Chapter 14
1830 Words
Where Almost Feels Like Always
A year had passed.
A year since she burned the bouquet and sold the ring.
A year since she whispered “I’m still here” into a sky that didn’t answer—yet.
And now?
She wasn’t just still here.
She was thriving.
Her design studio, RHE.Art Studio, had just been featured in 10 Design Startups to Watch. She had clients in Singapore, Paris, sometimes even Dubai. Once upon a time, she designed logos. Now she crafted entire brand identities—voices, visions, and visual poetry.
She lived alone in a sleek new apartment—16th floor, full of sunlight, free of shadows.
She’d moved after Asher started showing up at her old place, shouting her name from the gate, sobbing theatrically, then raging when she didn’t respond. Eventually, the neighbors got uncomfortable. One even called her in tears.
She also once ran into Asher—at a parking lot.
He was kissing a blonde woman with his hand halfway up her skirt.
For a moment, her brain went blank.
Then, like a petty cinema reel, memories played:
—Asher claiming he was "still healing from everything that happened."
—Asher texting at 2 a.m. saying, “I miss us.”
—Asher telling mutual friends he was “focused on himself.”
Yeah. Real self-reflection happening right now—with his hand apparently searching for enlightenment in another woman’s underwear.
When he noticed Rhea watching, he had the audacity to call her name, eyes wide like he was the victim. Like he was the one betrayed.
Rhea simply turned on her heel, slid into her car, dumped her fries on the passenger seat, and muttered, “Am I cursed to walk in every time Asher is halfway inside someone?”
Rhea just raised her eyebrows and drove off—eating fries with one hand and changing the radio station with the other.
“Bye, Asher. May you forever be someone else’s problem.”
--
It started as a normal girls' night. Or at least, their version of “normal,” which included Shirley forcing glitter highlighter onto Rhea’s cheekbones and Avelyn insisting the universe owed them all three a stupid amount of tequila.
“You need to rejoin the land of the living,” Shirley said, zipping up Rhea’s borrowed black jumpsuit. “Or at least the land of the dancing and marginally bad decisions.”
“You mean the land of public regrets,” Rhea muttered, tugging the neckline higher.
Avelyn cackled from the doorway. “That’s exactly where we’re going.”
The club was a sensory overload—neon lights pulsing like a heartbeat, music vibrating through floors, and the unmistakable smell of overpriced cocktails and too much cologne. Rhea hadn’t been to a place like this in ages. The crowd, the noise, the chaos—it should’ve made her anxious.
But it didn’t.
Maybe it was the relief of leaving behind her grief in literal ashes. Maybe it was Shirley’s relentless energy. Maybe it was the half-shot of tequila Avelyn had already shoved into her hand.
Whatever it was, Rhea was dancing. Laughing. Almost forgetting.
Until she turned her head… and saw him.
Lucian.
He was at a booth across the room, sitting with two friends she didn’t recognize—both guys, one with shoulder-length curls and a silver chain, the other with sharp cheekbones and a bored expression. They looked like trouble and wealth and charisma wrapped in designer jackets.
Lucian wore all black. A fitted button-up rolled at the sleeves. Dark slacks. A watch that gleamed under the strobe lights. His hair was slightly messier than she remembered. He looked… effortless. Calm. Like nothing about this world could touch him.
And then the light shifted—brief, golden, pulsing with the music—and flickered over his profile like déjà vu. Her breath caught.
And for a second, it was like breathing underwater. Her chest full of something tight and warm and impossible.
He’s not supposed to be here.
If the timeline followed what she remembered, Lucian should still be overseas—probably sketching arches in Rome or attending some quiet architecture symposium in Berlin. But there he was. In the flesh. Laughing at something one of his friends said. Completely unaware that the woman who had once kissed him like the world was ending was now thirty feet away in a nightclub she hadn’t even wanted to go to.
Her heart skipped. Then raced.
He doesn’t know you.
You’re just a stranger.
Avelyn leaned in, following her gaze. “Whoa. Who’s the brooding art professor over there?”
“Nobody,” Rhea said too fast, eyes still locked on him.
Lucian stood, heading toward the bar.
Now or never.
Her legs moved before her brain did. She cut across the dance floor, trying to look casual. Her heart was a drumline. She calculated the angle—too direct and she’d look desperate, too subtle and she’d miss him.
She aimed for the sweet spot.
Just as he reached the bar, she turned sharply—bumping right into him.
“Oops!” she said, hand lightly grazing his forearm. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
Lucian looked down at her. Their eyes met.
And nothing happened.
No flash of recognition. No moment of suspended time.
Just a polite smile. “No worries.”
His voice. Just like before.
Rhea blinked, recovering fast. She leaned casually against the bar. “That’s a dangerous kind of charming voice to have in a place like this.”
Lucian quirked an eyebrow, amused. “Is it?”
“Absolutely,” she said smoothly. “You could order a water and still sound like a seduction.”
He chuckled softly, nodding once like she’d passed some unspoken test. “Then I guess I’ll be careful what I order.”
She laughed. It wasn’t a flirt fueled by hope this time. It was nostalgia. Reverence. A gentle craving for something that had once been hers.
Lucian glanced back toward his table, then at her again. His eyes lingered just a beat longer than necessary.
Like maybe something tugged.
Like maybe somewhere, deep in the part of the soul that doesn’t obey logic, something almost sparked.
“Enjoy your night,” he said with a small nod, and turned to walk away.
Rhea didn’t stop him.
She didn’t reach out or say more.
Because she had already had the ending before the beginning. She knew what it felt like to be kissed by him, to fall into the space of his silence. And now, she’d touched his hand again—even if it meant nothing to him.
She turned back to the bar, breath steadying.
It wasn’t enough.
But it was everything.
From across the room, she watched him rejoin his friends. Laugh again. Tilt his head to listen. Live his life untouched by memories only she carried.
And Rhea—she smiled.
Because in a universe where she thought she’d lost him completely, she’d found him again.
Even if just for a moment.
Even if it was only her who remembered.
--
That night, for what felt like the thousandth time, Rhea dreamt of Lucian.
Not just any dream. The kind that wrapped around her like a worn sweater—familiar, warm, and utterly unfair.
It started the same way it always did: that moment in the corridor. The first time their eyes met. The way the world seemed to tilt a little. How he blinked like he was seeing color for the first time and she blinked like she wasn’t supposed to feel anything, and yet—there it was.
Then the scenes came in quick flickers.
Lucian’s voice in the car as he drove her home from the hospital, soft and slow like jazz on a rainy night.
His hand brushing hers as he passed her tea—chamomile, because he noticed things.
The way they danced in his apartment, barefoot, slightly tipsy. Her head on his chest. His heartbeat calm. His breath steady.
Then the kiss.
God, that kiss.
It played on loop in her subconscious like it was sponsored by every romance movie she’d ever pretended not to cry over. And just when she thought her heart might combust from the memory, the dream shifted—Lucian’s eyes looking at her like she was made of starlight and sadness.
And he whispered again, just like before, “Let’s not want too hard. Let’s just be.”
But this time, dream-Rhea grabbed him by the collar and said, “Screw that. I do want. And I want you, you poetic cinnamon roll of a man.”
She woke up with a gasp, tangled in her blanket like a caterpillar mid-existential crisis. Her forehead was damp with sweat. Her heart was pounding like it had just sprinted through a novel-length love story.
“Okay,” she whispered to herself, pushing hair from her face, “that’s it. I’ve had it with these nightly reruns of the Emotional Cinema Lucian Edition.”
She sat up, hugged her knees to her chest, and stared dramatically at the ceiling.
“I know you told me not to chase too hard, Lucian,” she said aloud to the room, “but respectfully, I’m ignoring that advice.”
There was a pause. No reply. Just her dusty ceiling fan spinning like it was mildly disappointed.
“I mean, come on,” she continued, standing up now, talking to herself like the unhinged romantic she was. “If you could just waltz into my life out of nowhere and turn it upside down, I can absolutely do the same thing. Equal rights, baby.”
She began pacing. “This is 2025. Women can love boldly. We can vote, wear jumpsuits, start empires, and chase emotionally available art men if we want to.”
Rhea marched to the mirror and pointed at her reflection. “You’re gonna get him. Not in a scary stalker way. In a cute, determined, fate-just-gave-you-a-second-chance way.”
Then she paused.
“Okay, maybe a slightly unhinged way. But charming. Unhinged with style.”
She grabbed her phone and googled: How to casually run into a man you love but who doesn’t remember you because you’ve time-traveled emotionally and he hasn’t.
No results. Useless internet.
She dropped her phone with a sigh and collapsed back onto the bed, flopping like a melodramatic starfish.
“Tomorrow,” she muttered. “Tomorrow I start the Lucian Hunt.”
She held a pillow to her chest, pretending it was his hoodie or his shoulder or something else deeply comforting and mildly scented.
“I’m coming for you, Lucian,” she whispered into the pillow. “Just give me a head start before I get awkward.”
Then she blinked at the ceiling once more and added with a smirk,
“Let’s not want too hard, you said? Watch me.”
- Writer
