The sun was beating down that day, one of those summer suns that stick to your skin and make everything feel a little blurry.
Catarina had promised herself she'd spend the day alone, with her notebook and an iced coffee, in that little corner of the public library she had discovered by chance.
But, of course, chance had other plans.
"Cat?!"
Althéa's voice pierced the quiet of the library like a golden arrow. Catarina looked up, half exasperated, half amused.
Althéa was there, denim shorts, a golden smile, sunglasses perched in her hair like a crown.
"You're supposed to whisper in a library, you know?"
"Whispering is for normal people. And I'm a work of art. I deserve to be admired."
Catarina smiled despite herself. She loved the way Althéa could light up the dullest places. With her, even dusty art history shelves seemed to breathe.
They spent the afternoon flipping through books, commenting on the strangest titles, inventing lives for forgotten authors.
At one point, Althéa leaned over and whispered:
"Have you noticed that sad books are often the most beautiful?"
"It's because we see ourselves in them. Happy stories are nice, but we remember them less."
"You're not wrong…" Althéa murmured, thoughtful.
A silence settled. Not awkward, no. Gentle. As if they had found the same rhythm, without even realizing it.
In the days that followed, they hardly ever parted.
An ice cream shared under the heat. A movie night ruined by a power outage, which they turned into candles and confessions. Bus rides where Althéa sang too loudly and Catarina pretended to be embarrassed, while laughing out loud.
And sometimes, when night fell, they sent each other pointless messages. "Still awake?" followed by paragraphs full of nothing: strange dreams, half-poetic lines, thoughts they'd never share with anyone else.
Catarina discovered in Althéa a quiet strength, almost comforting, despite her overflowing energy.And Althéa, for her part, felt there was something fragile in Catarina, something she wanted to protect without knowing why.
One evening, as the sky blazed behind the buildings, they sat on the edge of a bridge, legs dangling over the void.
Althéa tossed a stone into the water and said:
"Have you ever felt like you don't belong in your own life?"
"All the time."
"Then there are two of us."
They stayed there, watching the current, saying nothing. The world around them seemed to disappear, as if time itself had granted them a pause.
That night, in the silence of her room, Catarina wrote a line in her notebook:
"I think some friendships are promises we made before we were born."
She didn't yet know how right she was.