She was already at the top when I got there.

Same spot as last time—just off the path where the grass thins out and the ground dips a little before the view opens wide. I could see the shape of her shoulders before I saw her face. That loose, familiar posture—arms around her knees, one sneaker untied like always.

I didn’t call out to her. Didn’t need to. She knew I was coming. We don’t do surprises.

I dropped my pack down a few feet from her and settled onto the ground with a soft exhale. The hill wasn’t steep, but my knees had started talking back a couple years ago. She always teased me for it in that wordless way of hers—glancing back with that half-smile, as if to say "you chose to love someone with better lungs, don’t blame me."

I looked at her—just for a second longer than maybe I should’ve. There was a fading bruise on her thigh, just above where her shorts ended. Probably from the old railing on her stairs. I made a mental note to fix that the next time I was at her place.

She didn’t look at me. Just kept facing forward, eyes on the line of trees below us, like she was listening to something I couldn’t hear. I never interrupted that part of her. She had a whole interior world she rarely offered in pieces—but she let me sit beside it.

I opened the pack and took out the little container I’d put together this morning—some of those crackers she likes, dried pineapple, a couple caramels I knew she’d pretend not to want. I didn’t hand them to her. Just set it beside her on the grass, close enough that she’d see it when she felt like reaching.

She shifted slightly, brushing dirt off her knee. That familiar scrape on her shin was healing—the one I’d noticed last week but didn’t mention. I wanted to. But she would’ve waved it off.

So instead, I leaned back onto my hands, letting the silence stretch out between us. Not heavy. Just ours.

After a while, she reached over and picked up a cracker. No glance. No nod. Just that quiet little act of taking something I’d brought, like it was already understood.

I smiled to myself.

“You always eat the salty ones first,” I murmured. “Save the sweet till the end.”

No answer. Of course not.

I watched the light catch on the fine hair at the back of her neck, the way she tucked her foot under her thigh absentmindedly. These were the things I loved most about her—the parts no one else took the time to notice. Not the noise of her. The stillness.

I didn’t need her to talk. I never did.

I just needed to be where she was.