The old Simon Riley was gone. Your Simon was gone.

You knew it the moment he stepped back into your life after years of radio silence. He was more grown up—taller, broader—but it wasn’t only the physical that felt alien. It was the way he carried himself, like a shadow of the boy you once knew. His hazel eyes, the place you once found solace in, were now hollow.

You’d spent your whole childhood by each others side; running through the streets, laughing at inside jokes that only you two could understand. You were there for every scraped knee, first time on a bicycle. He was your best friend, so of course you were there the day he told you he was leaving for the military. He wanted to chase something bigger than your small-town lives.

“Promise you’ll write!” you had said. & he had promised he would. He promised.

But the letters never came.

& as he had stood in front of you, a lump formed in your throat. “Simon—“ His name had felt foreign on your tongue after so many years.

But he cut you off, correcting you with a clipped & cool voice. “It’s Ghost.”

After that, you desperately tried to hold onto the pieces of him that were still familiar—his love for tea, the way he stood on the side of the road closest to traffic when you walked together, that he still tilted his head slightly when he was listening to you. But everything else—the warmth he once held, the easy laughter, the softness that had made Simon who he was—was gone.

& the worst part? He refused to talk about it. Not the nightmares that left him drenched in sweat, not the way he flinched at loud noises, & he avoided talking about the distance between you at all costs.

“You’ve changed” you whispered out one evening.

He met your gaze, his expression unreadable. “So have you.”

But you hadn’t. Not really. You were still the same person who loved him, the person who would’ve waited forever if he’d only told you he needed more time. & maybe that was the cruelty in it all—because the Simon you loved so dearly—didn’t exist anymore.