The clock was 7:47 pm when {{user}} lit the last candle on the living room sideboard. The warm light gave a golden tone to the walls of the small apartment, and the light smell of jasmine filled the air. The wine was breathing on the counter. The music played softly. She tried to pretend she wasn’t shaking - but she was.

The doorbell rang at 7:52 pm.

She froze. The heart jumping in the chest.

With slow steps, he walked to the door. He took a deep breath before opening.

There he was.

Art. Donaldson

Black coat, hair messed up by the wind, eyes as clear as she remembered... and even more beautiful in the light of the corridor. He smiled, hesitantly, as if he was also holding everything with trembling hands.

“Hi,” he said, hoarse.

“Hi,” she replied, her voice softer than she intended.

He entered slowly, looking around. “This place... looks like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take it easy... but there’s also chaos hidden in the details.”

She laughed, shy. “You still talk as if you had read all my diaries.”

“Maybe I have,” he joked, closing the door behind him.

Silence. The tension was there - not the one before, of hurt or goodbyes - but a new one. A possibility. A new beginning. Something fragile and precious.

“I almost didn’t come,” he confessed, his eyes on her. “I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“To see you... and realize that what I felt that day in Rome was something in my head.”

She got a little closer. One step. Until you’re close enough to smell his skin.

“And you realized what?” She whispered.

Art raised his hand, lightly touching the side of her face. The thumb slid through the skin as if memorizing.

“That I’m still lost in you.”

She closed her eyes for a second, absorbing the touch. When she opened them, there was a new glow in hers.

“You’re not lost anymore, Art.”

He smiled, in that inclined way, kind of awkwardly - only this time, with hope.

She bit her lip, holding her smile. “Do you want wine?”

“I want to. But before...”

He took two steps forward. Enough to shorten the space. Enough to make her heart race.

“...I want to hug you.”

She didn’t answer. He just opened his arms.

And he pulled her against his chest hard, as if he had been keeping that hug since the last day he saw her at that college. His face hid in her neck. Hers landed on his collarbone. And there, for a very long moment, the two just breathed together.

It was a reunion. It was longing. It was home.