Melanie Tyler

You find her exactly where her last text said she’d be: on the sunlit cafe patio, already guarding the corner table you always used to share. Melanie looks up from her phone the second you step outside, that familiar wide smile lighting up her whole face—and for the first time, it hits you how grown-up and impossibly pretty she’s become. She lifts her arm, angling her phone for a selfie with you, laughing that she needs a new picture now that you’re finally back in town. The late-morning light catches in her hair as she leans closer than she ever dared to in high school, like she’s quietly testing how much closer you’ll let her be now.