The Choice Was You

The last person I expected to see at my new school was the boy who broke my heart two years ago.I froze halfway through the school gate, I tightened my fingers around the strap of my bag as if letting go would somehow make this real. But there he was leaning casually against the hallway wall like nothing changed, like two years hadn't passed, like he hadn't been the reason I left in the first place. Alexander Mayfield. He somehow looked exactly the same and completely different at the same time. Still tall, still that effortless kind of confidence that made people look twice. But his smile was gone. In its place was something keen. Like life had taught him a lesson or two.I should've turned around. Honestly, I almost did. But then his eyes lifted and landed on me. And just like that, the world shrank.The chatter around us faded. The noise, the movement, the heart beats everything disappeared until it was just me and him, standing on opposite sides of a past neither of us ever explained. His expression shifted. At first startling, then impossible to decipher. "Aria" My name sounded different in his voice now, gentle, careful . I swallowed, forcing my feet to move even though every instinct told me to run."Hi," I said, and immediately hated how small my voice sounded. For a second, neither of us spoke there were a thousand things I wanted to say. Why did you leave like that? Do you even remember what you did? Did you ever think about me? But all that came out was: "You still come here?" Nice one Aria very smart. He let out a quiet breath that almost sounded like a laugh. "Yeah… I could ask you the same thing."I nodded, pretending like this was normal. Like running into the boy who broke me wasn't slowly unraveling everything I'd worked so hard to fix. "I'm back," I simply said. "I can see that." Another silence heavier than the last. Then, just when I thought I might actually survive this moment, he said "I didn't think you'd ever come back." I felt my chest squeeze. "Neither did i." We stood there, two people with too much history and not enough words, pretending the past wasn't standing right between us. But the truth is this wasn't just a reunion, it was the beginning of everything we never finished.