“Friends.

Partners.

Even family starts treating you like you’re already a memory.”

There is a particular honesty that only exists between strangers at three in the morning, and they found it that night without trying.

Part of it was the hour — the world asleep, the ward quiet, the ordinary rules of who-you-perform-yourself-to-be suspended in the dark.

Part of it was that they would never see each other again, or so they both assumed, which made it safe to say true things.