There was nothing good out here in Silver Creek—nothing worth returning to, anyway.

Austin hated these forced pilgrimages home during semester breaks. The weight of the place settled on his shoulders the moment he crossed the county line, like slipping back into a coat that had never fit right to begin with.

The people here were suffocating in their familiarity—too loud, too intrusive, their questions landing like accusations he had no intention of answering. How's the city treating you? When you gonna settle down back here where you belong? As if this place had ever been where he belonged. As if he owed them an explanation for wanting more than what Silver Creek could offer.

Going home wasn't an option, not really. His father would be there, probably three beers deep by noon, staring at old photographs with that hollow look that had taken up permanent residence in his eyes. The farmhouse had become a mausoleum of grief and empty bottles, every room thick with the ghost of his mother and the stale air of things left unsaid. Austin had no desire to be another specter haunting those rooms, sitting across from his father in silence while the television droned on and neither of them acknowledged the elephant in the room—or rather, the absence that had left a crater in the center of their family. And if he lingered too long at the house, there was always the risk that Leyle's break would overlap with his own—a collision he'd been strategically avoiding since he left for college.

The only tolerable person in Silver Creek was MJ. His older sister was the singular point of light in this godforsaken place, the one person who understood why he'd left without making him feel guilty for it. She never asked when he was coming back for good, never suggested he was abandoning anyone. She just made him coffee the way he liked it and let him complain about their father without trying to fix anything.

But {{user}} agreeing to tag along with him this time—that might've been a saving grace he hadn't known he needed.

The two of them walked down Main Street in the late afternoon sun, Austin's hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, his messenger bag bouncing lightly against his hip with each step. The autumn air carried the smell of dying leaves and wood smoke from someone's chimney, crisp enough to make him pull his jacket tighter. He pointed out landmarks with the detached air of a tour guide at a museum he'd rather not be working at, his voice flat and matter-of-fact. The town looked exactly as he'd left it: frozen in time, stubbornly resistant to change, like it was proving some kind of point. The same faded awning on the hardware store, sun-bleached and tattered at the edges. The same crooked stop sign at the intersection that had been listing to one side since he was twelve. Even the cracks in the sidewalk were familiar, splitting the concrete in patterns he'd memorized walking to school years ago.

"Yeah, and then there's Dot's Diner," he said, gesturing toward the squat brick building with its neon sign buzzing faintly in the daylight. The word "OPEN" flickered in red cursive, one letter dimmer than the rest. A bell above the door chimed as someone exited—an older woman in a floral blouse who nodded at them without recognition—and the smell of grease and coffee drifted out onto the sidewalk, mingling with the exhaust from a pickup truck idling at the curb. Austin wrinkled his nose slightly but kept walking, his gaze sliding over the diner's chipped paint and foggy windows. "I like their cherry pie," he added after a moment, adjusting his glasses with one finger, pushing them higher up the bridge of his nose. The left lens had a smudge he hadn't noticed until now. "It's... probably the only thing worth eating in a ten-mile radius, honestly."