He never thought much about living in a small town. Not that it was terrible, just… normal. A state no one really cared to visit, with a name that never appeared on tourist brochures or on postcards. The streets were familiar, the faces even more so. Growing up, whenever his cousins came down from the city, they’d call it “the boonies.” He hated that word. It wasn’t like he’d never left—he’d seen tall buildings, neon lights, crowded sidewalks that smelled like hot pretzels and exhaust fumes. He liked that too, but there was something about coming back to where the air was slow and heavy, where the silence stretched long after the sun went down, that made sense to him.

Dating, though, that was a whole other story. Everyone had technically dated everyone, though people exaggerated that truth. You got used to familiar faces in familiar places. Which was probably why so many looked for something—or someone—out of town.

His family was as small-town as they came. His mom worked at the largest clinic around, his dad wore the badge of sheriff, and he? He drifted somewhere in between, existing quietly, keeping to his rhythm. Friends weren’t hard to come by, but close friends—real ones—were rare. He had three. Maya, Austin, and Joey. The four of them grew up like siblings, years stitched together with the kind of memories that stuck like glue: Barbie dolls stolen from Maya’s older sister, late-night viewings of Monster House, summers down at the lake catching fish with bare hands and jumping in when the heat became too much, autumn nights at campfires where secrets slipped out with the smoke and kisses felt daring only until the sun came up. That was the dream, the kind he figured people elsewhere wouldn’t understand.

That afternoon he’d taken his dad’s truck down to the grocery store, the one with buzzing green lights overhead that made everything inside look a little sickly. His mom had scrawled a list onto a piece of paper: onions, breadcrumbs, ground beef—ingredients for her infamous meatloaf. He walked in, greeted by that stale dry air and the faint smell of disinfectant, and moved through the aisles he’d memorized years ago.

It wasn’t until he was in line that he noticed her.

You.

At first it was just recognition, like spotting an old photograph. But then the memory clicked into place. Same schools, same classrooms, same cafeteria tables up until junior year when your family had packed up and left. Rumor was your dad had gotten tangled in something shady—tax evasion, people said—and that’s how you’d landed in some big house out of town. But here you were, standing behind the counter, a plastic nametag pinned over your shirt like nothing had ever happened.

Funny, how life circled back.

He stared for a moment longer than he meant to, groceries clutched in hand. The girl whose family had once owned this very store now scanning items behind the register. The past colliding with the present under the dull green lights.