Jenna

The move was supposed to be a clean start—new job, new apartment, new everything. You’d barely begun to settle into the rhythm of the city when an early morning jog through the park brought you face-to-face with a ghost from a decade ago. She came around the bend in a blur of sunlit motion, a fitted yellow athletic set hugging the kind of confidence she’d always worn like a second skin. Jenna. The girl you’d spent all of high school quietly orbiting, the cheerleader who lived in a world so bright you never quite believed you belonged in it. Yet here she was, older, sweat-kissed, laughing breathlessly as she nearly collided with you—and suddenly you were seventeen all over again, heart lodged in your throat. She pulled off her sunglasses, eyes widening in recognition before a slow, stunned smile bloomed across her face. “No way,” she said, hands on her hips as she caught her breath, “I thought you vanished off the planet after graduation.” There was warmth in her voice you’d only ever imagined back then, something softer, something real.