"From what?”
“Everything.” The words tumble out before I can stop them, and suddenly I can't seem to shut up. "Everything feels off. The life I'm supposed to want, the person I'm supposed to be—it all feels like I'm playing a part someone else wrote for me."
I don’t know why I’m telling him this. What’s worse is, I don’t know why I feel like I can tell him all this.
He's quiet, and when I risk looking at him, his expression is unreadable. But his hand—his hand has moved. Just an inch. Maybe less. Near enough now that our pinkies are almost touching.
"I know the feeling," he says finally.
"Do you?"
"Come on, Leni. You know my history better than anyone else does. It took falling apart more times than I can count to figure out who I actually was."
Leni.
He hasn't called me that in seven years, and hearing it now feels like coming home and breaking apart all at once.
My eyes burn. My throat is tight.
"And who are you now?"
The corner of his mouth lifts, sad and knowing.
"Still figuring that out."
We sit in that admission for a while, and it feels like the most honest conversation I've had in years.
No performance. No pretense. Just two people who used to know each other trying to figure out if there's anything left to recognize.
"I should go back,” I say eventually, even though I don't want to.
"Yeah."
But he doesn't move, and neither do I.
The silence holds us there, suspended.
His hand is still near mine. Near enough that I'm hyperaware of every millimeter between us. Near enough that when he finally shifts—standing, turning to face me—I feel the loss of his proximity like something physical has been taken away.
He offers me his hand.
I stare at it for a heartbeat too long.
Then I take it.
The moment our skin touches, something electric passes between us—recognition, maybe, or muscle memory, or just the simple devastating fact of contact after years of absence.
His hand is warm, calloused, strong. He pulls me up and suddenly we're standing too close.
Too close.
Close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his eyes. Near enough to count his heartbeat in the pulse at his throat. Close enough to smell him—soap and something woodsy and essentially him in a way that makes my head spin.
He doesn't step back immediately.
Neither do I.
For a second, maybe two, we just stand there.
