The bell above the café door chimed as I stepped inside, and the sound seemed to echo louder than it should have, as though it announced not just my arrival but the return of everything I had tried to bury.
The room smelled of coffee and warm bread, just as it always had. The wooden tables were scratched from years of use, the glass jars behind the counter filled with sugar and biscuits. It hadn't changed much, though perhaps it was smaller than I remembered—or maybe it was me who had grown, my memories stretching the space into something larger than it truly was.
Adrian rose when he saw me.
For a heartbeat, I couldn't move. I only stood there, clutching the strap of my bag, staring at him as if he were both stranger and salvation.
He looked older, of course. Time had marked him, as it had me. His hair, once so dark, was threaded with gray, especially at the temples. His face carried lines that hadn't been there before—creases at the corners of his eyes, etched deeper by either laughter or sorrow, I couldn't tell. And yet, his eyes… they were the same. That same stormy blue, intense and searching, the eyes that had once undone me completely.
"Elara," he said, my name catching in his throat, soft but full of recognition.
I managed a smile, though it trembled at the edges. "Adrian."
We stood there a moment too long, two people who had once known the map of each other's souls and now didn't know whether to shake hands or embrace. At last, he gestured toward the table where he'd been sitting.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," he admitted as I slid into the chair across from him. His voice had deepened, a roughness in it now, as though gravel lined the velvet.
"I wasn't sure either," I said honestly.
A silence fell, the kind that pressed close and heavy, thick with all the years we had not spoken. He fiddled with his spoon, stirring his coffee though it no longer needed stirring. I smoothed the fabric of my dress, my hands restless.
"You look…" He stopped himself, then tried again. "You look the same. Different, of course, but—"
I let out a small laugh, saving him from stumbling further. "Older?"
His lips curved faintly. "Beautiful."
Heat rushed to my cheeks, ridiculous after all these years. I looked down quickly, pretending interest in the sugar jar. "And you," I said softly, "look like someone who has lived a life."
He exhaled, long and quiet. "I suppose I have."
The waiter came by then, a young woman with tired eyes and an apron dusted in flour. She asked what I'd like, and without thinking, I said, "A lemon tart, please."
Adrian smiled at that, and suddenly I was twenty again, sitting across from him at this very café, laughing as I stole the first bite of the tart he'd bought me. The memory was so vivid it startled me.
When the waiter left, he leaned back in his chair, studying me as though trying to memorize my face all over again. "I thought of this place often," he said. "Of you, sitting here, laughing at me when I tried to sketch the people who walked past. Do you remember?"
"Of course." My voice faltered. "You never finished any of those sketches."
"I couldn't," he said simply. "Because I kept looking at you instead."
Something in my chest ached, sharp and familiar. I gripped my hands together beneath the table, trying to still the tremor.
For a long moment, we sat in silence again, the weight of the past crowding between us. Then I asked, quietly, "Why now, Adrian? Why come back?"
He looked down at his hands, the fingers that had once drawn me with such gentleness now fidgeting against his cup. "Because I couldn't stay away any longer."
"That's not an answer," I whispered.
His eyes lifted, and they pinned me, as steady and raw as they had been all those years ago. "Because every life I tried to build without you crumbled. Because I've carried you with me through every city, every mistake, every night I couldn't sleep. And because I needed to know if—" His voice broke, and he swallowed hard. "If you ever think of me too."
The truth burned at the back of my throat. Of course I thought of him. I had never stopped. But I couldn't let it spill out so easily. My heart had been broken once; it was not eager to be shattered again.
"I thought of you," I admitted carefully. "But I also thought you had forgotten me."
"Never," he said, fierce now. "Not for a day."
The waiter returned then with my lemon tart, interrupting the intensity between us. The golden crust gleamed beneath the café lights, the powdered sugar dusting the top like snow. My hands shook as I picked up the fork, and for a moment, I didn't eat it.
Adrian leaned forward, his voice gentler. "I don't expect forgiveness, Elara. I just… I wanted to see you again. To sit across from you once more. Even if that's all this is."
I studied him, the man he had become, layered over the boy I had loved. There was sincerity in his eyes, a rawness I didn't know how to refuse.
So I lifted the fork, cut into the tart, and took a bite. The sweetness burst across my tongue, tangy and sharp, and I couldn't help it—I laughed. The sound startled even me.
"What is it?" he asked, half-smiling.
"It tastes the same," I said, shaking my head. "After all this time, it tastes exactly the same."
And just like that, some of the tension between us loosened. We began to talk—not about the years yet, not about the wounds or the promises broken, but about small things. How the town had changed. How the old cinema had been torn down. How the river still smelled of salt in summer.
It was tentative, fragile, but it was a beginning.
When I left the café that afternoon, the bell chiming behind me, I felt the weight of his gaze on my back. I did not look over my shoulder. Not yet.
But as I walked down Rosehill Street, the taste of lemon still on my tongue, I knew this was not the end.
It was the beginning of something I wasn't sure I was strong enough to face, but something I could no longer ignore.