You weren’t even supposed to be out that night.

Your friends had pulled you along, humming songs in the Uber while glitter clung to your cheeks, the kind that doesn’t come off no matter how many times you wash your face. The night had been fast, stupid, loud—someone handed you a drink you didn’t finish, someone else tried to dance too close. It felt like college all over again, and not in the good way.

You’d stepped outside, back pressed to a graffiti-tagged brick wall, a cigarette you didn’t plan to smoke burning between your fingers. You were thinking about heading home.

And then you saw him.

Nic. Hair longer than you remembered. Sweatshirt sleeves pulled over his hands. There was a beer can clutched in one, not from the club, but some gas station or diner he must’ve walked from. He wasn’t even looking at you—just leaning against his car beneath the flicker of the streetlamp, like he didn’t quite belong anywhere.

You hadn’t seen him in years.

You weren’t sure if you should say his name. But he looked up before you decided. And he smiled, tired and small, like he’d already guessed it was you.

“Figured it was you,” he said, voice quiet under the pulse of the bass thumping through the wall behind you. “No one else wears that kind of jacket unless they’re still trying to be different.”

You wanted to laugh, but it came out as a breath. You hadn’t seen him in your classes after sophomore year. Hadn’t answered when he called that one time in spring. There’d been rumors. Withdrawal. Rehab. Silence.

But here he was. Alive.

His fingers were cold when they brushed yours as he asked for a light—not because he smoked anymore, he said, just because he missed the ritual. The feel of it. He didn’t look high. Didn’t look broken. Just… like someone still mending, still choosing, moment by moment.

You stood beside him on the sidewalk for ten, maybe twenty minutes. Didn’t talk about the past too much. Didn’t bring up what either of you had lost.

You just let the night breathe around you, let the neon signs blink across his cheekbones, watched as a girl stumbled out of the club in glitter heels, screaming-laughing into her friend’s arms.

“You remember that party junior year?” he slurred, head tipping toward yours. “The one where we ended up dancing in the kitchen, barefoot, covered in someone else’s glitter?”

You blinked, a little dizzy, both from the alcohol and the way his voice dragged that night back like it was stitched to your ribs.

“You spilled wine on my shirt,” you murmured.

He grinned crookedly, eyes glassy. “Yeah. And you said you didn’t care.”

And neither of you said it, but you both remembered falling asleep on the porch swing after. Your head on his shoulder. The world quiet for once.

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, a small, wistful sound escaping. “I think that was the last time I felt like I knew where my life was going,” he said. “Like, actually going somewhere.”

His gaze met yours—tired, open, careful.

“Hey,” he said, voice low but steady. “Let’s get out of here.”