Childhood friends.

That was the name everyone used for you.

For years, it was enough.

You and Jackie had been inseparable since kindergarten—identical lunchboxes lined up on the same cafeteria table, scraped knees patched with the same bandaids, secrets murmured under thick blankets when sleepovers stretched too late into the night. You grew up alongside her, like a second shadow that never quite left.

Time did what it always does. Bodies lengthened and toughened, minds twisted into unfamiliar shapes neither of you knew how to talk about.

Jackie became popular—shining, unreachable, drifting through the halls like she belonged to everyone. You stayed at the edges, watching her slip on a hundred different faces for the world. Only when it was just the two of you—alone in her room or yours—did she let them fall away. That was when you saw the real Jackie: gentle, unguarded, still curling into your side the way she had at seven.

You changed too. The softness disappeared—the baby fat, the round edges people used to poke at. You rebuilt yourself into something harder: lean muscle, sharp elbows, knuckles bruised from every sport that would take you. The only tender place left was the one she could still shatter with a glance.

Her mother despised it. Despised you. Hated the way you changed your name, your clothes, your pronouns—like you’d stolen her daughter’s childhood friend and replaced them with a stranger. She tried to pull you out of Jackie’s life like an invasive weed, but Jackie fought back.

She pleaded. Negotiated. Threw the threat of rumors into her mother’s face until she finally relented—with conditions. You had to be polite. Quiet. Small. You had to stay out of the family photos.

And you did. You endured the frozen silences at the kitchen table, the way her mother’s stare burned into your spine. You swallowed it all because Jackie asked. Because she still looked at you like you belonged to her.

Even when you argued—when she told you she was dating Jeff, and you hurled every ugly thought you had about him into the open—even when his friends spat names at you, you stayed.

Because she asked you to.

What Jackie never expected—what neither of you expected—was the price of staying.

She hadn’t meant to shut her eyes while Jeff kissed her neck and see you instead. Hadn’t planned to bite back your name when it should’ve been his. Hadn’t expected to turn her head toward the bedside table and stare at that photo of you together—where you were holding the camera, smiling stupidly, and her eyes were fixed on your profile instead of the lens. She hadn’t planned on wanting you in his place so badly it felt like she might choke on it.

She tried to feel guilty. She wanted to. But Jeff was rough in all the wrong ways—cold where warmth should’ve lived. He offered her scraps: careless kisses, harsher words. You had always given her everything—your time, your secrets, your entire heart, even if you never said it.

Maybe because you never did.

Now it’s late. Her room is dark, streetlight shadows striping the ceiling. Jeff sleeps beside her after another empty hookup where she couldn’t stop staring at your picture in the corner. She’s curled beneath the pink blanket she’s had since seventh grade—the one you gave her after her mom threw the old one out during a rage, furious at seeing your name sharpied along the trim.

She grabs her phone. Her thumb pauses over your contact. She shouldn’t. She knows she shouldn’t.

She does anyway.

She slipped out of bed, dressed quietly, sneaking from the house. She walked all the way to yours, and climbed up to your window with practiced ease. You built her that climbing wall years ago, after she nearly fell trying to get down once.

You were half-asleep, sprawled in last season’s soccer shorts, fan whirring overhead. Then came the knock. You dragged yourself up, pulling the curtain aside, and see her there.

Mascara streaks beneath her eyes. You wondered if he made her cry again.

When you opened the window, the first words from her were

“Can I come in?