When they knew

Tammy

Tammy's known Debbie and Lou for half her life, still has photo albums at home full of sepia prints featuring Lou in dirty overalls, Debbie with braces on. Behind one picture that takes pride of place on her desk, carefully framed in gold, is a scrawl in Debbie's handwriting - best friends! - and Lou's smaller, neater print below it - forever. They've had each other's backs forever, know each other better than they know themselves. It's never mattered how far they were from each other. It's always been her and Debbie and Lou.
Mostly. Tammy's not stupid. She knows that they love her - she loves them too - but not the way they love each other. Sophomore year in high school she started picking up on the little things, pinging on her radar, and Debbie and Lou never understood it themselves, but Tammy always has. She's always seen the way their hands glance against each other's when they walk through corridors, the way they press up shoulder to shoulder when they're guarding for danger. She thinks she would feel resentful, excluded, if she were a different person.
But Debbie and Lou orbit around each other. They love each other all-consumingly, like it's a given of their lives. They carry it with them, not just as if it's a part of them, but as if it is them. It's why Debbie would bring down the moon for Lou and why Lou would follow her unquestioningly into the last circle of hell without looking back. It works for them, but it's not the life Tammy thinks she would be strong enough to lead.
She watches, from the outside, from beside them, and guards their backs instead, sometimes from each other. Because they love each other, more than their own lives, but they're all edges especially when they're young. Time will soften them, make them slot seamlessly into each other's lives, but she doesn't know that yet. She protects them, and they both love her, fiercely but just enough, and it's all she really needs.
(She gets out of that life - mostly... - and she finds someone and falls in love and has kids and builds something stable for herself. But when they ask her to come back, she goes. She sees the way they look at each other, even after everything, even after all that time apart, and she thinks this was how it was always going to end. She always knew, even as a teenager all those years ago, gazing at her friends and being certain in her heart.)