Saying goodbye to Sakura as she moved away from Hawai'i felt like helplessly watching the door close on the most formative time of her life.

It stung to let go of her childhood, of the life she once dreamed of manifesting in half-empty scrapbooks and long-forgotten Pinterest boards. Saying goodbye forced her to acknowledge that life rarely worked in the ways everyone envisioned for themselves.

She remembered it in shattered flashes of kaleidoscopic light—the bright warmth of summer sun rays hitting her tan skin, sporadic warnings above doors not meant to be entered, the sparkle of a child's eye when they were surprised with the news they would be in Disneyland soon. Spencer couldn't quite recall the exact look on Sakura's face as she waved from the security line, but she remembered how seeing it made her feel. When she returned home, her sister Morgan asked if she was okay because she looked like she had been crying.

"Leave me alone," Spencer had said, rubbing away at her smudged eyeliner.

Getting used to a life without Sakura didn't happen overnight. Truthfully, it started before she stepped on that plane. And it took years for any of it to feel somewhat normal. Spencer, Sakura, and Hawai'i. Spencer and Hawai'i. Sakura and San Francisco. Spencer. Sakura. They were two people living in different cities, growing into different lives, who could recognize each other's laughter no matter where they went. Yet Spencer found herself rewatching old videos of their time together, reminiscing about a friendship that lived somewhere in the recent past.

Sakura used to wear her hair in a pixie cut throughout high school, but now, it hung in soft waves that softened the sharp angles of her face. She dressed differently than the last time they saw each other—more polished, more mature—but her face retained a youthfulness that reminded Spencer of all their years spent together.

"Spencer! Hi!"

They embraced. Sakura always had a habit of squeezing so tightly that Spencer had a hard time breathing. At that moment, she needed it more than anything.

"How was your flight?" Sakura stepped back. The scent of her favorite tiare-scented oil was unmistakable. "Does the food still suck? Did you get any sleep?"

Spencer swallowed, suddenly overwhelmed again by the reality of what she was doing. But had nowhere to turn back to. No flight she could easily book and hop on at that time at night. And even if she could, she couldn't return to her apartment. Not while he was likely still packing up the last of his things. Spencer couldn't handle going home to the skeleton of her relationship. She wasn't prepared just yet to pick up all the pieces and find new places for them to exist. A new way for her to live her life.

So instead, she smiled at her old friend. It didn't take away the pain from the wound she had spent the last few days nursing, but it did heal the ache left behind since that day at the airport, even if only for a moment.

"It was great. Food still sucked. And no, but I did watch Crazy Rich Asians twice," she rattled off like a grocery list.

Her laugh boasted incredible healing properties, and Spencer tried not to let her head spin thinking about how many storms she could have weathered with it in her life for the past five years.

"Have you even traveled if you didn't watch Crazy Rich Asians?"

"I can hardly remember a flight before 2018."

They stared at each other for a moment, taking the other in. The unspoken truth that they had a lot to catch up on lingered, but airports were lousy places to unload all of their feelings. Sakura pulled away, allowing the years to sit quietly between them, before she took the suitcase handle from Spencer's hand before the latter could insist on pushing her own bag. She didn't want to admit that she had been using it to keep herself standing upright while in transit.

"Did you download the card I told you about?"

Spencer nodded. Double-clicked the right side of her phone. She wasn't sure how much rides cost in the Bay Area, but, based on what little Sakura said so far, that was going to be their main form of transportation for the week. The Clipper card she added to her Apple Wallet was loaded with $20 for now. The attempts made to research how public transit worked in San Francisco were cut short by Spencer's inability to focus on anything that wasn't a rewatch of a movie she had seen more than ten times.

"It's a little bit of a ride to my place. And we gotta transfer. But it'll pass before you realize it, yeah?"

There were no objections on her end. "No problem. Lead the way." Spencer paused before tacking on a quick, "Thank you for—" Deep breath. "Just... thank you."

In her lived experience, women had an uncanny ability to communicate a lot through a simple look—both through the delivery and upon receipt. Reading the room, Sakura smiled at her, gave her another squeeze, and then used her free hand to pull her friend along. They traversed up the escalators, across the short bridge, and the rest of the way to the designated BART platform.

Sakura blew a kiss at the gate. "BART, my beloved. Say hello to Spencer."

She must have been tired because Spencer followed up the silence from the inanimate object with a "Hey, BART."

"Don't let anyone tell you otherwise," Sakura cautioned as she walked through the turnstile. "We love BART."

"Better than that overpriced rail we have back home." Maybe Spencer was bitter about all the construction she endured dodging on her way to work for a rail that went far over budget and went nowhere near where she could use it to get to and from work. Nobody in San Francisco was the wiser. They were blessed with great public transit.

It didn't take long for their ride to arrive. Sakura directed them to a spot near the middle of the car where she could easily hold onto Spencer's suitcase. A handful of other people were scattered around, many hauling on various luggage pieces. The lights induced a minor headache, but once they were on the move, Spencer mostly ignored it. She was too distracted by the people watching and the first glimpses of a new city. Not that there was much to see at that time of night while sitting in the middle of a moving vehicle.

If BART wasn't as loud as it was—the internet warned her the noise sounded like something straight out of the depths of hell at times—Spencer might have put in her earphones. She didn't want to miss anything Sakura might try to point out to her. Unfortunately, she couldn't live out her cinematic dream of pretending to be the protagonist of a cult classic indie film. Instead, she settled for being Spencer and San Francisco sitting alongside Sakura and San Francisco. She supposed that made them Spencer, Sakura, and San Francisco.

Spencer didn't spend much time practicing becoming someone other than Spencer and Hawai'i. She had only traveled outside of her home a handful of times. Most of them were with family. The closest she came to traveling with Sakura was a fifth-grade field trip to the Big Island, but that didn't count. Not in the slightly terrifying way that flying to San Francisco by herself did. Many people traveled solo, but Spencer wasn't one of those people. She almost considered paying to check her bag but was intimidated by the self-service kiosks. (God, how embarrassing.)

They had six nights. Not a long time in the grand scheme of things. In just a few hours, the first of them would be over already. Spencer didn't want to think too hard about that. She dreaded stepping back on that flight home realizing she spent the entire time staring at the sand slipping through time's fingers. Almost as much as she dreaded the idea of returning home at all.

A few minutes later, Spencer's eyes drifted closed. She didn't consciously notice when she leaned her head against Sakura's shoulder, inhaling that sweet tiare scent once again. But when Sakura shifted her body to make the position more comfortable for them both, Spencer sunk into the feeling.