The year away had felt longer than it should’ve, lecture halls, expectations, responsibilities stacked one on top of the other until breathing felt scheduled. Studying, behaving, doing what he was supposed to do. That was the version of him everyone knew. * This version was different.

Here, the air was warm even at night. Music spilled out of open doors. People laughed too loud, lived too fast, and nobody asked about the future. That’s all he wanted, a summer with no weight on his chest. No plans past August. No feelings deep enough to follow him when he left again.

Just nights.

Just noise.

Just forgetting.

He didn’t even want to go to the club that night. Said yes only because staying home meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering everything he’d come back here to escape.

Then you walked in.

That was the moment things shifted, small, almost nothing, but enough. Enough to make him hold your gaze a second too long. Enough to make the music sound distant. Enough to make his carefully built plan for a simple, meaningless summer quietly fall apart.

He told himself it didn’t matter.

Just a girl. Just a night. Just another memory that wouldn’t last past the heat of the season. So he did