AI The rain stuck to the Raven's Nest's front window like crushed sequins, turning the bar's green neon sign into a bleeding smear that colored every old map and faded photograph tacked to the walls. It was 11:47 PM, last call had rung ten minutes prior, and the only patrons left were Aurora Carter, Silas Blackwood, and a pair of tourists who’d passed out in the back booth over half-empty pints of lager. Aurora peeled her waterproof delivery jacket off, the cuffs soaked through from hauling a stack of dumplings and fried rice to a Covent Garden flat ten minutes earlier, and slung it over the stool next to the bar. Her straight, shoulder-length black hair, cut the month before at a cheap salon on Old Compton Street, stuck to the back of her neck, and she swiped a hand across it to tug it loose.
Silas didn’t look up from wiping down the bar’s oak surface, his auburn hair streaked with the same grey that threaded through his neatly trimmed beard, but he pushed a bottle of cold pear cider across the wood to her, the cap already popped. His silver signet ring glinted in the neon light as he pulled his hand back, and Aurora heard the faint drag of his left foot, the limp from an old knee injury, as he stepped around the end of the bar to stack empty glasses in the dishwasher.
The brass bell above the door jingled. A man stepped in, shaking rain off a charcoal wool coat too thin for London’s November chill , his scuffed leather boots squelching on the frayed doormat stitched with the Raven’s Nest’s logo. He brushed a strand of brown hair out of his eyes, and Aurora was mid-sip of cider when she locked eyes with him. The bottle stopped halfway to her mouth. She knew that jawline, the faint gap between his two front teeth, the way he tilted his head when he scanned a room like he was searching for a familiar face. Six years. She hadn’t seen that face in six years, not since she’d packed a duffel in the middle of a Cardiff night, left a half-scrawled note on her kitchen counter, and driven west to London, cutting off every number that wasn’t her childhood friend Eva’s or her parents’ to keep her abusive ex Evan from tracking her.
“Rory?”
The name landed soft, like he was scared to say it too loud and scare her off. No one in London called her Rory. Silas called her Carter. Yu-Fei, owner of the Golden Empress restaurant where she delivered, called her Aurora. Regulars at the bar tossed around Laila as a dumb joke about the light in her full name. Only the old crew, the people who knew her before Evan, before the running, called her Rory.
She set the cider down. Her fingers curled around the edge of the bar, hard enough that her knuckles whitened. Jamie O’Connell. The boy she’d snuck into Cardiff University’s law library with after hours, who’d taught her to steal pints of Guinness from his dad’s Penarth pub, who she’d booked a one-way Berlin flight with in 2017, the tickets costing them half their student loan money, the plan to work at a community legal aid clinic and rent a flat with a balcony overlooking the Spree. That Jamie.
He crossed the bar, slow, like she was a skittish cat that might bolt if he moved too fast. Silas, who’d paused by the dishwasher to watch the exchange, nodded once at Aurora, a quiet question in his hazel eyes, the same gaze that always picked up on tension before she named it herself. She shook her head, minutely, to signal she was fine, and he grabbed his own bottle of single malt, the good stuff he only drank after closing, and limped toward the hidden back room, the bookshelf door clicking shut behind him, leaving them alone except for the snoring tourists in the rear.
Jamie stopped on the other side of the bar, his coat still dripping onto the scuffed floorboards. She spotted the scar first, a thin white line slicing through the left side of his jaw, ending at the corner of his mouth. She would’ve missed it if she hadn’t spent three years of her life memorizing every freckle and line on that face.
“What happened to your face?”
Her voice came out rougher than she intended, like she’d swallowed a handful of gravel. She hadn’t spoken about anything that mattered to anyone but Silas and Eva in years, and the words felt stiff, untested.
“Car crash. 2019. T-boned on the M4 coming home from a friend’s wedding. Spent three days in the hospital. Docs said it could’ve been worse.” He shrugged out of his coat, draped it over a nearby stool, and Aurora noticed the crisp navy suit under it, a starched white collared shirt, no nose ring. He’d worn a silver hoop through his left nostril for as long as she’d known him, the accessory he’d refused to remove for his high school graduation photos, the one his dad had screamed at him for ruining family portraits.
“You took the nose ring out.”
“Had to. Started teaching high school history in Bristol three years ago. Headmaster said it was unprofessional. Bought a cheap wedding band to keep the parent creeps away, same reason. Can’t be the teacher kids trust if I look like I spent my twenties sneaking into pubs, I guess.” He leaned his forearms on the bar, and Aurora tugged the sleeve of her grey hoodie down further, yanking the fabric over the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, the one from the childhood tree fall she’d never outgrown. She never let anyone new see it. It felt like a window into the girl she used to be, the one that climbed oak trees to rescue stray cats, booked cross-continental flights on a whim, and thought she could rewrite every unfair law she’d ever watched her barrister dad fight.
Jamie’s eyes flicked to her wrist, and she knew he saw the movement, knew what she was hiding .
“I still have the tickets,” he said.
The line hit her like a punch to the sternum, hard enough that she had to suck in a sharp breath. The Berlin tickets. The ones they’d printed out and taped to her old Cardiff flat’s fridge, the ones they were supposed to use in October 2018, two months after she’d fled.
“Kept them in a box under my bed. Every time I moved, I packed that box first. Never threw them away. I thought you bailed. Thought you got into that LSE masters program, decided you were too busy for our dumb Berlin plan. I thought you ghosted us.”
“I didn’t ghost you.” The words came out sharp, and she lifted her hand, tugged the hoodie sleeve up to bare the crescent scar to him, let him look at the mark that tied them to that 12-year-old pair of kids who’d promised they’d never let anything split them up. “Evan happened. You remember him? The guy I started dating in 2017? He wasn’t the person he said he was. Broke my laptop when I tried to submit my LSE application. Threatened to hurt my dad if I told anyone what he was doing. Said he’d find me no matter where I ran. I couldn’t tell any of you. I was scared .”
She picked up her cider, took a long sip to stop her throat from closing up, and the green neon caught the scar, turning its pale pink skin a faint, bruised blue. Jamie’s face softened, the hard line of his jaw loosening, and Aurora saw the regret bloom in his eyes, the same regret that sat heavy in her chest every time she passed a law book in a shop window, every time she logged into her old student email and found a 5-year-old message from the legal aid clinic she’d applied to work at in Berlin.
“I didn’t know. Eva sent a text three months after you left, said you were safe, that’s all. I spent years thinking I’d pushed the Berlin plan too hard, that you didn’t want to be my friend anymore. I should’ve checked. Should’ve come looking. I’m sorry.”
“You couldn’t have found me if you tried. Silas got me a new driver’s license, a new bank account, hid me up here. Evan’s in prison now, got arrested for assaulting another girl two years ago. I don’t have to run anymore. But it’s too late for the plan, isn’t it? I’m not that girl anymore. I deliver dumplings for a Chinese restaurant in Soho, I live above this bar, I haven’t read a law book in five years. You’re a teacher. You got the life we planned, just… you did it without me.” She laughed, a sharp, bitter sound, and the snoring tourists in the back rumbled louder, filling the silence for a beat.
Jamie shook his head, reached across the bar, and set his palm warm against the back of her hand, his thumb brushing the edge of her scar.
“The plan didn’t have an expiration date. I’m in London for a job interview, teaching at a Camden comprehensive. I was gonna take it, move here next month. Berlin’s still there. We could go in the summer. Book new tickets. I still want to go. I never stopped wanting to go with you.”
Aurora looked down at their hands, at the frayed edge of the Prague map pinned to the wall behind the bar, the one Silas had brought back from his own botched mission, the edges worn thin from years of quiet staring. The rain still lashed the window, the neon still bleeded green over every surface, and for the first time in six years, the weight of the time she’d lost didn’t feel like a chain. It felt like a starting line .