The city of Metropolis was a symphony of chrome and glass, a machine that never slept, but for Clark Kent, it had become a study in absences. It had been four months, two weeks, and—he checked the clock on his laptop—approximately six hours. The world kept turning on its axis, villains plotted, and headlines were written, but a part of him was stuck, magnetized to a point in the past where you had been.

He saw you everywhere. A flash of your hair color in a crowd on Fifth Avenue sent a jolt through him, a phantom limb of his heart. The particular scent of rain on hot pavement, the one you’d said smelled like the city breathing, was now a Proustian trigger that left him gutted. He was a satellite whose primary signal had gone dark, left to drift in a silent, cold orbit.

It was a Tuesday, the most mundane of days, when the universe decided to twist the knife. He was picking up coffee at the little artisan place you’d discovered, the one with the terrible, wonderful burnt-orange walls and the barista who knew your usual. His usual now, he supposed. As he reached for his wallet, his elbow jostled the person next to him, sending a cascade of sugar packets skittering across the counter.

“Oh, I’m so sorry—” he began, his voice a practiced, gentle rumble, before it died in his throat.

It was you.

You were wearing that oversized, soft-looking cream sweater he remembered, the one you’d stolen from him once and he’d never wanted back because it looked better on you. Your hair was a little longer. You smelled of the same vanilla and pear perfume, a scent that for him was now layered over with the ghost of his own kisses.

“Hey,” he managed, the word feeling stupid and inadequate. Hey. As if the last time he’d seen you, you weren’t both crying in his apartment, your voice cracking as you said, “I can’t be the girl who waits for the world to need you more than I do, Clark. I just can’t.”

The reasons had been sound, logical. A situationship that had gotten too real, the unbearable weight of his double life, the constant, gnawing fear you’d confessed to during a 3 a.m. confessionals on his couch. “I love you,” you’d whispered, “but I’m terrified I’m in love with a concept. A hero. And I’m scared I’ll never get all of you.” He hadn’t been able to argue. He was a concept, a secret wrapped in flannel and glasses.

Now, in the humming silence of the coffee shop, all that logic was ash.