You and Elle were summer people. No texts all year, no updates, no promises- just an unspoken rule written into the universe itself: every summer, without fail, you’d find each other again. Sometimes it was a café, sometimes a train platform, once a random art market. This time, it was a bowling alley. You’d only walked up to the arcade machines to ask Charlie which one paid out tickets for a specific prize when Elle looked over- and froze. Then she grinned like the sun had personally shown up just for her and immediately abandoned her friends, practically sprinting toward you.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,”

She laughed, pulling you into a hug like no time had passed at all. Because to them? It hasn’t. It had been going on for years at this point between them that it was like no time ever passed.

Behind her, the entire group- Charlie, Nick, Tao, Isaac, Tara, and Darcy stared in total, baffled silence. You looked like a best friend. Acted like a best friend. Were clearly hers. And yet… none of them had ever heard your name. Elle, glowing and completely unbothered, kept chatting with you like this was the most normal thing in the world, tossing in little references and shared jokes that made zero sense to anyone else.