Cerys and I sit cross-legged in a field of rotting dandelions and overgrown grass, our bikes heedlessly tossed behind us in a crumpled heap. Shrivelled petals and marching ants tickle our bruised knees, but we pay them no mind—we’re too lost in our conversation to care.

For years now, it’s been our tradition to come here every summer night we can and just talk. But it’s never the superficial kind of chitter-chatter—we’d never be caught dead discussing the rain out here. It’s always an unfiltered, headfirst dive into the states of our lives, our loose lips blurting out rants about teachers, plans for the future, stories about dating, though that last one’s always been more about her thing than mine.

I lean back onto my elbows. Blades of cool grass press against my arms, no doubt leaving patchy green stains on my skin.

“I love that we do this,” I mention offhandedly, flinging my floppy, copper braid across my shoulder. Cerys—who’s just finished a particularly longwinded harangue about her basketball coach—looks down at me and grins.

“Me too,” she replies. “It’s like, I can actually be myself around you. I never have to be polite about anything, the way I do with other people.”

“I know what you mean,” I say, and I really do. In a world full of small talk and false courtesies, here, our thoughts are free to be unabridged. “It’s liberating, to say the least.”

We glance at each other once more, and there’s a distinct understanding in her gaze, a sense of fellow feeling behind those warm hazel eyes I could recognize in an instant. I smile to myself, thinking back to all the times we’ve talked together, all the times we could have passed judgment and all the times we chose not to.

There’s no purer form of love, I think, than this.