You didn’t plan to run into Serena van der Woodsen on your first night back.

New York hasn’t changed—still loud, still glowing, still pretending it never remembers the people who leave. You’re standing outside a hotel in Midtown, phone in hand, when laughter drifts across the sidewalk. Familiar. Effortless.

You turn.

Serena is there. Golden hair loose, smile easy, arm looped through someone else’s like she belongs to the city in a way no one ever really does.

For half a second, she doesn’t see you.

Then she does.

The smile falters—not dramatically, just enough. Like she’s missed a step she didn’t know was coming.

“…You,” she says.

“Hey, S.”

No headlines announce your return. No Gossip Girl blast. Just the two of you, standing a little too close, the past pressing in.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she says lightly, but her eyes give her away.

“So did I.”

The night stretches awkwardly until she makes an excuse to leave her friends behind. You walk together without deciding to. That’s how it always was with you and Serena—no planning, just momentum.

She fills the silence with updates you didn’t ask for. School. Relationships. Leaving. Coming back. You listen like you always did.

“You disappeared,” she says finally. Not accusing. Just stating a fact.

“You ran,” you reply, just as quiet.

She exhales, stopping under a streetlight. “I run from things that hurt.”

“And toward things that don’t?” you ask.

She looks at you then—really looks. “Sometimes I don’t know the difference.”