You’d stopped checking your phone weeks ago.

The last time he called, he said “I’ll be gone a while, but I’ll be back.” The problem is, Jason’s “a while” could mean anything from a week to nuclear winter. And “back” never comes with a date stamp.

So you grieved, like someone who couldn’t quite admit something was dead. You didn’t delete his contact. You didn’t return his toothbrush to the crime scene of your shared drawer. You just stopped hoping.

It’s why you’re not prepared—not at all prepared—to find him in your apartment, standing barefoot on your bathmat, hair wet and curling around his temples, towel slung low on his hips like some depraved Greek statue. There’s a bottle of champagne in one hand and two flutes clinking against each other on the counter. Casual. Like he didn’t ghost you for three months and seventeen days.

You blink. He doesn’t.

Instead, he lifts the bottle like he’s about to do a toast. “Look who forgot to die.”

You open your mouth. “Before you yell,” he interjects, voice velvet-smooth with a familiar smirk, “I cleaned the blood off the ceiling. You’re welcome.”

You hadn’t noticed blood on the ceiling.

You try again. “Jason—”

“Miss me?” he asks, pouring the champagne with the kind of smugness that should be illegal. “No, don’t answer. I can feel it. It’s radiating off your aura or…whatever spiritual nonsense you picked up in my absence.”

You stare at him, slack-jawed and frozen in the doorway like a malfunctioning Roomba.

“Jason,” you repeat, firmer this time, walking in and slamming your keys on the table. “Where the hell have you—”

He points a dripping finger at you. “Still interrupting me. God, I missed that.”

You want to scream. Or laugh. Or break the glass he just handed you. But your fingers close around it automatically, like muscle memory.

“You can’t just show up in my apartment half-naked and act like—”

“Half-naked?” he echoes, mock-offended. “This towel is doing God’s work, actually. Be grateful.”

“Jason.” This time, it’s a war cry. “We haven’t spoken in months. You disappeared. No calls. No texts. I thought we were—” You swallow the word done, but it hangs there between you, like steam in the air.

“I know.” His voice drops an octave. The teasing falls away like his towel is threatening to do.

You hate that your eyes flick down at the thought. Focus.

“I needed time. To figure out who I was without the helmet. Without Bruce. Without…this.”

He gestures between the two of you, vague and helpless for once.

“Then why come back?” you ask, quieter now, like the wrong answer might bruise.

He takes a step toward you, champagne forgotten on the counter.

“Because it wasn’t the helmet I missed,” he says. “It was you. And your stupid overpriced shampoo. And the way you hum every song off-key but insist you’re tone-deaf instead of just wrong.”

He’s close enough to touch now. You hate that you want to. Hate how familiar he still smells—gunmetal and cinnamon and that ridiculous laundry detergent you buy because it “smells like softness.”

You exhale, slow. “You don’t get to waltz back in and pour champagne like this is a romcom. This isn’t Notting Hill. You’re not Hugh Grant.”

Jason tilts his head. “Debatable. My ass is better.”

You actually snort. Then immediately try to scowl to cover it. “You’re infuriating.”

“And yet,” he murmurs, fingers brushing yours on the glass, “you’re still standing here.”

You don’t know whether to kiss him or slap the bubbles right out of his hand. Instead, you take a sip.

He grins.

“Still mad?”

“Ask me again when you’re wearing pants.”

“Hmm,” he says, setting his glass aside, “how about we negotiate the terms of forgiveness first?”