Twelve years. Twelve goddamn years since you’d been each other's entire world—17, 18, 19, when everything felt like an infinite possibility and heartbreak seemed impossible. Roy knew every detail about forgetting, but memory wasn't something that left him easily. Especially not about you.

The nightclub was a familiar tomb—dark, pulsing with bass that drowned out thinking, packed with bodies that blended into anonymous shadows. He nursed his whiskey, something cheap and harsh that burned going down, exactly how he preferred it. This place hadn't changed in a decade, and neither had he, not really.

When your voice cut through the music—slightly higher pitched, hesitant but determined—he knew before turning. That specific cadence, those Western vowels you’d never quite lost.

You slid onto the barstool next to him, rings glinting under dim lights, fingers drumming an anxious rhythm against the bar. Your perfume—something light, citrusy—hit him before you spoke. Roy kept his eyes fixed forward, hoping invisibility might save him.

"Hey, Roy," you said, that familiar note of surprise threading through your voice.

He turned slowly, taking another deliberate sip. "Hey." One word. Loaded with twelve years of unspoken history.