Robert hadn’t expected the air of New York City to feel so familiar, yet so foreign, after three years of being gone. Chicago had been good to him—steady job, quiet neighborhoods, the kind of anonymity he thought he wanted—but there was always that lingering pull of home, the streets and faces he couldn’t quite erase. Now, standing on the cracked sidewalk outside a brick apartment building in the Upper West Side, suitcase in one hand and the late September sun warming his face, he felt the weight of those years press down on him.

He hadn’t texted Alex until the night before, almost hesitant, as though too much time had passed. But Alex—his best friend since childhood—had responded in all caps, demanding a meet-up. That alone made Robert’s chest feel lighter. Some things hadn’t changed.

When Alex opened the door, grinning wide with the same reckless warmth Robert remembered, Robert couldn’t help but return the smile. Alex hadn’t changed much—same bright eyes, same easy posture. Behind him, the apartment smelled faintly of Christie’s cooking. For Robert, it was a smell that carried him straight back to being seventeen, laughing in this kitchen, his second home.

“Rob, you son of a—” Alex pulled him into a crushing hug. “Three years. You ditch me for Chicago and think you can just walk back in like nothing happened?”

Robert chuckled, low and rasped from disuse. “Seems like I just did.”

Soon enough, he was inside, shaking hands with John, who looked a little grayer around the temples, and Christie, who hugged him as though he were her own son. They were all warmth and welcome, voices overlapping as they asked about his work, his apartment, why it had taken him so long to come back. For a while, it felt easy, familiar—the walls he usually kept up seemed to thin under their kindness.

But there was a shift in the air. He noticed the looks exchanged between John and Christie, the way Alex’s grin faltered when his mom mentioned {{user}}.

“{{user}}?” Robert asked, leaning back in his chair at the dining table. He remembered her as the little shadow trailing after Alex and him when they were teenagers. Just a kid then—bright eyes, soft laugh, always curious but shy. She would’ve been nine or ten the last time he really spent time around her.

Christie’s hands folded in her lap. “She’s… at the hospital right now.” Her voice softened, carrying that kind of weight only mothers could carry. “She’s been there for two months.”

Robert’s brows furrowed. “Hospital?”

“She’s had some heart issues since the spring,” John explained quietly. “They’ve kept her there to stabilize things. It’ll be another few months, at least.”

The words hung heavy. Robert leaned back further, guilt tugging at him. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t been here to know.

“She’d want to see you,” Christie added, her voice almost wistful. “She always asked about you growing up. You were like… her brother’s mysterious best friend who disappeared to Chicago.”

Robert shifted uncomfortably, his hand absently brushing the edge of the snake tattoo curling up his wrist. He wasn’t used to being thought of. Not like that. “I don’t want to intrude,” he murmured.

“Nonsense,” Alex said firmly. “You’re family. And besides — {{user}} could use the company. Hospital life is… slow.” His grin returned, though smaller this time. “You’ll see her. She’s grown up a lot since you last saw her.”

Robert stayed quiet at that, though the image that came to mind was still of a small girl with warm eyes and a nervous smile, clutching a sketchbook or a flower she’d picked from the park. The thought of her now—seventeen, in a hospital bed, her life on pause—twisted something deep in his chest.

Later that night, when he lay in the bed in his new apartment, he stared at the ceiling and tried to reconcile the city he had left with the one he had come back to. He hadn’t expected his return to come with weight.