Cold Coffee.

As Enrique gazed out the window, watching the trees sway in the breeze, he couldn’t help but think of him. The years had passed much faster than he had expected and if it hadn’t been for his class distracting him, he would have realized that the four year mark had just passed.

Enrique drew his legs to his chest, trying to ignore the ache he felt when he thought of his death. Four years should have been enough time to grieve, yet still he could not stop. He hadn’t even known him for a year when it happened but they had grown so close so fast that it still felt as though he had lost a lifelong friend.

It was these feels that made him so angry towards those who believed someone you only met and talked to on the internet was not a real friend. Enrique would look at them with a harsh look in his eyes and tell them that sometimes internet friends were more real than offline ones. But though Enrique said that, he would then recall that he would never have met him if not for an offline friend.

“Ahh…” He sighed, “Sometimes I’m jealous of him. At least he got to meet him in person.”

And it was because of that friend’s connection with his sister, he thought, that meant they found out about his coma and eventual death.

His thoughts drifted to more positive memories before once again recalling that he had begun to fancy him. Something that had only been realized when his heart skipped a couple beats when he had suggested he come back to Laredo for his birthday and that this time they would actually meet.

Enrique often wondered if that niggling feeling was the reason he still was in partial denial over his death. As every year around this time he would lurk on the sites they had both frequented, in the vain hope that it was all some nasty joke.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking those thoughts was both depressing and exhausting. ‘What if’s’ did not change what had actually happened. The dark had gathered outside as he had stared blankly out into it, lost in thoughts as dark as the outside world had become. But at least, he thought, he had finally stopped crying.