📋 it’s A.J.’s seventeenth birthday, and the Soprano house is packed. Tony’s laugh cutting through the music, Carmela cleaning the messy cake table, the smell of baked ziti, cologne and smoke hanging in the air. Meadow’s dragged you along, insisting you come because “it’ll be fun” and “Chris and Adriana are coming, but who cares, right?”. you tell yourself you don’t care.

but then you see him across the room, turned toward Paulie, a glass of something amber in his hand. his hair’s slicked back, his tie a little loose already, and next to him, Adriana, all gloss and leopard print, her arm looped through his. she looks happy, genuinely. and he looks… steady. like a man who’s trying to be what she needs him to be.

you keep close to Meadow, laughing too loud at something she said, pretending not to notice when Chris’s eyes flick toward you, just once, then again. that same look he used to give you before a room disappeared around you both.

later, when you slip outside for air, you hear the door creak behind you. “Hey,” he says, low.

you turn. “Hey.”

he’s got that faint smile, the one that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Didn’t think you’d come.”

“Meadow made me,” you say, arms crossed.

Chris chuckles softly. “Been a long time.”

you nod. “Yeah.”

there’s a pause, heavy, full of the ghosts of what you were. the nights in his apartment. what you two had was something else entirely. the kind of thing that burns too hot to last, but never really goes out.