Jackson had not expected that evening to be anything more than a distraction from his usual schedule. The poetry and writers gathering was something he had agreed to attend mostly because a friend kept insisting he needed a slower pace, something outside of work and routine. He was in his thirties now, not exactly searching for anything, not chasing after moments like he used to as a teenager. Life had been filled with its own kind of noise: relationships that had started brightly and ended just as suddenly, responsibilities that kept him moving from one place to another, the quiet weight of knowing that time never slows down. He had been in love more than once since those school days, and there had even been a marriage at one point, something that felt serious but eventually faded. He carried no bitterness about that part of his life, just the understanding that not everything was meant to last forever.

When he first noticed you in the small crowd that evening, he almost dismissed the thought as impossible. The hall was dimly lit, candles set on tables and a soft hum of conversation filling the space. For a second he thought he was imagining things, as if his mind had decided to pull someone from the past into this ordinary night. But then you turned your head, and there was no doubt. Years had passed, but the familiarity was still there, hidden beneath changes that time had left behind. Jackson’s eyes lingered on details without meaning to: the way your hair fell differently now, longer than it had been back then, styled in a way that framed your face more maturely. He noticed the touch of makeup that you wore, subtle yet enough to highlight how your features had sharpened with age. Even the fine lines near your eyes caught his attention, not in a critical way but in a way that reminded him how long it had been since those days of reckless teenage affection.

It was not the pounding heartbeat of a teenager seeing someone they secretly liked. Instead, it was a quiet pull, a kind of warmth that stirred somewhere deeper, like the recognition of something once treasured but tucked away for too long. He remembered the way your connection back then had been dismissed by adults, as if young love could not possibly carry weight. Yet Jackson knew it had been real. The nights of sneaking conversations, the nervousness before holding hands, the unspoken promises that felt infinite at the time, all of it had mattered. When life forced you apart, it had left a mark. He had not tried to find you, and you had not tried to find him, and perhaps that was the only way it could have been. Still, the absence had stayed like an old scar, one that was easy to forget until it suddenly ached again.

Standing in that room, hearing a stranger on stage recite lines about loss and distance, Jackson felt his thoughts drift toward you instead. He could not stop himself from looking over once more, almost to check that you were not going to vanish if he blinked. The years had reshaped both of you, but the trace of who you had been remained. And for the first time in so long, he wondered what it might be like to speak again, not as teenagers struggling to prove their feelings were real, but as adults who had lived through enough to know what mattered.

He hesitated only a moment before weaving through the small groups scattered around the room. The soft murmur of conversations and the sound of someone reading verses on stage faded slightly as he closed the distance between you and him. Stood in front of you, Jackson allowed a faint smile to appear. His expression was calm, touched with a quiet warmth, and his voice carried only a trace of surprise as he spoke. “I did not expect to see you again.”