those years between us

[25] COOL WITH YOU

I still had questions. A lot of questions. But when Cami was like this, I couldn't bring myself to ask. She was Cami. My best friend, someone who'd stuck by me all these years.

"I'm so tired these days," I muttered, staring intently at the ceiling even though I knew there was nothing interesting about it. "All the life just drains out of me."

"That's me every day," Cami sighed. "Get used to it. It's called university for a reason."

"I don't think it's university, I think it's just life."

"Oh, don't get all depressed on me now," she huffed, giving me a slight shove. "We're already luckier than a mass majority of people. And if the only reason you're upset is over a boy, then you're a sadder person than I ever thought you were, Salome Lam."

"I'm not sad over a boy. Well, I'm not only sad about a boy."

"What else are you sad about?"

"I miss Hong Kong food."

"We literally only got back a couple weeks ago."

"But I'm already missing it."

"You cook every night?"

"But it gets repetitive, you know? There's just not as much stuff you can get here as you might in Hong Kong, or it's like three times as expensive and even though I could buy it, I don't want to buy it."

"How depressing. Sounds like a you problem."

I shot her a glare. "You're not helping, Camille Tsang Hoi-ning."

She glanced at me and shrugged. "I don't think it's as much of a problem as you think it is. Like, technically speaking, we could both solve our issues right now if we just went and talked to either of them, but we're both angry and thus being irrational, so we're going to drag this on instead. I mean, I know what I'm doing so I'm not that affected by it, but you don't seem to realise it."

"I..." My voice trailed off. It was a bit disconcerting, being called irrational by Cami, who I'd seen as my irrational counterpart for all these years. And now here she was, performing a role that I usually did in this friendship. And she was right about it. I knew she was. She was very correct in the fact that I was being illogical with this. Logically speaking I'd have accepted Orion's pursuits a long time ago and prepared for the way it might end, rather than try to stay away from it when I knew that wouldn't help me get over it in any way.

But just because it was logical didn't mean it felt right.

She cast a pointed look at me. "You know I'm right."

"You are," I admitted begrudgingly.

She smirked. "I know I am too. What are you going to do about it? You don't need to be rational over it, by the way, kind of unnecessary. Love and crushes and shit like this is meant to be irrational. I don't think you ever quite got that."

"I got it more than you might think. My crush on Orion is a wholly irrational phenomenon in the first place."

"Yes, but that's basically it. Even the way you treated him despite that crush was scarily irrational. Another person might think you were cold as ice."

"Maybe I am."

"No you're not," Cami laughed. "You've got the warmest heart out of anyone I know. At least to the people you care about anyways, you can be cold to the people outside your circle, so I do know where those assumptions might come from." She let out a sigh. "Everything is going to be okay. We'll eventually decide to solve all this with a proper conversation and thus we can live happily ever after."