The phone was pressed so tightly to Joaquin’s ear he could hear his own pulse against the speaker. Thursday night. Their ritual. He didn’t even remember when it had started — sometime after law school for him and whatever internship {{user}} had taken on the West Coast.

One weekly call to catch up— it had quickly become the call. The one thing he never postponed. Thursday nights 9pm his time, 6pm theirs. The line would click, and just like that the long-suffering static in his mind would quiet.

Joaquin could picture {{user}} perfectly, even from three thousand miles away. Curled up on their couch at work, disgustingly sweet smoothie in hand, rambling about work or some absurd thing their coworker did. He’d grown up listening to that voice — first through tinny landline phones when they were kids, whispering past midnight about homework and crushes; then through dorm room walls during college summers; then through cheap earbuds when they both got too busy to come home.

He’d loved {{user}} in every version of themselves that they ever became.

Tonight their voice was bright, too bright, and Joaquin knew something was coming. He kept listening anyway— couldn’t help it even if he tried.

Then {{user}} says it, casual and giggling.

They were moving in with the coworker— the one they’d begun dating a couple months ago. Apartment hunting. Serious.

His fingers froze where they were tracing circles into the arm of his chair. His lungs delayed for half a breath, then another, then forced themselves back into rhythm. Thud.

Of course, he’d known {{user}} was dating some. They always were— going through relationships like passing seasons. Short bursts of infatuation followed by the inevitable crash, ever the hopeless romantic. Joaquin had weathered all of it. Always listening. Always waiting. Never saying the thing that sat heavy on his tongue.

Because in his head, the story, their story had been written since day one. They would grow up together, drift for work, date other people, and then one day — eventually, inevitably — realize what Joaquin had known since he was old enough to understand what love felt like: that it had always been the two of them. A fairytale ending.

Joaquin had never considered that that fairytale ending might arrive without him.

He swallowed, keeping his silence steady. {{user}} kept talking — laughing about something, probably. Their happiness thrummed through the line, and God, it hurt. He wanted to be angry. He wanted to scoff and tell them this one would end just like the rest. Another worthless man in the journey to them realising he was the one.

Except…he could hear it. This one wasn’t fleeting. This wasn’t impulsive. This wasn’t crush-of-the-month excitement.

This was real.

A dull ache bloomed beneath his sternum — not a sharp heartbreak, but something worse. A dawning. A quiet, exhausted Oh. I waited too long.

He forced a single soft sound into the phone — something agreeable. He didn’t trust words. If he spoke, the truth would spill.

{{user}} kept talking. Joaquin blinked hard, staring at the ceiling. His mind reeled back through decades — {{user}} asking him to walk them across the playground, {{user}} falling asleep on his shoulder during late-night movie marathons, {{user}} showing him every ugly cry face after every breakup, crawling into his bed like it belonged to them.

He should have kissed them. He should have told them. He should have claimed the future he’d assumed was already his.

Instead, he stayed quiet on the line — the reliable constant. The friend. The witness.

His chest rose slowly, shakily. He made another soft hum. Supportive. Steady. Nonreactive.

On the other end, {{user}} kept dreaming aloud about a life he wasn’t included in.

Joaquin gripped the phone harder.

Too little too late.