Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTX93PJEGCKPG22RBW2Q832

The green neon of The Raven's Nest flickered twice before settling into its familiar hum. Aurora pushed through the door at half past ten, her delivery bag still slung across one shoulder, the smell of garlic and ginger clinging to her jacket. The dinner rush had been brutal—three orders to Hampstead, two to Primrose Hill, and a last-minute cancellation that left her with cold dumplings she'd eaten on the tube. Silas glanced up from behind the bar, already reaching for a glass. "Rough night?" "The usual." She dropped onto her regular stool, the one with the slight wobble that no one else wanted. "Some banker in Mayfair tipped me fifty pence and told me I should smile more." "Should've told him you charge extra for that." "I told him something. Probably won't be delivering to that address again." Silas set down a whiskey, neat, without asking. The ice would have been an insult—he'd learned that months ago, when she'd first started renting the flat upstairs and coming down for nightcaps that turned into conversations that turned into something like friendship. The bar was quiet tonight, just a couple in the corner booth whispering over wine and a solitary man nursing a pint near the window. Aurora took a long sip and let the warmth spread through her chest. The photographs on the wall behind Silas caught the amber light—faces she didn't recognize, places she'd never been. Prague, he'd told her once, pointing to a grainy shot of a bridge at dawn. Budapest. A village in Croatia whose name she couldn't pronounce. She never asked for details. He never offered them. The door opened again, letting in a gust of November air and a woman in a charcoal coat. Aurora's glass stopped halfway to her lips. The woman paused just inside the threshold, scanning the room with the particular wariness of someone who'd learned to check exits before committing to a space. Her hair was shorter than Aurora remembered—cropped close to her jaw now, severe in a way that aged her—and there were lines around her mouth that hadn't been there five years ago. But the eyes were the same. That particular shade of green, like sea glass held up to light. "Rory?" The name hit her like a slap. No one called her that anymore. Not in London. Not since she'd stopped answering her mother's calls and let her Cardiff life fade into something she could pretend had happened to someone else. "Megan." The woman crossed the room in three quick strides, and for a moment Aurora thought she might try to hug her. But Megan stopped short, one hand gripping the strap of her bag, the other hanging awkward at her side. "I can't—" Megan shook her head, laughing in that breathless way she always had when she was nervous. "What are you doing here? I thought you were still in Cardiff. Your mum said—" "My mum says a lot of things." Silas had retreated to the far end of the bar, polishing glasses that didn't need polishing. He had a gift for that—making himself invisible when the situation called for it. Megan slid onto the stool beside her, and Aurora caught a whiff of expensive perfume, something floral and sharp that didn't suit her. The Megan she'd known had smelled like coffee and the vanilla lotion she bought in bulk from Boots. This Megan wore pearl earrings and a silk blouse that probably cost more than Aurora's monthly rent. "Can I get you something?" Silas appeared at exactly the right moment, his voice carefully neutral. "Gin and tonic, please. Hendrick's if you have it." He nodded and moved away. Megan's hands were folded on the bar, her nails painted a tasteful nude. A diamond glinted on her left ring finger—modest by London standards, obscenely large by the standards of two girls who'd once shared a box of wine and called it a celebration. "You got married," Aurora said. "Two years ago. Thomas. He's a solicitor. Patent law, nothing exciting." Megan's laugh was too bright, too quick. "We have a flat in Kensington. Can you imagine? Me, in Kensington. My nan would've had a stroke." "Congratulations." The word sat between them like a stone. Silas returned with the gin and tonic, garnished with a slice of cucumber that Megan stared at as though she'd never seen one before. She took a sip, then another, and Aurora watched the way her throat moved when she swallowed. They'd been inseparable once. Flatmates at uni, study partners, the kind of friends who finished each other's sentences and knew each other's secrets. Aurora had held Megan's hair back when she drank too much at their graduation party. Megan had talked her through the first time Evan threw something at her head. And then Aurora had left, and she'd stopped answering Megan's calls, and the years had piled up like snow until the path between them disappeared entirely. "I've thought about you," Megan said quietly. "More than you probably know." "Have you." "Don't do that. Don't go cold on me. Not when I've just—" She pressed her fingers to her temples, the gesture achingly familiar. "I'm in London for a conference. Patent law, like I said. Nothing exciting. I saw the sign outside and I thought, 'That looks like a place Rory would like,' and I walked in and there you were. Sitting at the bar like we're still twenty and I've just come to drag you home from the library." Aurora drained her whiskey. The burn was grounding, familiar. "We're not twenty anymore." "No. We're not." The couple in the corner booth had stopped whispering. The man by the window was staring at his phone. Silas had vanished into the back room—the one behind the bookshelf that he thought she didn't know about. "Why didn't you tell me you were leaving?" Megan asked. "I would've helped. I would've done anything—" "That's why I didn't tell you." The words hung in the air, sharper than Aurora had intended. Megan flinched, and Aurora saw something crack behind her eyes—something that had been held together with professional composure and expensive gin. "I tried calling," Megan said. "For months. Your mum kept saying you were fine, you just needed space. And then she stopped answering too, and I thought—I don't know what I thought. That you'd died, maybe. That something terrible had happened and no one was telling me." "I didn't die." "Obviously." Megan's voice was raw now, stripped of its polished edges. "But you disappeared. You just—vanished. One day we were making plans for summer, and the next you were gone, and I had to hear from your bloody mother that you'd moved to London and didn't want to see anyone from your old life." Aurora turned the empty glass in her hands. The whiskey had left a thin film on the inside, catching the light. "It wasn't about you." "Then what was it about? Evan? Because I told you, I told you a hundred times—" "I know what you told me." The silence stretched between them, thin and fragile as old ice. Megan reached for her gin, then stopped. Her hand was trembling slightly—just enough to notice, just enough to matter. "I saw him, you know. About a year after you left. He was at a pub near the castle, chatting up some girl who couldn't have been more than twenty. I thought about going over there. Telling her to run." "Did you?" "No." Megan's laugh was bitter. "I told myself it wasn't my business. That she'd figure it out eventually, just like you did. That I'd only make things worse." She picked up her drink and took a long swallow. "I think about that night a lot. The girl, I mean. I wonder if she got out. I wonder if she's sitting in some bar somewhere, wondering why no one warned her." Aurora's fingers found the scar on her left wrist—that small crescent moon she'd carried since childhood, when she'd fallen off her bike and landed on broken glass. It had nothing to do with Evan. Nothing to do with any of it. But she touched it anyway, the way she always did when she needed something solid to hold onto. "I didn't leave because of him," she said finally. "Not entirely." "Then why?" "Because I didn't recognize myself anymore. Because every time I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who'd let herself become small. And you—" Aurora stopped, swallowed hard. "You kept looking at me like you could fix it. Like if you just said the right thing, did the right thing, I'd snap out of it and be the person you remembered." "I was trying to help." "I know. That's the problem. I couldn't get better with everyone watching. I couldn't figure out who I was supposed to be when everyone already had a version of me in their heads." Megan set down her glass. The ice had melted, diluting the gin into something pale and watery. "So you ran." "I ran." "And you're better now? Here, in this bar, delivering Chinese food for a living?" The words stung more than they should have. Aurora saw Megan register it, saw the instant flash of regret cross her face. "I'm sorry. That came out wrong. I didn't mean—" "Yes, you did." Aurora's voice was steady, almost gentle. "And that's fine. You've got a solicitor husband and a flat in Kensington and pearl earrings and a gin that costs twelve quid a glass. And I've got a room above a bar and a bike that I can't afford to fix and tips that barely cover my groceries. We're not the same people we were." "We could be again. We could—" "No." Aurora shook her head. "We can't. That's what I'm trying to tell you. The girl you knew, the one who needed saving—she doesn't exist anymore. I killed her. On purpose. And the person sitting here now, she's not looking to be fixed. She's just trying to figure out what comes next." Megan was crying. Quiet tears, the kind that slipped down without permission. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, smearing her mascara, and Aurora felt something twist in her chest—some old tenderness that hadn't quite died. "I missed you," Megan whispered. "I know that probably doesn't mean anything to you now. But I missed you every single day." Aurora reached out and touched her hand. Just for a moment. Just long enough to feel the warmth of her skin, the sharp edge of that modest diamond. "I know," she said. "I missed you too. But missing someone isn't the same as knowing them. And you don't know me anymore, Meg. Not really." "I'd like to." "Would you? Even if I'm not the person you're hoping for?" Megan didn't answer. The silence said everything. Silas emerged from the back, moving with that slight limp of his, and Aurora caught his eye. He nodded once—a small acknowledgment, a question—and she shook her head. "I should go," Megan said. "Thomas will be wondering where I am." "Of course." She gathered her bag, her coat, her careful composure. At the door, she paused, one hand on the frame. The green neon painted her face in strange shadows. "If you ever want to—I mean, if you're ever in Kensington—" "I know where to find you." Megan nodded. The door swung shut behind her, and the bar was quiet again, just Aurora and Silas and the old photographs watching from the walls. He poured her another whiskey without asking and set it down gently. "Old friend?" "Something like that." Aurora stared at the door, at the space where Megan had stood, at the faint trace of expensive perfume still hanging in the air. "Someone I used to know."