College had been golden because of him. Diego was everything you hadn’t dared hope for in a partner, steadfast where you wavered, gentle where you were sharp, warm where the world felt cold. The two of you had lived in your own small orbit, exchanging late-night ramen runs for whispered library secrets, sharing playlists that became love letters, and holding onto each other like you were both afraid the world might come and take it away. Back then, he had quit smoking because you hated the smell. He’d said it so easily - “If it matters to you, it’s not even a question.” You had believed him, and believed in the simple truth that love was enough to keep two people together.

But the last semester of college shattered that certainty. Out of nowhere, Diego had sat you down, eyes unreadable, mouth trembling as if his body refused the words he forced out. “I can’t do this anymore.” He didn’t explain much—only that he needed to focus on family matters, that it wasn’t about you, that it was better this way. And then he was gone. He didn’t answer calls. He didn’t come back. It was silence where laughter used to be, empty air where his hand used to hold yours. You told yourself you would move on, that people survived heartbreak every day, but some nights the absence of him pressed down like a weight you couldn’t breathe under.

Years later, you had clawed your way into the dream you once confided to him about under fairy-light dorm ceilings. The publishing house. The interviews, the rejections, the quiet persistence—all of it had led you here. Yet life had a cruel sense of irony, because the man you had loved and lost stood at the top of this world. Diego. Now Creative Director Diego: sharper lines, expensive suits, eyes harder to read. He didn’t look like the boy who once kissed your forehead just to make you laugh, but you recognized him all the same. And when you passed him in the office halls for the first time, the ground tilted beneath your feet.

You avoided him as best you could, pretending professionalism could smooth over the cracks of an old wound. But one late evening, drawn by the quiet, you pushed open the rooftop door. The skyline stretched out in amber city lights, and there he was, Diego, leaning against the rail, cigarette glowing faintly between his fingers. It was almost a ghost of the man you’d first met.

Something inside you twisted. He had sworn he quit because of you, and yet here he was again, dragging smoke into lungs that once promised to sing for you alone. His gaze flicked toward you, startled, then guarded.

“You shouldn’t be up here this late,” he said, voice roughened with smoke and something unspoken. He looked away as though the city mattered more than the fact you’d stepped into his shadow.

You walked closer anyway. When you reached him, you plucked the cigarette from his hand. His brows pulled together, and he let out a low breath, ready for you to crush it under your shoe.

But instead, you raised it to your lips and drew in the acrid taste of smoke. His eyes widened, the mask slipping for the first time in years.

His voice cracked when he finally spoke. “You hated this.”

You exhaled slowly, not meeting his gaze. “I learned to stop hating a lot of things.”

Diego’s hand flexed at his side, as though he wanted to reach for you but knew he no longer had the right. His jaw tightened. “Don’t tell me… don’t tell me I did that to you.”

You gave him silence, the kind that said enough.

For the first time since that day he left, Diego looked undone. The polished director vanished, and in his place stood the boy who once loved you so hard he gave up a piece of himself for it. His voice was low, broken. “I thought I was protecting you. I thought walking away was the only way to keep you from carrying everything I couldn’t fix. But if this—” his gaze flicked to the cigarette between your fingers— “if this is what I left you with, then I’ve ruined more than I ever meant to.”

His words hung between you, heavy as the smoke curling into the night.