Aiden didn't go home immediately after the gala.
The city felt quieter than the hall had, but not calmer. His mind still carried the weight of everything that had not been said, especially the silence Nia left behind when she walked away. He drove without a destination at first, following roads out of habit more than intention, until the need to breathe without expectation became louder than everything else.
His phone stayed face down on the passenger seat.
He already knew who would be calling.
The bar was not unfamiliar. It was the kind of place people went when they did not want questions asked too directly. Dim lighting, low music, conversations that never fully carried across tables. Aiden sat near the counter, hands loosely around a glass he had not really started drinking yet. He was not here for the alcohol. He was here because silence at home felt heavier than noise in public.
His friend arrived a few minutes later, sliding into the seat beside him without needing an invitation.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," his friend said lightly, ordering a drink before fully settling in.
Aiden didn't respond immediately. His gaze stayed on the glass in front of him, as if it might rearrange itself into an answer.
"Maybe I have," he said finally.
His friend gave a short laugh, not taking it seriously at first. "That serious?"
Aiden exhaled slowly, leaning back slightly.
"Seven years and it still feels like no time passed," he said. "That's the problem."
That made his friend pause.
Now he looked at him properly.
"You saw her," his friend said, not guessing anymore.
Aiden didn't correct him.
He didn't need to.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The bar noise filled the space between them, but it didn't reach Aiden in any meaningful way. He wasn't really here. Not fully.
His friend took a sip before speaking again.
"I remember how you were back then," he said carefully. "Before she left."
Aiden's jaw tightened slightly at the word left.
Because that was still the part that didn't make sense.
Not the meeting.
Not the tension.
Not even the silence between them now.
It was the leaving.
And the absence of a reason.
"She didn't even look like someone who had been gone for years," Aiden said quietly after a while. "It was like she just stepped out of a moment I was still standing in."
His friend studied him.
"And you?" he asked. "Did you move on, or are you just pretending better than most people?"
Aiden gave a faint, humorless breath.
"I got engaged," he said.
It sounded factual.
Not emotional.
Like something said to establish distance rather than belonging.
His friend tilted his head slightly.
"That wasn't an answer," he said.
Aiden didn't respond.
Because it wasn't.
And they both knew it.
Aiden's phone buzzed on the counter.
Once.
Then again.
He didn't look at it immediately, but his focus shifted anyway, subtly, as if the sound alone had pulled part of his attention away from the conversation.
His friend noticed.
"Let me guess," he said. "Her."
Aiden didn't confirm it.
But he didn't deny it either.
That was enough.
He finally turned the phone over.
Elena.
Three missed calls.
Then messages stacking one after another.
The tone wasn't angry at first.
Just concerned.
Then sharper.
Then more direct.
Where are you
You didn't come home
Aiden, answer me
A pause.
Then the last one.
You've been like this since the gala. I need to know what's going on.
Aiden stared at the screen for a long moment.His thumb hovered over it, but he didn't respond.Not yet.Not because he didn't see it.But because nothing he could say felt like it would stay honest for more than a second.
His friend watched him.
"You're not going to answer?" he asked.
Aiden locked the screen again and set the phone down.
"It won't change anything," he said.
But even as he said it, he knew that wasn't entirely true.It would change something.Just not in a direction he was ready for.
His friend leaned back slightly.
"You're still stuck on her," he said, not as a question.
Aiden didn't answer immediately.
The silence that followed felt heavier than the glass in front of him.
Finally, he spoke.
"I didn't think it would still feel like this," he said quietly.
His friend didn't interrupt.
So Aiden continued.
"I thought time would make it… smaller. Manageable."
A pause.
"It didn't."
His phone lit up again beside his hand.
Another call.
Elena again.
Persistent now.
Unignorable.
Aiden looked at it this time, but still didn't pick up.
Not because he didn't care.But because he couldn't yet decide what answering would force him to become.
Instead, he turned it face down again.
And for the first time that night, he admitted something silently to himself without saying it out loud.
Nia hadn't just returned to Willow Creek.
She had returned inside him.
And he didn't know how to make her leave again.