The house smelled faintly of lavender, clean sheets, and something deeper—an ache that settled in the corners like dust no one dared disturb. Sunlight spilled through gauzy curtains, painting the bed in soft gold. It was here that Nora lay, her once-vibrant eyes dulled by months of illness, her voice no more than a whisper most days. And beside her, always, was June.
They had been best friends since second grade, when Nora punched a boy in the stomach for making fun of June’s hand-me-down shoes. “Friends look after each other,” she said then, hands on her hips. That had been the start of everything.
Decades passed—laughter-filled dorm rooms, heartbreaks soothed over midnight calls, weddings, children, moves, shared silences, and coffee dates that stretched into dusk. They knew everything about each other. Every scar, every story. They had even joked once, over wine, “Let’s get old together, and raise hell in the nursing home.”
But things hadn’t gone quite that way. Cancer didn’t care about promises. When the treatments stopped working, Nora said no to hospitals, no to machines. She wanted the sky outside her window. She wanted the sound of rain on the roof. And she wanted June.
So June moved in.
She read aloud when Nora’s eyes were too tired. She played Nina Simone and Billie Holiday softly on a record player. She brushed Nora’s thinning hair each morning and tucked her in gently each night. And when the pain grew sharp, June held her hand through the storm, whispering, “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Some days, Nora was lucid enough to talk.
“Do you remember the summer we got lost in the woods?” she murmured one afternoon, the words barely pushing through dry lips.
June chuckled softly, adjusting the blankets. “You refused to admit we were lost until it got dark. You said, ‘Wilderness is just a misunderstood friend.’”
“Still true,” Nora said, a flicker of her old fire in her voice.
They laughed—gently, carefully—and then the silence settled between them again. Not uncomfortable, just full. Like a shared knowing.
When the end came, it was quiet. Nora’s breathing slowed in the still of early morning. June had fallen asleep in the chair beside her, her hand still wrapped around her friend’s frail fingers.
She woke to the stillness, the kind that says something has left. June didn’t cry right away. She sat there, tracing the fingers she’d held a thousand times before. Then, leaning forward, she pressed her lips to Nora’s forehead.
“Thank you for letting me walk you home.”
Outside, the sun rose like it always did. Inside, June sat for a long time, holding memory like a fragile flame.
And the house, though quieter now, still held the echoes of a lifelong friendship—the kind that doesn't end, only changes shape.
The End.
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