Harry picked me up in his gran’s old car that she’s too old now to drive and I sat in the back amongst stray filters and coffee cups and we all laughed about that time he borrowed it when we were nineteen and all the things we did together. Old friends are that warm sensation of putting on your favourite jacket on a cold morning. It’s getting warmer now but I still like the analogy.

‘What the fuck have we been doing for the past year?’ gets asked and I feel the gap between 22 and 23 stretch further away from one another. Hopefully forward, and if so, there is something quietly rewarding about that.

That night we played cards and sat on your porch with your flatmates as they smoked durries and prank called our friends on blocked caller IDs. For a while it felt like old times and I felt as though no time had passed beneath us at all. That sometimes things are surging forward at such a rate that it’s the best feeling when you can sub out of it for an evening, drink some cider and meander for a short while.

I met Will in a cafe we used to go to as students. Nothing much had changed. Not even Will. He was funny, made sure the waitress knew we weren’t dating (‘oh, we’re not in love, by the way’) and discussed at length the amount of slidey tray cafes in Wanganui. They do make bloody good mince pies though, we concluded. Bloody good.

We laughed about going on dates with people we weren’t in love with and how we had both given up on the idea of clubbing. ‘I started to feel old the other day’ he said. I smiled. You are going to Kenya for three months for your doctors training. I am doing presentations in front of GMs and flying (by proxy) via the Koru Lounge. We are definitely old, we concluded.
There’s something kind of great about it.