AI Rain lashed the smudged windows of The Raven’s Nest, the bar’s distinctive green neon sign bleeding lime into the Soho pavement below. The last of the after-work crowds had filtered out an hour prior, leaving only a pair of lost tourists nursing whiskeys in the front booth and Rory, who’d stayed late to help Silas close up after her flat’s boiler gave out for the third time that month. She wiped a ring of stale beer off the linoleum of the back booth, straight shoulder-length black hair falling into her face, and brushed it back with her left wrist. The small crescent scar there caught the glow of the amber string lights strung above the bar, a faint silver line against her skin.
Silas stacked pint glasses behind the bar, his grey-streaked auburn hair catching the same low light, his left leg propped on a low stool to ease the ache of his old knee injury. He twisted the silver signet ring on his right hand as he wiped down the tap lines, the old maps and black-and-white photographs lining the walls casting long shadows across the empty floor. “Boiler guy can’t make it till tomorrow,” he called across the space, his voice rough from years of yelling over bar chatter. “You can crash on the back room couch. It’s got clean blankets.”
Rory nodded, already expecting it. Her landlord was useless, and she’d spent the last three nights huddled under two duvets in her own freezing flat. Another night on a couch wouldn’t kill her. The door’s brass bell jingled, cutting through the Chet Baker track spinning on the jukebox. Silas called that last orders were in 15 minutes, and the figure that stepped inside shook rain off a tailored wool coat, her boots squelching on the doormat.
“Just need one,” she said, her voice warm, familiar in a way Rory couldn’t place. “Got stuck in the rain after a conference at the Temple. Missed the last tube.” She started toward the bar, then paused mid-step, her dark brown eyes locking on Rory. She blinked, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing . “Aurora Carter? Is that you?”
Rory’s hand froze around the rag in her fist. No one called her that, not her full first name, not outside of the stilted monthly calls she endured with her parents. She stood, wiping her damp palms on the thighs of her jeans, where a smudge of soy sauce from a spilled lunch order at Golden Empress had stained the fabric that afternoon. She would have passed this woman on the street and never recognized her. The Elin Jones she’d known, her first-year university roommate in Cardiff, had dyed her hair neon pink for their first college party, stolen a dozen tubs of mint chocolate chip ice cream from the campus cafeteria, and snuck Rory out of the dorm to see a Stereophonics gig at the Cardiff International Arena. The woman in front of her had chestnut hair pulled into a tight bun, wore a navy blazer sharp enough to cut paper, and pearl studs in her ears. But those eyes, the same eyes that had stayed up with Rory for three nights straight after her first breakup, that had carried her half a mile to the A&E when she’d fallen off a Barry Island pier at 16, they were the same.
“Elin?” Rory said, her voice cracking a little . Elin crossed the space in three steps, and they hugged awkwardly at first, both scared to hold on too tight, like the other might vanish if they squeezed too hard. When they pulled back, Silas had set two glasses of the Welsh cider he kept stocked just for Rory on their booth table, and he limped back to the far end of the bar to give them space, leaving them alone with the hum of the jukebox and the rain.
They slid into opposite sides of the booth, the vinyl creaking under their weight . Elin twisted a thin silver wedding band around her left index finger as she lifted her cider, taking a small sip. “I didn’t know you lived in London. No one heard from you for six months after you left Cardiff. Your dad called my mom, crying, said he didn’t know if you were even alive.”
Rory’s jaw tightened. She picked at a loose thread on the booth’s seat, her fingernail catching on the frayed fabric. “I’ve been here three years. Moved right after I left.” She paused, then lifted her chin, the words coming out before she could stop them. “I was dating Evan Moore. You remember him? The guy I met in my first torts class.”
Elin’s face fell. She remembered Evan, the charming pre-law student who’d won Rory over with expensive coffee and promises of a perfect life together, who’d started isolating her from their friend group within six months. “I remember. What happened?”
“He broke my phone the night I left. Slammed my head into the kitchen cabinet after I tried to break up with him. Eva drove up from Swansea that night, helped me pack my car. I didn’t tell anyone. I was ashamed. Thought everyone would say I was stupid, that I’d ruined the perfect legal career my dad mapped out for me, all for some guy who couldn’t keep his hands to himself.” Rory’s throat burned, and she took a long drink of cider to wash the taste of the old shame away. She hadn’t said those words out loud to anyone but Silas, not even Eva had heard her admit how deep the shame had run.
Elin reached across the table, her cold hand covering Rory’s. “That’s not stupid. That’s never your fault. I wish you’d called me. I would have come. I would have helped you hide, or fight him, or whatever you needed. I thought you just… forgot about all of us. That you had this amazing new life in London and didn’t need the old crew from Cardiff anymore.”
A wet laugh burst out of Rory. She wiped a stray tear off her cheek with the back of her hand, the crescent scar glinting again. “Me? I deliver Chinese food for a restaurant in Chinatown. I live in the flat above this bar. I spend most nights bleeding radiators or fixing my broken bike or picking up extra shifts to pay rent. The only legal thing I’ve done in three years is take a free employment law class at City Lit last semester, just for fun. I didn’t tell my dad. He’d blow a gasket if he knew I wasted the tuition he paid for pre-law. I thought you had the perfect life. You were the one who was gonna move to Paris, open your own gallery, paint murals on the sides of buildings. What the hell are you doing as a barrister?”
Elin’s face crumpled. She wiped a tear off her own cheek, tucking a stray strand of rain-wet hair behind her ear. “Dad got lung cancer, my third year of art school. The NHS covered most of his treatment, but the private meds, the trips to Cardiff for scans, someone had to pay. Mom was working three part-time jobs to keep the house. I couldn’t keep buying canvases and paint when he needed new oxygen tanks. I transferred to law the next semester. It paid the bills. It still pays the bills. I’m a junior barrister at a family law firm in the City. I got married last year to a guy I met in bar school. He’s nice. He can’t name my favorite painting, though. He works 60 hours a week, forgets my birthday half the time. I haven’t painted a single canvas in four years. I walk past the Tate Modern on my way to work every day and I can’t go in. If I look at a tube of oil paint, I’ll break down. I have the perfect life everyone wanted for me, and I hate it most days.”
They sat in silence for a long minute, the tourists finishing their whiskeys and leaving, the bell jingling as they headed out into the rain. Silas stayed in the back, pretending to sort through stock to give them space. Rory thought of the four years that had slipped between them, both of them too ashamed to reach out, both convinced the other had gotten everything they’d ever wanted, while they’d been left with the scraps. They’d both become the people they swore they’d never be: Rory, the girl who’d hated pre-law, was the only one who still snuck back to it for fun, and Elin, the girl who’d hated law more than anything, had built her entire life around it. They’d swapped places, and lost each other in the swap.
Elin checked her phone, the screen lighting up with a dozen missed texts from her husband. She stood, pulling her wool coat back on, and scribbled her number on a napkin, sliding it across the table to Rory. Rory did the same, her handwriting scrawled under Elin’s, scared she’d lose it if she didn’t write it down right then.
“Court date at 9 AM tomorrow,” Elin said, pausing at the door. She hesitated, then turned back, her smile soft, the same smile she’d had when they were 16, waiting outside the A&E to get Rory’s wrist stitched up. “We have to do this again. Before another four years pass. Before we wake up and we’re 60, and we still haven’t had that paint class I signed up for, or that law conversion course you’ve been too scared to take.”
Rory blinked, surprised. She hadn’t told anyone about the law conversion course she’d been daydreaming about, hadn’t even admitted it to herself. She nodded, clutching the napkin in her fist. “Yeah. Soon.”
Elin left, the bell jingling behind her, the glow of the green neon sign swallowing her as she stepped onto the wet pavement. Silas limped out of the back room, sliding another full glass of cider across the table to Rory, his signet ring glinting as he set it down.
“Old friend?” he said, leaning against the bar.
Rory folded the napkin, tucking it into her jacket pocket, the paper crinkling under her fingers. She wiped the last of the tears off her cheeks, the weight of the four lost years settling soft in her chest, not heavy anymore, just there, a reminder that she wasn’t the only one who’d lost parts of herself along the way.
“Yeah,” she said, lifting her cider. “The best one I ever had. I just found her again.”