I was 21. It was summer. My roommate sliced a white peach on the kitchen table.
The air hung warm on my skin, and I stood in front of the open refrigerator to cool down. Her hands were manicured and skilled as she sliced the peaches thick and dry, the pit spinning unceremoniously on the cutting board. The rest of our roommates circled around in anticipation, lounging in chairs or perched high on the kitchen counter. The center of the peach was tinged with red, skin the color of a sunrise. She held a slice out to me and I bit into it graciously. It was crisp and sweet and warm.
The red-dotted center reminded me of a different peach, a different best friend, before hands could be ringed and graceful and freshly manicured. We played in the hose water in spring; our Easter dresses stuck like smocks to our scraggly frames, hair plastered to our faces, forever unaware of our angled limbs and juxtaposing bodies. We had sleepovers in her worn, striped sheets in the summer, no blankets. In the cool mornings, just as the sun rose through her windows, trellised vines casting orange shadows over her walls, her father would wake us up with plates of perfectly ripe, evenly sliced white peaches.
We grabbed them with greedy fingers, wide-eyed heathens whispering to each other in our own, made-up language. The juice dribbled down our chins and her father rushed to get us forks and paper towels and we refused both, licking the juice from our stubby, childish fingers for another taste of the sticky sweetness.
Friendship was easy then, born of convenience and similarity, but, as I grew, I often found it harder. It seemed that these principles didn’t apply anymore and that people were looking for something else, each of us contorting ourselves in different ways to fit each other’s ideals of what the perfect friend should be. I could no longer simply walk up to someone and ask to be friends; instead, there was a more complicated and drawn-out dance of how to do this exact same thing in a socially acceptable way. When we’re all trying so hard to fit in, it feels as though we often fail.
I turned 22 last week. My birthday is an event that falls in alternating years on the autumn equinox, when the air is still wet and sticky but the leaves have just started to turn golden, when there are still summer bugs flitting about and the occasional summer rainstorm but the mornings are cool and crisp. After the clock ticked past midnight and my friends force-fed me cake and it was officially autumn and the beginning of my 22nd year, one of my roommates asked me to share what I was thinking of, being the first to turn 22 and therefore older and wiser than the rest of my friends.
I thought of a few things — well, more than a few, since I am now 22 and my brain is expansive and grand and more developed than that of a 21-year-old — but the one thing that I continued to think about was how grateful I’ve been feeling for my friends as of late.
Something that struck me recently is that each of my friends were not acquired on purpose or by any of my own doing, but rather each of these wonders came into my life by complete chance.
I was thinking about how I saw my two best friends for the first time the day I moved to college. They gave me small smiles and disappeared behind a closed door and I figured we wouldn’t be friends. I was wrong.
A year later, in a moment of wonderful serendipity, we snuck into a birthday party that we weren’t invited to and quite literally stumbled upon our two other best friends, and three became five. Within the month, we’d signed a lease to live together.
I was thinking about the white peaches, about how deftly my roommate sliced them, about how clean and wonderful they tasted.
I was thinking about my house, about how my friends have become my family and how we’ve filled our home with joy and love.
Molly Green is a senior from Orange County, Calif. studying Writing Seminars. Her column centers around beautiful moments and things in her life.
