Walk with Me
3: Depth without performance
Some relationships were like this too.
David doesn’t talk to Kenny often now.
It wasn’t always this quiet.
When they were younger, they spoke more. Not in long explanations, but in overlap. They found each other through mutual friends in Australia and spent years in each other’s lives. It was different from other friends, in a way that didn’t need much language. Sometimes David let his circles intersect. Kenny met Amandha that way. Nothing shifted.
A lot of it was quiet. They cooked. Had beers. Sat around while someone else talked, plates left on the bench a little too long. Finished each other’s sentences without noticing.
Even then, when everything else demanded intensity, their connection didn’t. It had shape and pauses. They would meet when one of them passed through. Sit. Talk. Leave. Usually over coffee. Once, they met in Singapore Airport for four hours while Kenny was in transit. The smell of burnt coffee and floor polish, the low hum of early flights under everything. No build-up. No aftermath. It was enough.
Kenny lives in Melbourne now. Has for years. He’s married. His life has a steady centre.
Another time, David flew into Melbourne and met Kenny for breakfast at seven in the morning, before Kenny had to report to work at nine-thirty. The kitchen was already warm, toast popping, the smell of eggs and coffee settling into the day. They ate, talked a little, mostly sat, watching commuters in work shoes and jackets move past the big glass windows. Then Kenny stood, checked the time, and left. He sends the occasional photo. A gym mirror. His family’s dinner repurposed for the next day’s lunch. A sky that looks too blue to be real. David never feels pressed to respond. A short reply lands just as easily as a long one would.
There was the hospital once. Tests. A wait that stretched longer than it should have. Kenny texted when the results came.
Results out. Cancer free. Have inflammation.
So what were your thoughts during the waiting period? Very interesting to know.
Sometimes they talk more. Kenny will send a photo before a run, sweatpants low, doorway light cutting across his ribs.
“Making sure we look good at the next funeral,” the caption reads.
David sends back a thumbs-up.
Once, Kenny texts David: I don’t drink coffee anymore.
Two days later, David replies, Naturally? Or…
Kenny sends a thumbs-up emoji.
David types back a simple, “Yeah. Makes sense.”
Today, David sends a Chinese New Year greeting without thinking much about it.
Kenny replies later. Says he doesn’t like fixed celebrations. That if he enjoys something, he enjoys it. If not, he doesn’t perform it. Jokes that he’s selfish.
Later, another photo follows. Kenny stretching before lifting weights. David feels his body ease.
This is how it has always been between them, even when the shape of it changed.
No requirement to sync. No need to prove continuity. No unspoken future being negotiated. Just two lives running alongside each other, close enough to acknowledge, far enough not to interfere.
David reacts with a thumbs-up.
David doesn’t reach for more words.
David puts the phone down. The exchange doesn’t linger. It doesn’t pull. It doesn’t ask to be held.
For a moment, David notices how rare this kind of connection is supposed to be, how easily it gets misnamed as distance or indifference.
But he knows better.
This isn’t a friendship that endured because it was maintained.
It endured because it never asked either of them to be anything other than where they already were.
Neither one has to move to meet the other.