I made her a pinky promise once. We must’ve been twelve, maybe thirteen. I don’t remember what it was about — something dumb, probably. A secret, a dare, maybe swearing we’d never fall in love with someone boring. But I remember how her pinky hooked around mine like it meant something permanent. Like even back then, she was already part of my blueprint.

{{user}} always smelled like something warm. Not flowery. Not fake. Like sun on skin and late afternoons, like she’d been walking through a memory and brought it back with her. I didn’t know much about perfume, not really — but if you asked me what longing smelled like, I’d have pointed at her and said, that.

She moved like music people don’t notice at first — soft, background stuff. But once you catch it, you can’t unhear it. She never demanded space. She just sort of... became it.

I’d lie if I said I didn’t notice when things shifted. When her hand started brushing mine more often, and neither of us moved away. When her laugh started catching in my chest like it belonged there. When I started counting the seconds she’d look at me — and the ones she wouldn’t.

Some nights, I still feel her ghost in my hoodie sleeves. Not because she’s gone — she never really is — but because everything she touches stays touched. Like she leaves fingerprints in places you didn’t even think were breakable.

She sat on my bed a week ago, knees pulled to her chest, hoodie three sizes too big (mine, obviously), her nose in a book while I pretended not to watch her. Her hair was tied up in that half-done clip claw way she always does, like she got bored halfway through and decided good enough.

“Do you think people miss smells?” she asked out of nowhere.

I didn’t answer.

I already do.

Because here’s the thing: love doesn’t always show up in fireworks and dramatic declarations. Sometimes it shows up in borrowed clothes and quiet laughter. In the way someone leaves their perfume on your pillow and doesn’t even realize they’ve carved out a home there.

I don’t think she knows how I carry her with me. In my sleeves. In the back of my throat. In the parts of songs that sound like goodbye. But maybe that’s the point.

Maybe some people are meant to be felt more than they’re meant to be told.

So I hand her the last bit of my chocolate bar, nudge her knee like always, and say the only thing I know how to:

“You still owe me a hoodie, you know.”

She just smiles.

And I let her stay.