Seraphina
Making friends as an adult is an administrative nightmare.
Nobody warns you about that when you're little.
They spend years teaching you how to tie your shoelaces, how to say "please" and "thank you," and why licking frozen flagpoles is apparently a poor life choice.
Yet somehow, nobody sits you down and says, By the way, once you're an adult, making a friend becomes harder than filing your taxes.
When you're six, the baseline for friendship is remarkably uncomplicated.
You simply sit beside another child in the sandbox, offer them half of your bruised apple, or decide together that the slide is actually a pirate ship, and suddenly you've acquired a best friend until someone moves schools or eats glue.
Adults, however,...
Adults insist on making everything exhausting.
Apparently, you're expected to engage in this long, tedious dance of mutual deception before anyone decides you're trustworthy.
You have to ask about their careers even though neither of you actually cares.
You have to nod politely while they explain mortgage rates, meal-prepping, or why gluten personally offended them in 2019.
You pretend their vacation photographs are fascinating.
They pretend your story about accidentally killing your basil plant deserves sympathy.
Then, after approximately seventeen carefully monitored conversations, you're allowed to text each other first. It's ridiculous. Honestly, I think children had the superior operating system.
So.
Naturally.
I decided to bypass the traditional channels entirely.
The laptop glowed a pale blue against the kitchen table, the screen throwing cold light across the old maple wood while the rest of the cottage still sat wrapped in the soft gold of early morning.
Outside, fog drifted lazily between the birch trees, and somewhere deeper in the valley, a woodpecker had declared war on something that probably deserved it.
I opened an anonymous online forum. The cursor blinked patiently waiting, probably expecting professionalism. It was about to be disappointed. I rested my fingers on the keyboard before typing my title with great care.
Looking for Psycho Friends (Female Preferred)
I leaned back and read it once. Tilted my head.
"Perfect."
"You're going to attract tax auditors."
Gerald's horrified voice floated across the table from his usual position beside the butter dish. His tiny painted eyes were so wide I worried one might actually pop loose.
"The phrasing lacks structural ambiguity," he continued, already spiralling into bureaucratic despair. "It's an open invitation for federal observation. This is exactly how people end up in psychological evaluations."
Frank didn't even look up from the windowsill.
"She's filtering."
Gerald turned toward him so fast his little red hat nearly tipped sideways.
"Filtering?"
"Mm."
Frank shrugged.
"If somebody replies enthusiastically to an advertisement titled Looking for Psycho Friends, they've already saved everyone a tremendous amount of time."
"They could be dangerous!"
"They could."
"They could be murderers!"
Frank blinked once.
"So could accountants."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I've met accountants."
Gerald threw both tiny ceramic hands into the air.
"They also keep human teeth in jewellery boxes, Frank!"
Frank sighed.
"We all have hobbies."
I ignored them.
Experience had taught me that intervening in one of Gerald's ethical debates was like attempting to negotiate peace between two particularly opinionated pigeons.
Instead, I began typing. If I was going to find a friend, then the baseline had to be very specific.
People always complain that modern friendships are shallow. Personally...
I think the application process simply isn't thorough enough.
Requirements:
Must not panic upon hearing words such as bleach, luminol, or molecular binding. If your immediate response is "Should I call somebody?" this probably won't work.
Must understand that the IRS is infinitely more terrifying than haunted houses. Ghosts have never audited anyone.
Comfortable with ravens, moss-covered gravestones, abandoned greenhouses, rainy forests, and the peculiar peace that exists in places everyone else avoids.
Must appreciate silence. Not awkward silence. Proper silence. The sort where two people can spend three hours together without feeling obligated to discuss the weather.
Will not judge me for alphabetizing things, arranging my spices by height, or folding kitchen towels exactly three times. There is a system. Respect the system.
Bonus points if you also think cemeteries are significantly quieter than coffee shops.
I paused.
"...Maybe that's too much."
"It absolutely is," Gerald groaned.
His little ceramic boots stomped dramatically across the butter dish.
"You're not looking for a friend anymore. You're conducting psychological screening."
"I thought that's what friendship was."
Frank snorted.
"I like her list."
"Of course you do."
Gerald pointed an accusing finger toward him.
"You've encouraged this."
"I have."
"You should be ashamed."
Frank considered that.
"I’m not."
Gerald looked genuinely offended.
"I don't know why I continue speaking to either of you."
"You don't."
Frank yawned.
"You continue speaking at us."
I smiled to myself before reading over the post one final time. Maybe I should remove the cemetery requirement. No. That one was important. I clicked Post. The screen refreshed. Done.
"Good," I murmured, folding my hands with quiet satisfaction.
"At least now the universe knows I'm available."
Gerald buried his face in his tiny ceramic hands.
"We're all going to prison."
"I don't think prison has gardens."
Frank shrugged.
"They probably have accountants."
Gerald whimpered.
That settled it, I closed the laptop. The morning finally remembered how to be kind.
Thin ribbons of sunlight slipped through the towering pines, breaking the fog into floating pieces of gold that drifted lazily above the garden beds.
Everything smelled wonderfully alive. Wet earth.
Pine needles. Rose. The faint sweetness of the climbing roses curling around the fence I'd spent three entire Saturdays convincing to behave.
Gardening is remarkably therapeutic. People assume it's because you're nurturing life.
Personally, I think it's because dirt never asks invasive questions, it never asks why you still jump when someone raises their voice, it never asks why every cupboard in your kitchen is alphabetized and it certainly never asks why your pantry contains enough flour to survive an economic collapse.
The soil simply accepts you exactly as you are.
Which is terribly considerate of it.
I knelt beside the herb bed; my gloves already stained a respectable shade of brown as I loosened the earth around the rosemary bushes. My little hand trowel scraped gently through the damp soil while the morning birds argued overhead about absolutely nothing of importance.
Snip...
Snip...
The pruning shears clicked through a stubborn stem.
My thoughts, unfortunately, refused to stay in the garden. They wandered straight back to the post I'd written this morning.
Looking for psycho friends.
Perhaps "psycho" had been too strong, maybe I should've written...
Emotionally unconventional women with excellent communication skills.
No. That sounded like a support group, I wasn't looking for healing.
I was looking for someone who wouldn't call the police because I alphabetized my spices by emotional importance instead of cuisine. There’s a difference, a very important one.
Frank would understand. Gerald would probably file paperwork.
Speaking of…
"I still think 'psycho' was a poor choice of wording," Gerald called from somewhere near the porch rail.
I sighed dramatically without looking up.
"You think breathing is a poor choice of wording."
"It lacks professionalism."
Frank's ceramic voice drifted from the flower bed.
"I liked it."
"Of course you liked it."
"I would've added 'bring snacks.'"
Gerald gasped.
"You cannot lure unstable strangers with baked goods!"
"I absolutely can."
"No!"
"Cookies build trust."
"They build lawsuits!"
Sometimes I wondered if the gnomes only argued because silence made them uncomfortable. Or perhaps… They simply enjoyed annoying each other. Honestly?
Relationship goals if you ask me.
I brushed another handful of weeds aside before pressing fresh compost around the roses. The valley was unusually peaceful. Too peaceful. Just... the sort of quiet that makes you believe, for a tiny moment, life might actually leave you alone.
Woof!
My head lifted immediately. Max. The smile found my face before I could stop it.
"Good morning, sweetheart-"
The rest of the sentence dissolved somewhere between my lungs and my heartbeat. Across the fence… Across the narrow strip of gravel that separated our properties...
Elias was outside. Not Detective Reed. Not the man in the heavy jacket with his permanent frown and coffee-stained files. Just...
Elias.
He wasn't wearing his uniform. He wasn't even wearing a shirt.
He stood barefoot in the grass, the early sunlight painting warm gold across broad shoulders that looked as though they'd been carved from old cedar.
His back flexed as he bent to grab a thick pine branch, every movement effortless, every muscle shifting beneath weathered skin crisscrossed with old scars that disappeared beneath the waistband of his worn jeans.
Scars. There were so many. Long pale lines. Small circular marks. One jagged slash across his shoulder blade that looked old enough to have become part of him. He threw the branch. Max launched after it with all the enthusiasm of a puppy who definitely hadn't almost died two days ago.
"Cheater!" Elias laughed.
Actually...
Laughed.
The sound drifted across the clearing like sunlight breaking through rain clouds. Deep. Warm. Entirely unfair. Nobody had warned me his smile changed his entire face.
My poor little heart immediately forgot every survival instinct it had ever developed. It performed one enthusiastic cartwheel… Followed by what I'm fairly certain was cardiac fraud.
Oh.
He's beautiful.
That's...
That's incredibly inconvenient. My mouth went dry. The sensible part of my brain suggested I should probably look away. The much louder part screamed…
PHONE. GET THE PHONE. NOW.
I bolted upright so quickly I nearly planted myself face-first into the rosemary bush.
"Oh, absolutely not," Gerald shouted behind me.
"You already know what she's thinking."
"I do," Frank replied calmly.
"And I support it."
"This is evidence tampering!"
"This is photography."
"This is stalking!"
"This is appreciation."
I ignored them, mostly because Frank was correct. I sprinted inside the cottage, nearly sliding across the rag rug before grabbing my phone off the kitchen counter.
"Don't drop it," I muttered to myself.
"Don't drop it."
"If she falls and dies doing this," Gerald sighed.
"I'm haunting the coroner."
I hurried back to the screen door but stopped just inside the shadow of the hallway. Important distinction. I wasn't hiding. I was...remaining visually discreet. There's a difference. A very legal difference. I carefully lifted my phone.
Click.
Listen...before you judge me.
Actually, no.
Go ahead but answer honestly first.
If the brooding detective who kissed you like the world had thirty seconds left to exist was currently outside wrestling a German Shepherd in the morning sun playing in the grass without a shirt, his six-pack glistening in the morning dew...
while looking like a Renaissance sculpture that accidentally wandered into rural Montana...
You'd grab your phone too.
Exactly.
Thank you for your honesty.
The court finds me innocent of all charges.
Click.
I zoomed in not on his face, mostly but to see the scars that fascinated me more.
Every line looked like a sentence someone else had written across his body.
Every healed wound whispered a story he'd never tell.
Authors collect stories. Detectives collect evidence.
Really... We're coworkers with different filing systems.
Click.
Two days ago, he'd kissed me like he couldn't breathe without me... then apologized then broke both our hearts in under sixty seconds. Technically...I had been rejected. Emotionally...That kiss had filed an appeal and I've never been particularly good at accepting closed cases.
Some women collect pressed flowers. Some collect vintage teacups.
Apparently...I collect impossible men.
And honestly?
I've developed worse hobbies.