Lucky

It was a sunny day that found three friends hiding from the sun inside a tiny (Maira preferred to think of it as cozy) cottage by the New Jersey shore. Not that it wasn’t comfortable, it was, but she, Vance, and Leopold were only inside to escape the oppressive heat while they weren’t in the ocean. At least that had been the original plan when she had suggested it.
That idea had gotten hijacked the moment Vance had opened his mouth.
“If we had met in High School...”
Out of the corner of her eye Maira saw Vance pause for a moment in the process of eating his carrot, as if wondering whether or not to continue his thought.
“Hm...?” Intrigued, she glanced up from her cup of yogurt and cereal she had been industriously stirring.
Leo merely rolled his eyes and continued to slice the green apple on the cutting board. He had, Maira thought, like herself, probably already figured out where his younger brother was headed.
“If it hadn't been in kinder garden, but in high school. If we had met each other then... the three of us, I mean, would we still be friends?”
The question didn’t surprise Maira but she knitted her eyebrows in slight confusion anyway. “We didn’t though.”
“But if we had,” Van persisted. “Would we have been friends?”
Maira opened her mouth to reply, before closing it again as she considered the question more carefully, as well as to finish chewing. “Like we are now? Or as a general rule?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, you’re in luck, the answer’s the same. No.”
“No!?” Leopold promptly proceeded to choke on the apple slice he had just put in his mouth as he heard his friends response. “You call that lucky?”
Van shot his elder brother a nasty look, “You know what she meant.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Leo thumped his chest lightly as he replied, “And?”
This time it was Van with whom Maira exchanged a resigned glance, “Nothing. Look, we’ve been together for too long for it to matter, so why worry?”
“Because it’s what he does.”
“Because,” Van paused to shoot Leo another dirty look, “I can’t help it. You’re one of the few people I know in my life, right now, who... that I can picture myself still being friends with when we’re all old and gray. So I wonder, if things had been different, would I still feel this way?”
Maira shrugged. She was touched by his sentiments, she shared them, but still, she remained unconcerned with that line of thought. “We’re different now. We hang out with different groups of people. Not that it matters, but we do.”
“Then why are we still friends? How can I feel this way about our friendship? If we’re so different from one another?” Van didn’t seem genuinely confused, just a bit worried. Like one who spent too much of his time thinking over what he was asking, as well as the possible responses.
“Maybe it’s because... ” Maira placed her cup, now finished, on the counter as she moved to the fridge to search for something to drink. “We’ve already tested, and still maintained, our friendship we formed all those years ago. So even if we’re different now, which can’t be helped, we’ve still grown up and shared experiences together.”
“Yeah, through our parents-” Leopold pulled out a few more cups for his friend to pour the juice into.
“That didn’t matter though.”
“-not that is matters,” he looked reproachfully at Maira for interrupting him.
She grinned cheekily back at him, before she turned back to his younger brother, “But the point is our friendship was tested already and we know, after everything we’ve been through that no matter how different we all are, now or in the future, that we’ll remain friends.”
“Cheers to that,” Leo raised his glass of cider.
Van stared at his cup for a moment, “it needs cinnamon,” but raised his as well.
The glasses clinked and once more it was silent in the beach house.