AI The green neon above the door was buzzing again. It had been buzzing for as long as Rory had lived above the Nest, a thin high whine that settled behind her teeth when she came down the stairs after her shift. She pushed through the door with a thermal bag balanced against her hip, the clatter of the bell swallowed by the low hum of the bar.
The Raven's Nest smelled the same as ever: old wood, spilled beer, and the faint metallic tang of the maps that papered the walls. Black-and-white photographs leaned in their frames, men and women with hard eyes and softer cigarettes, and the bar itself was a long dark island under a single row of amber bulbs. Silas was behind it, sleeves rolled to his forearms, polishing a glass with a cloth that had seen better years. His hair was still that grey-streaked auburn, neatly trimmed, and the beard matched it. The silver signet ring caught the light when he set the glass down, always on his right hand. He had a slight limp when he moved, the left leg dragging a fraction longer than the right, and he didn't look up at first.
"You're late," he said, as if she came down every night.
"I had a flat on Kingsland," Rory said. "Driver quit. You want your usual?"
She set the bag down on the bar. The bag was from Golden Empress, Yu-Fei Cheung's place where she worked part-time, the thin paper still warm from the kitchen. She had her delivery jacket zipped to the throat, black hair falling straight to her shoulders, and the small crescent scar on her left wrist caught the light when she reached for a receipt.
Silas was about to answer when the woman at the far end of the bar shifted, and the amber light caught her face.
Rory stopped.
Eva was sitting on a stool with her back to the room, a glass halfway to her lips, the same way she used to sit in the library at Cardiff with her feet tucked up. The hair was different. Shorter, cut sharp around her jaw, dyed a dark copper that didn't suit her. She wore a coat that was too big, sleeves pushed up, and there were lines around her mouth Rory didn't remember. She looked older than twenty-five, older than the both of them, and she turned at the sound of the bell.
Their eyes met.
Rory's bright blue eyes, the ones Eva used to tease her for being the color of a cheap swimming pool, widened. She felt the familiar cool-headedness slip. For a half second she was sixteen again, on a train platform with a duffel bag, Eva promising London would be different.
Eva's hand froze around her glass.
"Rory," she said. Not a question.
"Hey."
Silas watched them both with the quiet authority he carried like a coat. He didn't move, didn't offer introductions. He just set the cloth down.
"You didn't tell me you were coming back," Rory said.
"I didn't know I'd be." Eva slid off the stool, and Rory saw how she moved, careful, as if her joints hurt. "I'm in town for two days. Court thing."
The word landed hard. Court. Rory thought of her father, Brendan Carter, Irish barrister, the way he used to talk about cases over tea. She thought of Pre-Law at Cardiff University, the textbooks she had left behind. She thought of Evan, the name that still sat like a stone in her throat, and how she had fled to London at Eva's behest after leaving him.
"I heard you were here," Eva said, softer . "Silas said you lived upstairs."
"He says a lot of things." Rory tried for lightness and it came out thin. "You look well."
"You look..." Eva stopped. She looked at Rory's hair, at the scar on her wrist that she must have seen a hundred times before. "Different. Good."
Rory's fingers found the edge of the bar. "You look different too."
A silence settled between them, the kind that had weight . The bar was quiet for a Thursday. A couple at a table near the maps were laughing about something, and the green neon buzzed.
"I thought you'd be a lawyer," Eva said finally.
Rory laughed, a short sound. "I thought you'd be... I don't know. Happier?"
Eva's mouth tightened. "I am happy. I'm just tired."
Silas poured a whisky without being asked and set it in front of Eva, then a water for Rory. He didn't sit. He just stood there, ring catching light, watching.
"I didn't know where else to go," Eva said, not looking at Rory, looking at the whisky . "Mum's ill. The house sold. I came to find you."
The words unspooled slowly . Jennifer Carter née Ellis, Welsh teacher mother. Rory had not spoken to her in months. The house in Cardiff gone. She felt the familiar out-of-the-box thinking kick in, the cool head that had gotten her through the worst nights, and it did nothing to stop the prick at the back of her eyes.
"You could have called," Rory said.
"Would you have answered?"
Rory didn't answer. She thought about the flat above the bar, the thin walls, the way Silas sometimes knocked with soup when she hadn't eaten. She thought about the delivery route that kept her moving, the hours at Golden Empress, the way she had built a life out of being useful and invisible.
"I was scared," Eva admitted. "After you left. You didn't tell me what happened with Evan. I just heard bits. I thought... I thought you'd hate me for dragging you here."
The regret hung between them, unspoken and thick. They had been childhood friends, the kind who shared secrets in dorm rooms and promised they'd never let the other disappear. And then one had disappeared, and the other had stayed, and time had done what time does.
"I didn't hate you," Rory said quietly. "I was angry. For a while. Then I was just tired."
Eva reached out, then pulled her hand back, as if touching Rory might be a mistake . "I'm sorry I didn't check in. I kept telling myself you were fine. You always were fine."
"You didn't know," Rory said. Her voice was steady. "I didn't tell anyone."
Silas limped around the bar then, set a coaster down between them. "Ladies," he said, low . "It's late. You can shout at each other upstairs or you can have a drink and be civil."
Eva smiled, a real smile this time, cracked at the edges. "He's always been like this."
"He's the reason I'm still in London," Rory said.
Eva looked at her then, really looked. "You're smaller. Or I got bigger."
"I'm five-six," Rory said automatically.
"Same."
They both laughed, a little wetly. The tension didn't break, but it shifted.
"Do you still think about Cardiff?" Eva asked.
"Every time it rains," Rory said. "The way the light hits the university. I think about the library."
"I think about the kitchen," Eva said. "Mum making tea. Your dad reading briefs at the table."
The bar felt smaller. The photographs on the walls watched. Rory thought about the hidden back room behind the bookshelf, the clandestine meetings Silas still hosted. She thought about how she had come down for a delivery and found the past sitting on a stool.
"You should come up," she said. "I have tea."
Eva shook her head. "I can't. I have a train."
"Then I'll walk you out."
Silas nodded once, the small movement of approval. He picked up the cloth again.
They stood together under the green neon, the buzz louder out on the street. Eva was shorter than Rory remembered, or Rory had grown in other ways. The copper hair was damp at the temples. She didn't ask for forgiveness, and Rory didn't offer it. They said goodbye like people who knew they might not see each other again, with the weight of all the years they had not spoken sitting in the space between the words.
"You kept your hair," Eva said, almost a smile.
"You kept your laugh," Rory said, not sure it was true.
Eva hugged her then, awkward and brief, careful not to press too hard. Rory felt the coat, the thinness of her friend's shoulders, and the crescent scar on her wrist brushed against Eva's sleeve.
"Take care of yourself, Rory," Eva whispered.
"Try you," Rory said.
The door closed behind her with the same bell. Silas was already wiping down the bar. The neon buzzed. Rory stayed a moment longer, hands in the pockets of her delivery jacket, watching the green light paint the photographs on the wall, thinking about how time didn't just pass, it changed the people who survived it, and how regret was the quiet thing that lived in the space between who they had been and who they'd become, and how sometimes the only honest thing you could do was stand in a dim bar and not look away.