her again last night.

the dreams come every couple months or so. really, they're less of dreams and more the fractured remnants of his own memories. they're the flash of dark hair and the shape of ivy on a building and the faded blue of a t-shirt with words his memory cannot conjure after all this time. they shift and blur around the edges and fade to nothing before he can grasp them in his waking hours.

still, he wakes up and he knows it was her. his brain doesn't remember but his heart does. he can feel it tighten in his chest now as he rubs the sleep from his eyes.

tom swings his legs over the edge of the bed, hissing as his bare feet meet the freezing hardwood floor. goosebumps prickle along his arms, and he rubs them away. he grabs a hoodie, pulling it over his head.

his heating has been less than reliable lately. today, the radiator gives a feeble, wheezing cough from the corner of the room and he knows it's going to be another chilly day. he makes a note to himself to call on hattie, his landlady, later.

he gets up, passing the window. he runs a finger along the pane of glass, the tip of his thumb numbing as he draws a line in the frost. it's still snowing outside, although tiny spokes of light have begun to burn through slashes in the clouds.

he pulls out his phone. he wills it to light up, but the screen remains flat and gray. it's not like he's been expecting anything, but he still feels a strange twinge of disappointment.

he sighs, and heads down the stairs to the kitchen. the stairs creak in protest, straining against their nails in the symphony of old things at the end of their lives. he makes sure to avoid the step near the bottom that slopes dangerously to the left.

he flicks on the light to the kitchen. he busies himself making a cup of tea to combat the chill the cold winter day has left deep in his bones. he hums to himself softly as he grabs the kettle, careful not to pull the doors of the cupboard too hard. they've been hanging precariously on their hinges ever since jacob tore through his kitchen trying to make cheesy pasta (it's ambrosia of the gods, tom!) at four am.

everything is about two hundred years old in this place, and noisy enough to prove it. the cupboard hinges whine when he opens them, the floors groan under his weight, and the faucets give a rusty cough every time he turns them on.

his flat is phenomenally shitty, and he loves it.

he used to live in a three story house made of marble and steel and sharp edges. it was sleek and modern and expensive and exceptionally lonely. everything echoed and he was always cold, even in the summer.

he moved out and into this flat when he broke up with maia a year and a half ago, to be closer to his family.

his gaze drifts to the box in the corner of the room. their relationship is packed up inside those four cardboard walls, maia's sweaters neatly folded on top of old pictures of the two of them she'd gotten framed. he still hasn't been able to work up to nerve to give it back to her.

he'd tried to love her, he really had.

it wasn't that they had been unhappy. maia had been tall and blonde and beautiful and the media had adored her. he'd liked her too. tom had liked her loud laugh and how she always overcooked pasta and fit perfectly under his arm.

but it wasn't enough.

sometimes he thought that no one would ever be enough. that maybe there really was just one person for someone and he was destined to spend the rest of his life surviving only off pieces of the past and flashes in his dreams.

maybe it was foolish how much he'd loved mel. maybe he should've tried harder to get over her. maybe—

the whistle of the tea kettle brings him back to reality. he scolds himself for thinking about her again. he has to stop thinking about maybe's. he pours the hot water into a mug and sits back into a chair next to the window.

she didn't love you, he reminds himself, watching the steam rise and disappear. and she's not thinking about you now, even if you're thinking of her.

•

hours later, tom dumps his groceries in the hallway. he stamps his feet and rubs his hands to warm them, leaving a trail of fallen snow behind him to melt into the carpet. the day has begun to slip into night, the sky tinged pink, and the deep chill of winter has set in.

he unwinds his scarf, only to find it's nearly as cold inside his flat as it is outside. he exhales sharply. he'd better go talk to hattie if he wants to survive the night with his fingers and toes.

he pulls his boots back on and and shuts the door, hearing the glass rattle in the doorframe. he clomps down the steps to the tiny flat on the first floor where hattie lives.

hattie is a small woman with sharp blue eyes and black hair cut to her chin that refuses to go gray, even after sixty seven years. she terrifies him sometimes, but she makes excellent pies and the promise of baked goods and his uncooperative heater usually outweigh her sharp tongue.

now, he knocks on her door, hoping she's in a good mood. once, he'd caught her while she was feeling cranky and she had said such hurtful things about his hair and its likeness to what she'd just brushed off her cat Fettucini that he'd avoided her for weeks. he'd had to wear six pairs of socks to bed to keep away the chill.

"hattie," he calls out. "my radiator's gone to shit again."

she opens the door a crack, her pointed nose poking around the corner.

"tough luck, tommy. i've got a guest."

"hattie, you charmer," he gasps in mock surprise.

"a female guest," she glares.

"my, my. you truly do have hidden depths," he grins.

"i'm giving you ten seconds to walk away or i'll cut off your power and plumbing too," she warns, starting to close the door.

he sticks his hand out. "come on, hattie. it's freezing up there. you don't want me to get hypothermia, do you? imagine this pretty face damaged by frostbite."

"it'd be an improvement," she sniffs.

"plus, it'd look bad on your record. cantankerous old woman—"

she begins to close the door on his hand.

"—lovely, sweet, young woman leaves spider-man for dead in his apartment. imagine the headlines."

she raises an eyebrow.

"c'mon, hattie. i can smell brownies. at least let me grab something to fuel my poor, shivering body for the frigid night ahead."

she mutters something about him and which of his extremities she hopes will freeze off tonight, but she lets him in.

he grins, blowing her a kiss as he passes her and heads for the kitchen. he grabs a mug off the table with the intention of making a nice, hot cup of tea to accompany the sixteen brownies he'll inevitably scarf down.

he pauses when he ducks through the doorway. there's a small, shivering figure seated at her kitchen table, standing between him and a delicious plate of brownies. it isn't hard to see why she's trembling. the woman is only wearing a light sweater and jeans, which have been soaked through by the snow and ice.

"jeez, hattie, get her a blanket or something. your date's going to be frozen solid in a few minutes."

the woman turns around.

his mouth drops open.

hattie says something in response, but tom doesn't hear it over the hollow pressure mounting in his ears. somewhere, he registers the mug slipping from his fingers, but he barely notices when it shatters to pieces at his feet.

"mel?" he asks. his voice is unrecognizable to his own ears, hoarse and thin.

"tom?"

it's her.

it's really her. he knows from her voice, low and warm and rich and raspy. it makes him think of flannel sheets and mahogany and the strange color street lights turn in the rain.

mel give him a small smile and suddenly he's twenty-two again.

hattie steps between them.

"tom, you've gone and broken my best mug," she scolds sharply.

she follows his unwavering gaze to mel's face and huffs when he doesn't look at her or respond.

"this young lady's come to see you, tom. i took her inside to warm her up before i sent her upstairs to you. she was running around in this weather without a coat or boots, the silly thing."

"i'm not used to london winter yet," mel smiles apologetically.

tom doesn't say anything. he can't. his tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth, his throat immeasurably dry.

"how do you two know each other, anyway?" hattie asks.

"oh, tom is. . . um, we're. . . well, we were friends," mel stammers. "back home. a long time ago,"

"six years ago," he hears himself say faintly.

she turns to him, dark brows furrowed in surprise as though she can't believe he's remembered.

"yeah," she nods. "six years."

hattie is looking between the two of them.

"well, then i better let you two get reacquainted," she says, and goes to help mel up out of her seat.

"oh, i—" mel starts.

"no need to thank me yet, dear," hattie smiles. "i am sending you off with tom, after all. i definitely wouldn't thank me for that."

before tom can say anything, she bundles the two of them towards the door. "upstairs you go. tommy, i'll go sort out the heat."

he catches her wink before she shuts the door.

he and mel are left standing in the doorway. they stare at each other.

"hi," she says finally.

•

he's pretty sure he's having a heart attack.

he's too young, and yet he's almost positive his heart is giving out right now. it's jerking and jolting in his chest, his pulse scrambling wildly as he sits at the kitchen table. he covers his face with his hands, trying to slow his breathing.

mel is upstairs taking a hot shower. her lips were practically blue by the time they got up to his door. he's not sure what possessed her to gallivant through london in the dead of winter in a sweater and sneakers, but she was trembling too badly to stay in her wet clothes for long.

"um. . . tom?"

he jumps out of his chair.

she's standing in the doorway. her hair hangs around her face in damp tangles, her cheeks flushed from the warm water. she's wearing the clothes he laid out for her. the sweater and sweatpants hang off her frame, her small hands barely visible under the bulky sleeves she's rolled up around her wrists.

she looks different. older. her hair is short now, and the ends of it brush her chin. her face looks sharper somehow, her cheekbones more pronounced, and her brow slopes forward into a crease in a way it didn't used to. she looks tired, he registers.

and yet, underneath it all, she's still mel.

she is painfully familiar, after all these years. he knows the curve of her jaw and the shape of her lips and her oil-spill eyes. he has unknowingly memorized the way she shifts from foot to foot and the motion of her hand pushing her glasses up onto her head.

and his heart is stretching and aching, yearning for something he's spent six years trying to forget.

"uh," he says eloquently.

he clears his throat.

"how have you been?" he tries again.

"fine, i guess," mel says. "and you?"

"fine," he echoes. "how's MIT?"

"good. it was good. i finished my phd and graduated, so. . ."

"that's. . . that's awesome, mel. i'm glad to hear it."

she gestures to him. "and i saw you won an oscar. that's. . . i mean, wow."

he nods. "i guess all of our dreams came true, huh?"

he tries to laugh, but it sounds strangely hoarse and dull to his ears.

mel straightens up. her eyes meet his, as though she's just remembered something. her mouth narrows into a determined sort of a line.

"that's—that's why i'm here, actually."

her words come quickly. he blinks at her, bewildered.

she pats the pockets of her pants, then realizes she's wearing his. something clears in her expression. she darts out of the room and disappears, her movements startlingly quick all of a sudden as if the freezing fog of cold has just lifted.

she returns a few seconds later with a crumpled piece of paper in her hand. she strides towards him, and out of instinct he takes a small step back.

"did you write this?" she asks, a note of urgency in her voice.

she pushes the paper into his hands. it's damp from the snow, and the words are bleeding together in places, but he would recognize his own handwriting anywhere.

dear mel,

he doesn't need to read the rest. he still remembers what it says. he agonized over those words for weeks before putting them to paper. he spent months after he sent that letter picking them apart, trying to find the faulty seams in his sentences. even now, they follow him into his waking hours.

his hand is shaking slightly, the letter trembling with it.

"did you write it?" she asks again, the note of urgency growing stronger.

her eyes are searching his face, but he doesn't know what she's looking for.

he breathes out. "yes."

her eyes go wide. "y-you did? you really wrote this?"

the words come out in a rush, tripping and stumbling over one another.

she's nervous. he can see it in her eyes and the tremble of her bottom lip and the way her hand is clenched at her side. and for some reason, this makes him angry.

he feels his face get hot as he tries to shove the letter back at her.

"yeah, i wrote it. six years ago. and i never heard back," he says bitterly.

six years worth of confusion and resentment are surfacing, and many more years worth of anger and hurt.

"tom—"

his voice is rising. "i mean, i get it, you didn't love me. but we couldn't have just been friends? you had to cut me out of your life completely?"

"i didn't," she protests. "we stopped talking to each other. you stopped talking to me."

"i sent you the letter, and you never responded. you never even acknowledged it. how were we supposed to go back to normal after that?"

"tom, i wanted things to go back to normal, i swear, but—"

"that's exactly the problem, mel," he spits. "that's why you broke my fucking heart. because all you wanted was normal for us, and i wanted so much more than that."

now she's angry too. he cannot fathom why. her eyes are blazing, wide and mirror-like in their own light. she fumbles for something in her pocket, before pulling out another cream-colored rectangle.

she holds it out to him, her hand shaky but jaw set.

he pulls it from her hand without meeting her eyes. it's an envelope in the same color, the top torn open to expose a set of jagged paper teeth.

he knows that stamp and that address and his own handwriting in black ink on the front.

all of it is obscured, though, by three huge words that slice open the front of the envelope in red.

RETURN TO SENDER.

the words become crimson slashes as his vision blurs.

"i never got it," mel says. "tom, i never got the letter."

her eyes search his pleadingly but his thoughts are too jumbled and crowded to form a response.

"nikki gave it to me this morning when i went to go visit her. i-i've come to london for an internship, and she. . . tom, i didn't know how you felt."

"you must've—you must've known. . ."

"i knew there was something, tom, but i thought it was a crush. i didn't know it was this. i didn't know i meant all those things to you."

"and you know now."

a question hangs at the edge of his sentence, unspoken.

she nods, and looks at the floor. she doesn't say anything else.

so she didn't love him after all.

he thought he'd realized it all those years ago. he'd been living with this conclusion for years, and he'd come to accept it with aching defeat. but now, now that she had fed him some tiny portion of hope and then taken it away again, it hurt so much more.

he knows now for sure, but god, he wishes he didn't.

the hollows behind his eyes ache. his throat stings and his face burns and his chest is too tight. he needs to get out of here.

he can't be here in this flat, not when mel smells like ink and snow and lemons and he loves her more than he ever has before.

he moves towards the doorway, his head roiling and spilling, but mel steps in front of him.

"tom," she says in a small, firm voice. "i'm not done."

"please," he says miserably. "please, let's just be done. this game has been going on since i met you and i—i can't do it anymore."

"no," she insists, her mouth set in the stubborn line he's become achingly familiar with. "i need to talk to you. i need to say something, and i need you to be quiet until i finish."

"mel—"

"tom. please."

he's done fighting. he nods barely, and his shoulders sag. whatever poison she wants to rub in his wound, let her.

"okay," she says. her voice is shaking badly now. "okay."

she twists her hands in front of her tightly until her thumb goes purple. she takes a deep breath, then another.

"oh, god," she says, weakly. "i should've practiced. i always have a plan, how could i not have planned this too?"

"mel."

"right. tom, the thing is. . . the thing is i didn't plan any of this. you were always the one part of my life i didn't—couldn't—control. i tried so hard to be indifferent. but. . . you looked at me and my heart would pound so hard it felt like it was starting for the first time and i would forget it had been beating for years. and no matter how hard i tried to tell myself you didn't matter to me, when you left i swear my heart forgot how to beat again. i-i know that's cheesy. but here's the thing: i know you too, tom. i know you like your tea so hot it burns your tongue. i know your socks never match. i know you always drive with the windows down, even when it's raining. i was there when you thought you lost tessa and when you broke your nose in two places and when you had that fight with your mom. but i wasn't there for the past six years. i'm so sorry, tom. i never want that to happen again. i want to be there. from now on and always."

"i-i don't understand," he manages.

she's breathing hard. "look how many years i've wasted. because i thought i was being smart, doing the right thing for us both. god, i've been so—so ignorant. all this time. . ."

"mel, i don't. . ."

she takes a deep breath.

"what i'm trying to say," she says. "is that i love you."

the words explode in the air.

"what?" he breathes.

time slips and trembles around them, trying to find a hold and failing.

"i love you, tom," she says. "i'm in love with you."

she smiles then. it's so gentle and sad his breath catches.

"i'm sorry, tom. i know it's not fair to come here now, and i know it's too late, and i know there's probably someone else. i just never expected you would love me the same way i loved you, and now that i know you did. . . i don't know what i was thinking. i had to try."

"do," he says faintly.

"what?" she swallows.

"there's no past tense, mel. love without an ending, remember?"

"you still—after all this time?"

"yes. after all this time and during all this time and before all this time."

he can't remember when they got so close. at some point he stopped trying to walk away and starting walking towards her. they're so close now, closer than they've ever been.