Liam, for his part, grew into a quiet, observant young man. He wasn’t like the other boys who crashed through life with loud voices and bruised knees. Liam was a watcher. He absorbed the world. He was sensitive in ways that made my chest ache, as if he had no skin to protect him from the harshness of reality. He felt things too deeply, perceiving the emotional undercurrents in a room the way other people perceive temperature.
But he kept it locked away. He hid his depth behind careful smiles and short, polite answers. He was a vault, and I didn’t have the combination.
As high school graduation approached, the distance between us seemed to stretch into a chasm. Liam became secretive. It started slowly—a closed door here, a hushed phone call there—but soon, it became a pattern.
