Two friends sit alone outside the campus pond on a cool fall night under a blanket of distant stars and wrapped in the misleading warmth of whiskey. They don’t speak often, but pass between them a flask. After a prolonged moment of silence:

“Do you ever wonder if, in five or ten years, we’re going to look back on all of this and regret everything?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, every decision you ever made here. Every fight you had, every girl you ever slept with. Every night you went out and partied instead of doing your work, or, every night you stayed in and did work while your friends lived their lives.

The major and classes you chose, and skipped. The types of beer you drank, and where you spent your free time. Every friend you made and every friend you lost. Every heart you passed by and never allowed to open up to you. Every time you opened your own heart and had it closed for you.

Really, every chance you never took, and every chance you shouldn’t have taken. The extent of your life leading up to where you will be. The choices in your life, big or small, that will have made you who you will become.”

“I guess it depends on who I’ve become.”

“What if you’ve become no one?”

“Well, in that light, I think it would be impossible not to. But no one is still someone. They’ve still been somewhere, they’ve still done something.”

Behind them the wind blew across the water, breaking the reflection of the moon into shards of glass while the whiskey ran dry.