Lee talked with Bai for the first but not the last time in a long time. 

Knowing that talking with her opened old emotional wounds not only for himself but also for his wife, Karen, his friends Guin, Bai, Cajessi and Pierre.

Lee listened to Bai and sighed. 

Two years had passed since the breakup, since Lee had lost a tightknit group of friends who introduced him to the happiness of social dancing…

Lee looked at Bai and tried to keep smiling. 

The pain, mostly memory, was real again. 

Bai relived the hurt he’d heard in Guin’s voice and eyes hours earlier.

Two years had passed and the pain felt just as horrible as before, everyone pretending to be analytical adults when they were crying inside.

Lee’s intention to seek healing amongst the members of the former group did not happen instantly.

Since the scars, still tender, subject to outside poison and toxins, burned at the surface, two years served only to start a life of healing.

Two years did not give them enough time to build even a modest integrated platform of a bigger organisation with new as well as old members of the core group.

Lee sighed.

He loved without judgment.

He wanted to magically heal his friends, find some way for them to forgive and forget, as he had trained himself to dissociate temporary emotional responses from influence on future actions.

But he couldn’t. 

He, like them, was simply human.

And that was enough, sufficient to go forward with big goals for a bigger group.