The river’s dark this time of year. Slow. Unbothered.
When I get there, she’s already waiting—hands in her pockets, hair whipping in the wind, cheeks flushed from thecold. She looks at me like I’m not a project, not a pedestal, not a mistake.
Just… me.
“You look tired,” she says.
“Productive tired,” I counter.
She smirks. “That’s new.”
We walk. Shoulder to shoulder. No rush.
And I think—this is it.
Not the ending.
The beginning that actually counts.
I don’t know where we’ll be in five years. Or ten. Or whether the world will try to tear us apart again.
But I know this:
I’m not the boy who let fear make his choices anymore.
I’m becoming a man who knows what he stands for.
And I know exactly who I want beside me while I figure the rest out.
