Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXR09XH4H6YAB12E303XTD

The green neon sign of The Raven's Nest hummed its familiar electric song as Aurora pushed through the heavy wooden door. Rain clung to her jacket, dark spots blooming across the navy fabric. She'd been running deliveries all afternoon—three orders of dim sum to Covent Garden, a large beef chow fun to some office in Fitzroy—and her feet had begun their protest by order number two. The bar exhaled its usual cologne of aged wood, spilled whisky, and something metallic she'd never quite identified. Silas polished a rocks glass behind the counter, his movements economical, practiced. The silver signet ring caught the light as he worked. The other patrons scattered themselves like chess pieces across the space—two men at a corner table speaking in clipped tones, a woman alone with a gin and tonic, a couple who seemed to be having separate conversations despite sitting inches apart. Aurora made for her usual spot, the corner stool where she could watch the door without looking like she was watching anything at all. Silas poured her a sparkling water without being asked. Some people got smiles with their drinks. Rory got efficiency. A laugh cut through the ambient murmur of the bar. Not the polite kind—the genuine, head-thrown-back kind that belonged to someone who'd forgotten how to control themselves in public. She turned. The woman sat three stools down, perched on the edge of her seat like she might spring away at any moment. Dark blonde hair, considerably shorter than Aurora remembered, cut into something severe and fashionable. She wore a tailored grey blazer over what might have been silk, and her shoes—Christ, her shoes cost more than Rory's monthly rent. But it was the laugh that had given her away, that particular cadence that used to fill university halls and late-night kebab shops. Lily Chen. They'd been inseparable once. Properly inseparable—the kind of friendship where other people became secondary characters in the narrative of the two of them. Lily had been studying economics, all sharp angles and sharper humour. She'd been the one who made plans, who dragged Rory out of bed, who'd held her hand during the slow dissolution of things with Evan. Then Lily had taken a job in New York. A good job, the kind that required moving across the ocean and building a new life. That had been four years ago. They'd texted for a while—sporadic messages that grew longer and more formal until they collapsed entirely. Aurora didn't move. She watched the woman drink what looked like a martini with the precision of someone who'd learned to hold her alcohol differently. Silas appeared with another drink—a whisky something—and set it before the blonde woman. "On the house," he said, the words clipped. "Welcome back." So Silas knew. Of course Silas knew. He seemed to know when the weather would turn, when regulars would stop coming, what people needed before they asked for it. The blonde woman smiled at him, and it wasn't the smile Aurora remembered. The old Lily had smiled with her entire face. This version managed to animate only her mouth. Aurora lifted her water glass to her lips. She should leave. Better to slip out quietly, head back to the flat above the bar, order something from a place that wasn't hers. Send a text later—surprised to hear you're in London, should catch up sometime—the kind of message that established friendly intentions while guaranteeing nothing. Instead, she heard herself moving. The stool scraped against the floor. Lily turned. Her eyes—they used to be warmer, Rory thought—went through a moment of calibration. Recognition came slowly, like a photograph developing in solution. "Rory?" There it was. The name, delivered in a voice that had learned to hold meetings and conduct negotiations. Professional. Cordial. The tone reserved for people you'd once known. "Lily." Aurora settled onto the adjacent stool, close enough to smell her perfume—something French-sounding and aggressively expensive. "Didn't know you were in London." "Just arrived. Three days ago." Lily turned to face her fully now, and the smile had transformed into something closer to shock. "You look... exactly the same. How is that possible?" "You don't," Rory said. The words hung there. Not cruel, not quite, but honest in a way that didn't leave room for negotiation. Lily's fingers tightened around her martini glass. "I suppose I don't," she said finally. "Three years will do that." "Four." "Four. Right." Lily looked away, tracking the movement of some invisible thing across the far wall. "I was in New York. Then Singapore for a while. Just took a position with a firm here—consultancy work, quite boring really. Mergers, acquisitions, the dissolution of things." Aurora heard what wasn't being said. The career that had needed her absolute devotion. The life that had required reinvention. The person she'd needed to become to succeed at it. "Singapore sounds interesting." "It was sterile." Lily's jaw worked slightly. "Everything cleaned up before you could arrive. Hotels that looked like other hotels. Office parks that smelled the same everywhere. I became efficient at forgetting things in that environment." She paused to drink. Her eyes had developed these small lines at the corners—not laugh lines. Concentration lines. The marks of someone who spent hours squinting at screens, building arguments, anticipating counterarguments. "You remember when we were supposed to go to Prague?" Lily asked abruptly. Aurora did. The trip Lily had planned to cancel at the last moment because of a work thing. The first of many cancellations, each one reasonable, each one incremental. The death of closeness by a thousand necessary adjustments. "I do." "I should have gone." Lily finished her martini. She didn't flag Silas for another one. "That was when I should have realized what was happening. That I was becoming someone who chose work over people. Over you. But I didn't realize it. I was too busy being excellent at everything to notice I was terrible at the things that mattered." The honesty of it caught something in Aurora's chest. This was close to the real Lily—the one who'd existed before the optimization. But it was also just a glimpse, a moment of transparency before the professional exterior reasserted itself. "Why are you back?" Aurora asked. "The firm transferred me. They wanted me managing their London office." Lily's smile turned wry. "Impressive opportunity. Significant salary increase. Everything you're supposed to want when you've built a career." She glanced at Rory. "I turned it down yesterday." "You did?" "I did." Lily picked up the empty glass, studied it. "I was sitting in my flat in Canary Wharf—all glass and chrome and views of the Thames—and I realized I'd been looking out those windows for two days without actually seeing anything. Just... existing behind expensive glass." Silas appeared with a water glass and set it between them. He didn't ask if Lily wanted anything else. The wordlessness of him was remarkable sometimes. "So what now?" Aurora asked. Lily turned to look at her fully. For the first time, her eyes held something recognizable. Something like vulnerability, or regret, or the gap between who people were supposed to become and who they actually wanted to be. "I don't know yet," she said. "I thought I'd come home first. Sit in the rain for a bit. See if anything felt familiar."