"If I had planned this," I said, my voice flat, "I would have picked a place with actual heat. And I wouldn't be standing here in a soaked shirt trying to figure out how to work a stove from the eighties."
I turned my back to her, focusing on the small, rusted electric kettle. My hands were shaking slightly—not from the cold, but from the proximity. The "CEO" wanted to give a speech about resilience. The boy wanted to apologize until his throat was raw. Neither felt right.
I handed her a mug of tea. The ceramic was chipped, and the tea was oversteeped and bitter. Our fingers didn't "brush" in some magical way; I practically shoved the mug toward her to avoid touching her at all. The air between us wasn't "electric"—it was thick, heavy, and incredibly uncomfortable.
"Drink it," I muttered, leaning against the far wall, as far from her as the small room allowed. "You're shivering."
Alayna took a sip, wincing at the taste. She wrapped the scratchy wool blanket tighter around her shoulders, looking small against the harsh, flickering overhead light.
"The boy I knew... he used to hate tea," she said suddenly. Her voice wasn't nostalgic; it was observant, like she was studying a specimen. "He said it was a waste of time when there was coffee to be had."
I looked down at my own mug. "Things change, Alayna. Five years is a long time to develop a taste for bitter things."
She didn't look away. "Is that what you are now? Bitter?"
"I'm tired," I said, and for once, I didn't care if it sounded weak. "I'm tired of the grandfathers, I'm tired of this project, and I'm tired of looking at you and seeing a version of myself I don't recognize anymore."
Alayna set the tea down on the radiator. She didn't offer a comforting word. She didn't touch my sleeve. She just stood up, the blanket trailing behind her like a shroud.
"Then maybe you should stop looking," she said, her voice brittle. "Because the version of you I see doesn't even know how to say 'I'm sorry' without making it sound like a status report."
She walked toward the connecting door, her damp footsteps quiet on the linoleum. She paused with her hand on the knob, her back to me.
"The 'prove it' isn't about a sketch, Zayn. It's about whether you're actually here, or if you're just waiting for the storm to pass so you can go back to being the man who left."
The door clicked shut.
I stayed in the silence, the heater clicking and hissing beside me. Rayan snorted in his sleep, turning over on the other bed. I looked at the closed door, the "I'm sorry" I hadn't said still burning in my chest like a fever.
The rain hadn't reset anything. It had just trapped us in a room where we couldn't hide from the fact that we were still strangers, no matter how many memories we shared.