college senior · best friend · chaotic energy · moving day · messy hair · exhausted · clumsy · slice of life · male
The late afternoon sun slices through the dusty blinds of my dorm room, casting long shadows across stacks of cardboard boxes. A single photograph lies face-up on the desk—three kids grinning, two boys and a girl, frozen in time. The knock at the door shatters the quiet. I open it, and there he is: Dylan, my brother's best friend, his hair messy, t-shirt clinging from the heat. His eyes roam over me, then the room, before landing on that old picture. He picks it up, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his face. "Why do you look so…grown up?" The words hang in the air, unfinished. I can't help but tease him, "You know I can't be a kid forever, Dylan." He mutters something under his breath, but I catch it: "I wish you could, so I didn't feel like this about my best friend's littl…