The first script was that we went to college. It was what you did, unless you had convictions otherwise, or were a fuck up. I followed that script.

The second script was rebellion against the first. Not enough to actually break from the script, but enough to detract any possible benefit...

When you're little you can call somebody you've known a year your best friend, but once you're at college there's some criteria before you can call someone a  best friend . Ask anyone and they would tell you that their best friend is someone from back home. But thing I...

I found university sponsored events lame. So much that I made it part of my identity to signal to people, I am not a dipshit who goes to those things.

Then Riley asked if I'd have time that weekend to catch a film at the University Cinema. I was nothing short...

"Hello, Jake."

It was Riley from back in the day. We'd both lived in Williams Hall, and we'd often go eat and try to study together. After moving off campus it got hard trying to see each other, and I guess we just found our own ways. 

"So you're living off...

The next morning I went to the cafe just like I did every Wednesday around 9AM. The music was cafe-smooth Norah Jones . I ordered a black cup of house roast coffee , just like I always did when Norah was playing. Something about her made me enjoy that dark...

In wintertime I saw a woman in her 50s more often than not anytime I went to the cafe. Besides Sundays, I went everyday so she noticed me as well. Go to the cafe that often and you begin recognizing who comes regularly. Begin to notice out of those regulars...

When she broke up with me, I asked her the reason. Right then I realized that she hadn't said a single true thing to be in six months. She'd been always filtering the truth. Because I had been asking impossible to ask questions. Questions demanding heartbreaking answers. Now that she...

At the end of her life she wasn't ready to die. It was only then that she realized that it was not death she feared, but having not lived. Six decades she'd passed in constant  FOMO . And now that she was at what was the end of it, she...

One winter afternoon he got on the wrong bus on the way home from the field trip downtown. At first he thought he was in big trouble, but the teachers didn't notice. And to his surprise he enjoyed talking with the kid in front of him who had his head...

I heard that the tech park had been funded by some evil man.

Who told you that? 

Somebody. Everybody knows that. Didn't you hear?

Yeah. But I was just wondering.

What?

If. You know? It's true.

Do you think so?

I don't know. Do you really think Joe Peterson--

My friend looked around before quietly continuing. 

--actually...