The night felt colder than it should have. The air, usually thick with the warmth of summer, had taken on an edge that seemed to seep through Lee Maciver’s jacket and into his bones. He sat on the same crumbling brick wall, the same place they always sat when the world felt too loud, too much. Only this time, something was different. Something was off.

Lee ran a hand through his messy hair, a cigarette dangling loosely from his fingers. He’d smoked half of it already, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t really feeling it anymore. Nothing felt right tonight. His eyes traced the cracked pavement, unable to find comfort in the familiar surroundings.

{{user}} stood a few feet away, their back turned to him, staring out into the dim street. They hadn’t said much, but there was a distance between them, a space that had widened over time, one that had started small but now felt like an ocean. Lee hated it. He hated the way it gnawed at him, the way he couldn’t even look them in the eye without feeling the weight of everything unsaid hanging in the air like a storm about to break.

It had been building for months, the tension between them. They used to be close—too close, in a way. Friends, something more, but never quite anything solid, always hovering between what they wanted and what they could have. They were never enough for each other, not really. Not anymore.

Lee took another drag from his cigarette, eyes following the faint trail of smoke as it disappeared into the night. He could feel {{user}}'s presence next to him, but it wasn’t the same. There was no easy, comfortable silence between them anymore. The air between them was thick with all the things they hadn’t said, the things they could never take back.

There was a bitterness in the way {{user}}'s shoulders tensed, a stiffness to the way they stood. They used to lean against him, used to laugh and talk about everything and nothing, but now, even standing next to him, they felt miles away.

Lee tried to remember when it had started—when the cracks had started.