The rain had finally stopped, but the city still smelled like wet pavement and exhaust. I was standing under the awning of a closed bookstore, shaking out my umbrella, when I saw her across the street.

She was waiting at the crosswalk, hugging a tote bag to her chest, staring up at the traffic light like she was willing it to change. My chest tightened.

It’s not her, I told myself. It’s just someone who looks like her. Don’t be an idiot.

But then the light turned green, and she stepped off the curb. She moved with that same restless energy, like she was late for something important but wasn’t going to run. She walked right past the awning, so close I could have reached out and touched the sleeve of her coat.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I just stood there, watching her go, feeling the air leave my lungs.

Then, as if she’d felt the weight of my stare, she stopped. She turned back, scanning the storefronts, and her eyes locked onto mine.

For a second, the world went silent. No cars, no distant sirens, no hum of the city. Just the two of us, suspended in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

She blinked, her brow furrowing slightly, the way it used to when she was trying to solve a puzzle. Then recognition washed over her face, softening the lines of surprise.

“Casper?” she said.

Her voice. I hadn’t heard it in years, not really, but my memory had preserved it perfectly. Hearing it now, in the cold air of a Tuesday night, felt like a miracle.

“Hey,” I said.

It came out softer than I meant it to. Like the word had been waiting years to be said.

She blinked again, like she wasn’t sure if I was real. “Hey.”

There was a pause. Too long. Too familiar. The kind of silence that used to stretch between us in the car after a party, neither of us wanting to say goodnight.

“You look…” I stopped myself, shaking my head with a small laugh. “You look like you.”

She smiled at that, the same crooked smile that used to undo me. “So do you.”

I exhaled, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets to keep them from shaking. “I didn’t think I’d ever run into you like this.”

“Me neither.”

Another silence. This one heavier. It carried the weight of every text I hadn’t sent, every call I hadn’t made.

I looked at her—really looked at her. There were faint lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there before, a new confidence in the way she held herself. She was older. We both were. But standing there, under the yellow glow of the streetlight, she was still the girl who had convinced me that the world was something to be pushed against, not hidden from.

“I know this is stupid,” I said, suddenly, before I could talk myself out of it. “But seeing you—it’s like everything else just disappeared for a second.”

She didn’t look away. She held my gaze, and for a moment, I felt the same terrifying pull I’d felt the first time we met. The pull toward a version of myself I thought I’d lost.

The crosswalk light started blinking. The moment was slipping away.

“Are you… are you in town for long?” I asked, hating how desperate I sounded.