The bar hadn't changed much, either.
Same squeaky door, same flickering neon sign above the window that read Crosby's, though half the letters no longer lit. Sophie and Jake used to sneak in through the back door when they were barely seventeen, always with too much laughter and not enough caution.
Tonight, the laughter was gone, replaced by a quiet that followed them like a third person at their table.
Jake ordered a beer. Sophie stuck to ginger ale.
They sat across from each other in a booth near the back, where the jukebox still glowed dimly, humming old country songs that sounded like regret.
"Do you ever wish you could go back?" Jake asked after a few minutes, not looking at her. He was fiddling with the label on his bottle, peeling it slowly.
Sophie thought for a long moment. "I don't know. Back then… I was just trying to get out. Every second in this town felt like a cage. I used to think leaving would fix everything."
"Did it?"
She looked at him, then down at her hands. "No. Not really."
He nodded like he already knew the answer.
"You?" she asked.
"Sometimes. But mostly, I think about how different things might've been if we hadn't been so damn proud."
Sophie exhaled. "We were young. We thought time would wait for us."
Jake finally met her eyes. "I waited, Soph. I really did."
Her chest ached at the way he said it. Not bitter. Just tired.
"I thought about writing you back," she admitted. "So many times. I just didn't know what I'd say that wouldn't sound like an apology for wanting more."
"You didn't owe me an apology," he said gently. "You owed yourself that chance."
Sophie nodded slowly. "Maybe. But I never stopped wondering if I could've had both—you, and the life I built."
He smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I used to imagine running into you in some big city. You'd be in a coffee shop or a bookstore. You'd look happy. I didn't want to ruin that."
"You wouldn't have."
The jukebox crackled into a new song. Something slow and gravelly, about driving down back roads and losing people you never meant to lose.
Jake sat back in his seat. "I almost left, you know. Two years after you did. I packed a bag and got as far as the county line. But I turned around."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "My mom got sick. And I guess part of me felt like if I stayed long enough, you might come back."
Sophie felt that answer like a weight settling in her lungs. "I didn't mean to stay gone so long."
"I know."
A silence stretched between them again, but it wasn't the awkward kind anymore. It was softer now—like both of them were finally letting go of the pieces they'd been holding too tightly for too long.
"I found your father's guitar in the attic," she said after a while. "Still in its case. Dusty as hell."
Jake chuckled. "I remember him playing it out on your porch. Every Sunday. Always the same damn chords."
"I hated it back then. Now I miss it."
"That's the cruel thing about memory," Jake said. "It polishes all the rough parts until you can't help but miss them."
Sophie stared at her drink. "She never forgave me for leaving. My mom."
"She did," Jake said quietly. "She just didn't know how to say it. I used to run into her sometimes. At the grocery store or the post office. She'd ask about you. Never said your name. But I could tell she was proud, even if she was stubborn as hell."
Sophie bit her lip, fighting the sting behind her eyes. "I didn't even get to say goodbye."
Jake reached across the table, resting his hand over hers. His palm was warm and calloused, grounding her in a way nothing else had since she'd come back.
"You're here now," he said. "That counts for something."
They sat like that for a long time, hands touching lightly, old ghosts swirling in the spaces between their breaths.
When the bar began to empty and the music dimmed, they finally rose from the booth and walked outside.
The night air was sharp with frost, the stars stretched wide over the quiet town.
Jake walked her to her car.
"I don't know how long I'll be here," Sophie said, her voice low. "Once the funeral's over, I have to get back to Boston. I have a job, a life. But—"
He waited.
"But part of me wonders if maybe I could stay... just a little longer."
Jake smiled then, really smiled, like maybe he'd been holding that in for years. "Then stay a little longer."
She nodded, something inside her easing for the first time in days.
As she got in the car, Jake leaned down, resting his hand briefly on the open door. "Goodnight, Soph."
"Goodnight, Jake."
He stepped back. She drove off.
And for the first time in a decade, Alder Ridge didn't feel like a cage. It felt like a door—one that maybe, just maybe, hadn't closed all the way.