stung. She had gotten into the school that she wanted, the one with the prestigious pre-med program that was only an hour from home. After the ceremony, many tears shed by Alex, and a brief but intense sobbing session from Bishop, they were sitting in Bishop’s backyard. Her head rested on his shoulder as they sat in comfortable silence, watching the sun set over the town where they had spent their whole lives.

“ATB, I have something to tell you,” Bishop said uneasily. Alex sat up and looked at him immediately.

“Of course, anything.” 

He sighed, running his hands over his thighs. “I got in.”

Alex looked at him, confused. “What are you talking about, Bishop? You got in where?”

“Melbourne.” He sucked in a breath.

Her brows furrowed. “As in Melbourne, Australia?” 

He nodded grimly, looking at her to get some sense of her feelings. Alex was too stunned to speak. She stared at him in shock, her mouth moving wordlessly and trying to find the words that would never express the pain that had just hit her heart. 

“It’s okay, Alex. You’re going to the school of your dreams, and I’m going to mine. I know you’ll meet new people there, and you’ll still have friends from high school that are staying close by,” he added desperately, sensing that this wasn’t going as smoothly as he hoped.

 Every emotion that she had suppressed in hopes of keeping her friendship stable tumbled out of her like an avalanche. 

“You’re my only friend, Bishop,” Alex sobbed. Tears that had waited years to fall finally did, streaking her foundation. She gasped for breath and turned away from him to hide her face. “I don’t know anyone else. I don’t talk to anyone else. It’s you, only you. My whole life, it’s only been you, and now you’re leaving the entire damn country!”

“We still have most of the summer,” he uttered. 

Alex whipped her head around and stared through him with a ferocity he only saw in his nightmares. “That’s what you’re focused on? You must be joking. I can’t believe you right now, Bishop. Why would you start…whatever you started with me if you were just planning on leaving a million miles away?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” His calm tone was firmer now.

“Don’t you dare pull this crap with me. You know exactly what I’m talking about!” She screamed at him through her tears, and she felt like her words just bounced off of him and into the endless night sky, her deepest thoughts disappearing into the abyss forever. He didn’t say anything, just stared with those godforsaken eyes that had haunted Alex since Halloween.

“What have we been doing, B? Spending all those nights together, just for you to abandon me? What is wrong with you? You’re messed up in the head.”

“Who do you think you are? You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he spat out. He spoke in a tone Alex had never heard him use with her before, and it terrified her, quite frankly.

“If you think I haven’t loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you, you’re the one who’s messed up in the head. I love you to death, and I never wanted to do anything to upset you! I thought…” His voice trailed off as his throat constricted. He took some deep breaths and looked up. “I thought you didn’t want it. I thought you didn’t want to fight for this.”

Alex hung her head between her legs, sobbing into her hands. “So it’s my fault then? Why are you leaving?” She demanded. “Why would you leave when we can finally do something about this?” 

That did it for him. The tears broke through and started rolling down his cheeks in fat droplets. “Alexandria, I love you so much. But I need to leave. You like staying close to home, and that’s incredible. But I need to see the world. If I stay in this place my whole life, I don’t know how much more of it I’ll live.” He sniffled. “They offered me a scholarship. I couldn’t not take it. I’m sorry, I’m so, so, sorry. I can’t stay here.” 

Alex didn’t respond; she just kept sobbing. She felt frayed at the edges. She didn’t know how she could go on without him, but she guessed she would have to find a way. She looked at him sniffling, her eyes still filled with tears. His face crumpled at how vulnerable and broken she looked. It was honestly unsettling for her, watching the person she looked to as her rock come undone in front of her.

“But I love you,” she begged through her tears as his own began falling harder. He moved closer to her, continuing to whisper ‘I’m so sorry’ and took her into his arms, just holding her as they sat in the yard and slept away their childhood.

He never came back.

At least not when Alex cared about it. She visited his family on every holiday, checking to see if he was there, but he never was. She completed her undergraduate degree without him. She became a person without him, something she never expected to see herself do. She finally trusted herself enough to go farther from home for medical school. She had accepted the fact that she would never have the courage to leave the country so brazenly like Bishop did, and that was okay. She surprised herself with going as far as she did. It wasn't a comfortable driving distance, and she wasn’t about to waste a day of her precious break to drive to her hometown. 

Fate worked in her own mysterious ways. As Alex sat at her airport terminal, she knew her eyes were deceiving her. She was somewhat sleep deprived, and she blamed it on that. But even as she tried to tell herself it couldn’t be, she knew. She knew that walk, that nose, those eyes. Those sparkling eyes that met hers in a mixture of shock and emotion that she wasn’t used to seeing as of late. An emotion that she wasn’t used to seeing appear in his eyes.

Hope.