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“Anyway.” I exhaled heavily. “Moving forward doesn’t change who you are. It makes way for the person you could become. This is your opportunity to figure out what you want for yourself.”

Becka was silent for a moment. “What if I don’t know how to move forward?” She croaked, and I rubbed her arm.

“I don’t think we always get the luxury of figuring it out before we have to.”

My chest ached as fragments of memories drifted through me. My eyes misted, and I blinked rapidly to clear them. This wasn’t about me.

“Will you help me?”

“Always.”

In the morning we dragged all the boxes and bags into the car Becka had hired for the move back to her parents’ place in Oakland. Despite how long it had seemed to take to pack everything up, she didn’t have that much. She’d sold, or given away all the furniture she’d owned, which had left her with her clothes, toiletries and assorted life-accumulation.

I’d caught her this morning looking at her stack of belongings, piled up in the small bedroom that had once upon a time been mine. The expression on her face was one I hadn’t seen since her grandma had passed away. It was a private kind of grief that I left her to.

She needed to rebuild herself. And she would. My best friend. The tenacious Rebecca Hanson.

When all was said and done, the apartment somehow felt smaller laid bare.

It was funny, in a way, because once emptied of all the things that made it the place I had known, I would have expected it to feel bigger. But perhaps it had always been small, and we’d just filled it too much to notice.

The piles of shoes in the entryway, the sink always full of mugs, cheap candles on the coffee table and the windows full of half-faded sun-catchers. All gone now.

Scratches marked the floor where the sofa had sat and pale squares marked the walls where pictures had hung. Fingerprints from the life that had happened in this home. In the kitchenette, the fridge hummed louder than I ever remembered. Perhaps it was trying to make up for the silence that even the noise from the street outside couldn’t mask.

Becka stood by the kitchen counter, idly clinking her key on its keychain. For a long moment, neither of us moved.

“Well,” she said eventually. “I guess we’re done.”

I looked at her, seeing the slight tremble of her chin, and I felt my throat tighten.

“Don’t say it like that,” I protested weakly.

“Like what?”

“We’re not dying, Becka.”

She laughed, sniffing a little. “No. We’re just not here, anymore.” Her face crumpled for half a second before she caught it, pressing her lips together and nodding.

She set her keys down on the counter. It was a tiny sound in the silent apartment, barely a clink against the faux-marble laminate, but somehow it was resonant. Like a door shutting.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the key Becka had given me the day I’d moved in nearly five years ago to the date. I hadn’t given it back when I’d moved to Korea. She’d wanted me to keep it. I’d wanted to keep it. It had been on my set of keys ever since. I took it off now, but hesitated, my hand hovering over the counter. It was warm in my palm, and I held it for a second longer before placing it down next to hers.

Becka sniffled hard. “This is stupid.”

“Really stupid,” I agreed, blinking rapidly.

“We’re being very dramatic about a place we never owned.”

I laughed then, because if I didn’t, I would cry, and Becka laughed too, wiping under one eye with the heel of her hand.

But when we reached the door, she stopped.

So did I.

The hallway waited beyond. Beige, cracked walls. Utterly unremarkable, and beyond that the world kept going, expanding to Oakland, the rest of the stops on the tour and a million other unknowns.

Behind us was the place where so much had happened in so short a time. Equally unknown things, and I didn’t think I’d ever realised just how much of my world I had associated with this apartment, until that moment.