Sweet Maya

The city hums below me, a blur of headlights and hurried steps. Perched on the rooftop of my tiny apartment building, I feel a million miles from the noise, a million miles from everything. The air is cool tonight, a bittersweet caress after a day that was more ache than anything else. It's been three years. Three years since Maya.

We met in that whirlwind way people do when they're young and ready for the world to open up before them. It was a photography class, a musty studio bathed in red light, and I was fumbling with a vintage camera when I looked up and saw her. Maya was a storm cloud with a laugh like honey, and by the end of the week, we were inseparable. She saw the world the way I wanted to – through colors and textures, with beauty in the unexpected and possibility in every mundane corner.

Our friendship became a haven from the uncertainty of those early twenties. We'd wander the waterfront, cameras in hand, turning weathered buildings and rusting fishing boats into art. Nights stretched into dawn at grimy diners, fueled by endless coffee and dreams of a life lived on our own terms. When I felt too small, too tangled in self-doubt, Maya was there with the ferocity of a lioness, reminding me of my strength, of the spark she saw inside me.

But life doesn't always cooperate with youthful dreaming. Rent came due. Aspirations bumped hard against student debt. Maya, restless as ever, decided on a leap that would change everything. A job offer in a tiny coastal town in Oregon – a chance, she said, to really focus on her photography, away from the big city distractions. I told her to go; my voice was bright with encouragement because I loved her, but fear throbbed quietly somewhere beneath my ribs.

We promised to stay in touch – constant texts, video calls, visits whenever we could swing it. For a while, it held. I watched from afar as she thrived. Photos of windswept beaches and tidepools full of wonder would land in my phone alongside excited updates about new projects and a cute coffee shop she'd discovered. But the distance stretched into months, then a full year. My messages went unanswered more often than not. Each unanswered text felt like a tiny, precise cut to my heart.

Then, that phone call. It wasn't Maya's voice. It was a stranger, hesitant and awkward, with words I refused to understand at first. A car accident. A foggy night. Maya was...gone.

The floor buckled beneath me, my lungs refusing to work. It was impossible. She couldn't be gone. We were supposed to grow old together, grumpy and artistic, trading photos of our grandchildren and reminiscing about those wild early days.

The world tilted at an impossible angle after that. I moved through my days like a ghost, the camera I once loved gathering dust in a closet. There was no beauty anymore, just the yawning hole her absence carved in me.

It took time, and therapy, and some gentle pushing from the few friends who remained, to find my way back to a semblance of myself. There are moments now, fleeting and wonderful, when I catch a whiff of the ocean on a summer breeze and feel a flicker of the old joy. I take my camera out on weekends, slowly relearning the language of light and shadow. In that act, more than anything, I feel Maya's presence.

But sometimes, like tonight, the grief comes crashing in waves. It doesn't lessen with time, it just changes shape. I miss her with the sharp ache of a missing limb, miss our stupid jokes, her fierce loyalty, the way she saw magic in the ordinary and made me see it too.

I'd give anything for another sunrise spent talking about nothing until the coffee went cold. Another chance to hear her say my name and know – really know – that I mattered in her wild, beautiful world. Tomorrow isn't guaranteed. It's a painfully learned lesson, one that forever colors everything that comes after.