text: Seven o’clock and it’s already dark out. The days were getting shorter and colder than John appreciated. Those lovely, long summer evenings were gone. Goodbye to warmth, and happiness, and energy. Hello to depression, lethargy, and despair. As his boots trudged through the dirty but thankfully dry streets of central London, he finally saw his destination. One final glance down at his phone confirmed it. Here was The Last Whisper, and he was uncharacteristically on time. Unfortunately, the friend he was meeting was uncharacteristically early. Which effectively made John (characteristically) late. He tossed his half-smoked cigarette in the gutter, ruminating on his many failed attempts to quit, and the general filth of the city. The bouncer waved him in without checking ID. Beyond the nondescript black door lay the alluring promise of darkness. John fumbled his way up the metal stairs towards the muffled sounds of music and voices. This time, a padded leather door that wouldn’t look out of place in a gentlemen’s club from a Hollywood film, separated him from his final destination. John scanned the room as he entered. It was hard enough spotting someone in a crowded room, let alone a dimly lit one, and that broke out into all manner of different sections. After squeezing his way through more than a few unwelcoming bodies, he finally spotted Luc in a plush velvet chair tucked away in a corner. A little table for two. Fresh drinks were already waiting. “Johnny boy!” Luc shouted, erupting into a giant grin as he stood up to embrace his friend. “How are you doing, my friend?” John smiled as he returned Luc’s very excitable hug with slightly less fervour. “I’m good, I’m good. How are you?” “All the better for seeing you,” Luc beamed back. The old friends sat down and chatted about the weeks they’d just had. John dictated his fairly ordinary week at work to his friend, skipping over the more boring, technical elements, as always. And Luc probed with questions as he always did. They remembered their forgotten drinks, cheersed them, and began a long night of drinking. What started as surface level work chat and whisky cocktails, turned into venting about interpersonal frustrations on projects, and Vespers. (“David is just so inconsistent. He’ll take no issue with these big experiments we want to try, but then get caught up in minutiae for hours.”) From there, the two shifted to pure work gossip and Pisco sours. (“Cassie definitely hooked up with someone from Sales at the offsite last week.”) And not long after that, they were sharing aspirations for the next five years, over some regrettable Amaretto and Coke’s. (“I really want to move to Budapest at some point, and just work there for a year or two.”) “Do you think we’ll still be friends like 10 years from now?” Luc asked, fresh off of ordering two glasses of wine. John paused for a moment. “Why do you ask?” “I guess with neither of us being British, I just wonder if we’ll both still be here in London after all that time. I mean, don’t you feel like you might move back home at some point?” “True, I might. But I also might not. It’s hard to plan that far ahead. There’s already so much that’s happened in the past few years that I never would have expected. It almost seems silly to guess what life will be like 10 years from now.” Luc frowned, seemingly unsatisfied. “What?” asked John, “I mean we might be friends in 10 years. I’d like to hope so. But who knows?” Luc excused himself to go to the bathroom. The two hadn’t known each other long, but it was a friendship that developed fast. They met at work, occasionally being involved in the same meetings. Those small encounters gave way to them saying hello when they passed each other in the hallway. Which one day led to a shared coffee break, when they both arrived in the kitchen at the same time, alone. One coffee became many. Office kitchen coffees became coffee shop down the road coffees. Which became after work beers. Which became weekend coffees and beers. And acquaintances became friends. But for the first time, John couldn’t get a read on his friend. Something was off. But what it was, he couldn’t tell. He brushed it aside and the two drank their wine. Eventually, the watch checking couldn’t be ignored. It was definitively home time for John. Luc half-joked at the idea of another glass of wine, but relented upon seeing the expression on John’s face. The two made their way back through the padded leather door, down the metal stairs draped in darkness, and came out of the nondescript black door into the cold, dirty, but thankfully dry streets of London. “Which way are you headed?” Luc asked. “I’m getting the tube down there,” John gestured. “Ah, I’m grabbing a bus the other way.” A brief, awkward pause buffered the conversation. John opened his arms for a goodbye hug, and questioned if there was an uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm in Luc’s response. “Goodnight, pal,” John said, as he began to turn, “I’ll see you soon.” “Yeah...” Luc replied with a weak smile, as he stood watching John walk away.