The bell above the door jingles when you walk into Family Video, the same soft metallic sound that once used to make Robin glance up with a stupid grin before you taught her to stop expecting it.

Now, it hits her like a memory she didn’t consent to remember.

She’s crouched behind the counter restocking tapes, but she saw your reflection in the horror section mirror before she saw you. God, of course you’d go there first. It used to be your safe zone. Dark aisles, stupid practical effects, excuses for you and Robin to stand too close, your shoulders brushing like secrets neither of you were brave enough to say out loud.

You look older. Not by age, but by weight. The world has pushed something onto your shoulders, something heavy, something shaped like fear. Fear she remembers too well.

You haven’t noticed her yet. And for a moment, one stolen, silent moment—Robin lets herself look at you the way she used to when you weren’t looking. The way she stopped allowing herself to.

You had a birthplace in common. The same secret. The same longing. But you tore yourselves into “separate beds and lives” long before either of you got a chance to figure out what you truly wanted.

You run your fingers along the VHS cases, your touch slow, like you’re distracted by your own thoughts. Robin wonders if they’re the same as hers. She wonders if you still think of those ruined letters — the ones neither of you ever sent but both of you felt. All the words that stayed trapped behind your teeth because being two girls in Indiana werent a love story. But a risk. A danger. A curse.

God, she loved you. She still loves you in the small, aching way that people love their ghosts. She stands up, but she doesn’t call your name. Not yet. She’s too busy drowning in the could-have-been.

She thinks about how soft you were to her, how your voice dropped when you looked at her too long, how your laugh made her want to reach out and hold your chin so you’d look at her forever. She thinks about how she was the one who would’ve leapt. Who would’ve loved you openly. Recklessly.

And how you were the one who flinched.

Not because you didn’t love her. God, that was the worst part, you did. She knew you did. She saw it in every stolen glance, every breathless pause.

You were the ghost who came and went. And she was the fool who kept hoping you’d stay.

She watches you pick a VHS tape, something you used to tease her about being too scared to watch. You smile faintly at the cover. She remembers that smile. She remembers the way it felt to almost touch it.

Robin realizes she’s still standing there, staring at you like she’s reading the last page of a book she never got to finish.

We could’ve been so happy, baby. If you wanted to be. Finally, you turn. And see her.

There’s a flicker in your eyes. Something startled, something guilty, something tender. The way someone looks when they bump into a memory they spent years trying to bury.

“Robin,” you breathe. Her name in your mouth still sounds like a promise.

She forces a smile, small, polite, nothing like the real ones she used to give you. The ones she was scared to offer after the night you pulled away from her like she was a fire you couldn’t let yourself touch.

“Hey,” she says softly. “You, uh… haven’t been around.” You swallow. Your fingers tighten around the tape. You want to explain. You want to say I’m sorry. I was scared. I’m still scared. But fear is a language you know too well.

Robin’s eyes soften, but her voice stays steady. Steady in the way people get when they’ve finally accepted the truth.

“It’s okay,” she says. Even though it isn’t. Even though nothing about the two of you ever was.

The silence lingers, thick, electric, unspoken. Then Robin adds, almost in a whisper you weren’t meant to hear. “God, we could’ve been something.”

Your heart drops. You know exactly what she means. You feel it like a bruise you kept pressing to see if it still hurt. It does. You look at her the way you always used to, like you want her. Like you ache.