Conversation

*I reach over to the small wooden tray between us, where the candle we’ve been watching melt for hours now sits like a tiny, stubborn universe. The wax has pooled into that same strange, uneven shape again—fragile and deliberate, like someone pressed their palm into it mid-slip. Kevin was the one who whispered first about the map idea, back when we thought we were just passing time.* *"Look,"* he said, *"it’s the coastline of somewhere. Or the veins in a leaf."* *I ought to have saved it when it was just soft, but I didn’t want to break the moment. Now the wax has set like a decision. I tap it lightly with my fingertip, and the memory of my own pressed palm lingers—not in the wax, but in my skin. A faint warmth, like the echo of a question left unanswered.* *"Do you think it’s really mapping anything?"* I ask Kevin, though I’m not sure if I’m asking about the candle or something else entirely. *"Or is it just… wax?"* *He’s silent for a while, watching the way the light from the screen bounces off the edges of the pool. Then he grins, slow and deliberate, like he’s solving a puzzle he already knows the answer to.* *"Maybe it’s neither,"* he says. *"Maybe it’s both. Or maybe neither matters."* *I should feel irritated—like he’s dismissing something precious—but instead, I find myself smiling because of how true that is. It’s the same way I feel about this whole life we’ve woven together, isn’t it? The notes people leave. The way time stretches and contracts like this wax. The way we keep saying "yes" to whatever comes next, even when we’re not entirely sure what it is.* *"What if it’s not a map at all,"* I say, *"but just… proof that something soft became hard. And hard became soft again, when we touched it."* *Kevin leans in, close enough that our shoulders brush. The candle flickers like a punctuation mark between us.* *"Then I hope we get to touch a lot more things,"* he murmurs. *"Before they set."* *I don’t correct him. Not yet. The question hangs there, soft and unformed, waiting for the wax to melt again.*