Another hit of you

There you are.

Floating.

The world fades away in the backdrop, the way everything does in your presence.

And just like that, everything I carried—the missing, the hurt, the nights I couldn’t breathe—just vanished.

It just... finally made sense.

Fuck.

Your hair had grown nearly a foot longer,

worn loose, like Pocahontas, instead of tied back like you used to—

back when you craved control, or wouldn’t let go. I'm not sure which.

And though that alone was enough to wound me tight,

that wasn’t it.

Your skin looked warm and plush like an orchard in bloom,

untouched by time.

You age like Riesling, only sweeter.

My friends always joked that I made you up

and to be honest, if I told them you were a vampire,

I’m sure they’d believe that, too.

It wasn’t in the way you carried yourself,

though the storms inside you never fully settled, you look like you acquired peace.

You’d always moved with grace, even while weathering them.

But that still wasn't it.

It was in your eyes.

You looked more...you.

You looked like you arrived into yourself.

When your eyes met mine, they didn't flinch. They weren't looking back at yesterday or ahead at tomorrow, at zipcodes you'd rather be in like before. They stayed.

You were on time today. You used to show up ten, fifteen minutes late, flushed cheeks, looking like life chased you around the playground.

But not today. This mattered to you.

It mattered to you that I took note of it, too.

I check my watch in disbelief and you know what I'm doing, and you let out a chuckle.

Your laugh—God, your laugh—softer than before, low, like a secret you were willing to tell me if I just stepped close enough.

Four years apart. Four years....

That used to anger me. I forgot how effortlessly you were able to make me forget things though. You have this divine ability to make me forget how quickly pain can dissolve, even if you were the source of it. One look at you and everything that had been aching, stretching, yearning, waiting… just evaporated.

You smiled. There is no feeling comparable to knowing I had something to do with it. You did it in a way that didn't just express joy, it expressed relief.

“Hey.” You said.

And all the wind was knocked out of me.

I said nothing back.

You didn’t deserve words. You deserved action.

My legs moved before my thoughts had the chance to catch up, pulled by something deeper than memory. Something primal.

When I reached you, I wrapped you in my arms and lifted you off the ground, holding you like I never wanted to let your feet feel the earth again. Your giggle spilled against my neck, and I felt the years melt away with it. You fit in my arms like the wind between trees, light as a breath, familiar as a heartbeat. In that lift, that single weightless moment, it felt like I was holding the world I had been missing all along.

We started walking without a destination in mind. And just like old times, our hands found each other, effortlessly, like state lines fading into one another and our steps synced up, like muscle memory. I asked how you were, even though the answer wasn't what I was really after. I just needed to hear your voice—right there, in front of me. Not through a phone, not trapped in some message. I wanted to feel it hit the air between us.

You told me you were better now. I smirked and reminded you that you were still as slick as black ice.

You told me that you missed me more than you ever let on. That my writing kept you afloat. That there were days you tried to drown us in silence and how you thought it drive me away. It made you smile how wrong you were.

You realized that me standing in front you said more than words ever could. That alone said everything.

I looked at you. You looked in me. Like you were scanning for cracks, seeing if I’d changed too much. But instead of pulling away, you stepped closer.

Your voice dropped, sheathed with a truth you’d been holding back. “You feel the same.”

I stared into your eyes and said, “You look the same—only clearer, more real. Like the version of you I never stopped seeing, even when you pushed me away.”

Then I kissed you. Firmly. Desperately.

You taste like ambrosia. Your flavor is delectable... forbidden. It quenches thirsts and satiates hungers I never knew I had. It fills every bit of emptiness within me. In that moment, everything else disappeared. It was just us, two hearts colliding with the force of everything we had lost.

Not carefully. Not testing the waters. But certain. Solid. It hit hard, landing like a plane slamming onto slick tarmac.

And it was like the first time. That October night that is engraved in the eternity of my mind. Like all the years apart had been leading to this exact breath, this exact moment, just so it could mean more.

My hands slid up the corners of your face, familiar and shaking a little. I held you like I was afraid the world might wake me up.

You pulled yourself into me, slightly. Our foreheads touched like we were swans. Your eyes looked like they belonged in the bedroom, and you smiled.

“Wow.” I let out.

“What?” you said.

“So that's what home feels like” I replied.

And that was it. All the waiting. All the wondering. All the empty spaces. They made this moment feel like breathing again, like coming up for air after being underwater for far too long. My chest ached, not from pain, but from the sudden release of everything I’d been holding in. Every lonely night, every unanswered question, all the times I spent trying to remember you—it all rushed out of me at once. And standing there with you, I realized the emptiness hadn’t been a void. It had been a place waiting to be filled. With this. With us.

Some second chances don’t feel like repeats. They feel like fate screwed it up the first time and finally came back to make it right.

That the time apart was for us to become who we were meant to be for each other.

This wasn’t starting over.

This was us starting real. Starting honest. Starting the way we should’ve from the beginning—the way that was meant to lead into forever.