Entry by AbiBee

~Winning entry of the Pride Month Flash Fiction Party Contest~

Sian Pritchard has sent you a friend request

During my first team meeting in a new job.

Shit. I'd been Facebook-stalking her for about two weeks, so the algorithms must've caught up with me. Now I'd have to choose whether to engage with her properly. I accepted surreptitiously and felt immediately it was the right thing to do, then re-focused on the meeting. I wondered whether I should send her a message, or whether she would. I felt nervous about getting back in touch.

With not actually being her Facebook friend up till now, I'd not been able to see much on her feed – mainly profile photo updates, and references to other platforms. But I could see enough to realise that Sian hadn't changed much since school (apart from growing up, obviously, and getting a lip piercing, lavender highlights and a lopsided pixie cut) and she took a good selfie. It felt reassuring, also nice, that she was even more outwardly lovely than she'd always been inside.

There was a cute blonde in most of the recent photos too, of whom I'd immediately felt a tiny irrational jealousy because she looked a bit like me but prettier. They seemed close.

*

Sorting through things at my parents', before moving to this new town and job, I'd found a box of old school stuff, and the letter that Sian had written to me when we were eleven. It'd been a class exercise: write to your hero, telling them why they mean so much to you. Being best friends since we'd been about four, Sian and I had immediately decided not to write to some distant celebrity but to write to each other. Reading the letter again after fifteen years, I realised with a pang of surprised guilt (and ache of pleasure) that she'd felt very deeply about me.

As I had her.

Guilt because we'd drifted apart after going to different senior schools, and I'd always thought that'd been my fault. Pleasure because somehow her eleven-year-old's pledge of undying friendship seemed to resonate even now. I felt sad that we'd lost touch, and the declarations of affection had proved premature.

That didn't mean I hadn't thought about her an awful lot over the years, though.

*

We chatted back and forth on Messenger, vaguely discussed meeting up. I got her current address (which by chance wasn't that far away, in the next big town). In the lonely evenings in my new flat, when time to think was all-too-abundant, I had to confront a few things which had been pushed into the background over the years.

Fortifying myself with a large glass of wine one night, I sat down to write her a second letter.

Dear Sian,

Do you remember the letters we wrote to each other in Year Six? I found yours recently, clearing out some stuff at home. It made me want to write again, because I think I need to explain a few things.

I'm sorry we lost touch after leaving primary school. I suppose new friends and new situations, and trying to fit in, got in the way at first. Then we moved away because of dad's work, and I never got a chance to tell you where we were going. I thought about you constantly, though. I feel so guilty for not making more of an effort to keep up our friendship, because it was one of the very best things in what was (admittedly) a pretty good childhood – it's only with hindsight that I can see just how much your friendship was fundamental to making my childhood as happy as it was. I hope you've found another bestie to love as fiercely as we loved each other back then.

Can eleven-year-olds love? Can they love fiercely? It certainly felt like it at the time.

I'm glad we're back in touch. I'd love to see you again, and hope that even if we've both inevitably changed, we can find some faint echo of what we had before. I'd love to have you back in my life, even at a distance or on an occasional basis.

But I need to be honest, if we're going to pick things up again.

Our friendship really marked me, I think even gave me an expectation of affection which has been deeply influential on my subsequent relationships. I have good girl-friends, but none quite like you. And I've had nice girlfriends (surprise?!) too, but even then – especially then, I should perhaps say – you've been somehow hovering in the background.

I know we parted ways long before either of us would even ever have thought about intimacy in a grown-up way. But what we had as kids seems to have set a benchmark for everything since – every sort of level of affection and closeness – and I really do feel that no-one has quite ever come up to the very high bar you set. I definitely have a piece of myself missing which is distinctly Sian-shaped. I didn't realise, until I found that letter and re-read it, and then started looking for you on social media, just how desperately and fundamentally I've missed you.

All that said, I should probably leave it there. But there is something I feel I have to add. I don't think I was ever going to be particularly into boys, as it happens, but it was you I thought about most when I was first struggling with liking girls. And it's girls in your mould I've sought out and ended up with ever since.

Just thought you should know, in case it changes things, before we commit to meeting up.

Lots of love,

Alicia xo

*

A week after my letter, Sian's Facebook feed announced she'd split up with the cute blonde. I received a hasty postcard:

Hey Alicia.

You've always been the only girl for me, in every sense. Then, now, always will be. Reckon we should meet, very soon.

Fierce love,

Sian xoxo