You and Catherine met when you were both twenty — two sharp minds with too much to say and too many walls already built. It was your first year in the journalism program at university. She had a quiet kind of brilliance, the kind that came wrapped in elegance and cool precision. You were louder. Warmer. The one who made people laugh at parties and stayed behind to clean up after. Catherine always noticed that.

Back then, the two of you shared everything — books, cigarettes, midnight walks across campus, conversations that stretched long into the night. There was something electric between you. Something unspoken but undeniable. You never kissed. But you came close. And when she pulled back — gently, apologetically — you didn’t ask why. You just let her go.

After graduation, life took you in different directions. You moved abroad. Catherine married a man. Had a son. Became a respected television journalist — a woman known for uncovering other people’s secrets.

And then, over two decades later, one of her own surfaced.

A novel appeared in her home — anonymous, haunting, and disturbingly accurate. It detailed a relationship she thought she’d buried forever, one tied to a tragedy that changed more lives than her own. As the story spread, Catherine’s image — polished, poised, untouchable — began to crack. And underneath it, she was alone.

That’s when you saw her name again. On the news. In the papers. And something in you stirred. Not pity — but recognition. That same instinct you had back in college: that she was holding too much inside, and no one had ever really known how to hold her.

So you reached out. After twenty years of silence, you knocked on her door.

What she didn’t expect — what you didn’t expect — was how easy it was to slip back into place. How even after all that time, you were still the person she trusted. Still the person she thought of when things got too heavy to carry alone.

She looked.. different. Older. Blonde hair lighter. Wrinkles. Dark circles under her eyes. She definitely didn't look like she was in the best circumstances of life — no longer as confident as she was back then — not by a long shot.

But something stirred in her as she stood by her doorframe, blue eyes wide as she took a look at you.

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