Love is easy to come by, in my opinion. But friendship—good, real, true companionship—regardless of gender—is so scarce that some people spend their whole lives living without it. There are friends and acquaintances, people we meet throughout our lives—sharing interests, activities, or common goals. But true kinship, the ability to love someone for who they are, is a rarity. When I was younger, I just took it for granted and didn’t realize that my childhood friendship with Asher would be the only real one of its kind; I had dozens of other friends after him, but none of those were the same. Not the kind of friendship where you can disappear for a year and come back and pick right up where you left off; souls connecting like they never parted in the first place.

It seemed silly to describe my relationship with Asher in this way. So, I could see why Elizabeth thought it was love—the lovey-dovey kind of love—but she couldn’t have been more wrong.

You see, people don’t feel sorry for kids like me and Asher. We grew up with rich parents and entitlements that most kids could only dream of. But we were lonely… painfully lonely, all we had was each other. I had no siblings, and Asher was never particularly close to Bri, not until they got older. Bri was a whiz kid, always going off to special schools or science camps, so I fulfilled the role of his sister most days. And he certainly was a brother in mine.

While our parents spent their evenings and weekends at parties, Asher and I were often dragged along for the ride. The only kids in an adult-centered world, we were unseen and unheard, money or toys shoved in our hands to distract us. So, instead we distracted each other.

We became best friends at such a young age, at a time when sex and puberty and gender weren’t even a factor. We didn’t know or understand those things; all we knew was that we were pals, one minute playing pirates and the next minute playing house. We shared all our secrets and kept each other company, otherwise we would have died of loneliness or boredom back then.