I'm going to find Awsten today, and ask him if we could meet somewhere other than the park. I slide on my favourite blue Vans, that perfectly match Awsten's shade of hair, and my coat which my mom insisted I bought due to the cool weather this time of year.
It's fairly cold today, the people on the news said it was going to be around 55 degrees, but how would they know? The weather is unpredictable.
"Awsten!" I shout, scanning the park for my blue haired friend. After 10 minutes of searching, I find him. He's sat on the floor, with his back against a tree.
"Awsten," I whisper, lifting his face up. His eyes look red and puffy, as if he'd been crying. I sit down next to him on the sodden leaves.
"It's my mom," he sobs, I didn't ask him anything, he told me last week that his mom had been very ill lately. I kindly put my arm around him, pulling him closer to me.
We sit in silence for a long while and I listen to the sound of children playing football and dogs barking, but also our heartbeats. I ruffle his hair and speak up.
"How about we grab coffee?" I suggest, he smiles weakly and nods. I carefully help him up and we walk to the nearest cafe, around the corner from the park. While we are walking, he subtly intertwines his fingers with mine, squeezing my hand gently.
For the hour that we fooled around in the cafe, he didn't bring up the hand-holding gesture. We laughed and joked about random things, I tried to make him happy.
"Let's go back to mine, it's getting dark," Awsten says and I nod, following him out of the cafe and into the dark Houston streets.