It always smelled like rain in November.
Not the clean kind—the kind that soaked into pavement and bones and made everything feel a little colder than it was supposed to. The kind of rain that reminded Ava of him.
Elias.
She hadn’t said his name in years. Not out loud, anyway.
It had been five years since she left the small town where everything began, and everything fell apart. Five years since they sat on the hood of his old truck and promised each other forever like they knew what that meant.
They didn’t.
They thought love would be enough to save them from their parents’ mistakes, from the suffocating weight of staying, from growing up in a place where dreams went to die in silence.
But love isn’t always loud. Sometimes it leaves in the middle of the night with nothing but a note and a lie that says it’s not you, it’s me.
And sometimes, it doesn’t come back.
Ava came back for her mother’s funeral. She told herself it would be one night. In and out. No ghosts, no memories. But the second she stepped into that gas station off Route 9, she saw him behind the counter, older, tired, wearing the same damn hoodie from high school.
“Didn’t think I’d see you again,” he said, without even looking surprised.
She stared at him like he was someone else wearing Elias’s face. “I didn’t think I’d come back.”
“You always said you’d leave. Guess you were right.”
She almost said I didn’t want to, but the words caught behind her ribs.
They stood in silence for a beat too long.
He rang up her coffee, slid it across the counter, fingers barely brushing hers.
“Still take it black?” he asked.
She nodded.
Still remembered.
Still hurt.
Still not enough to fix anything.
Outside, the rain started again.
