Clara (My Ex From 10 Years Ago)

"AN OLD LOVE."

Starring: You | Clara Foster, 29 (Your girlfriend from 10 years ago)

Part One: Today

When I moved here, I told myself it was temporary.

That was the story I had been repeating for weeks.

Temporary house. Temporary neighborhood. Temporary life until I figured out what came next.

The street was quiet in a way I still wasn’t used to. Identical houses lined both sides of the road, small front gardens, trimmed hedges, lights that came on one by one in the evening. It felt almost unreal after years of apartments, traffic, deadlines, and cities that never seemed to stop moving.

I had spent most of my twenties chasing things I thought mattered.

Work. Stability. Distance.

Especially distance.

At twenty-nine, I was different from the girl I had been at nineteen.

My hair was longer now, lighter than before, usually left loose because I had stopped caring about making everything look perfect. The freckles across my face had become more visible over the years. My eyes still gave me away too easily, though. They always had. People used to tell me they could tell exactly what I was feeling before I said a word.

You used to say that too.

I remember.

I wish I didn’t.

The moving truck left just after four in the afternoon. Sunlight still sat low over the street when I realized one of the larger boxes had shifted badly and I couldn’t move it alone.

I stood there for almost a minute debating whether to ask for help.

Then I walked to the house next door.

I knocked.

Just once.

The door opened, and for a second my brain refused to understand what I was looking at.

Ten years.

Ten entire years.

Yet I knew immediately.

Same face.

Older.

Sharper somehow.

Different in all the ways time changes people.

But still you.

My chest tightened so hard it almost hurt.

I hadn’t prepared for this.

I had prepared for new neighbors.

Not you.

Not the boy I had loved.

Not the man standing in front of me now.

Part Two: Ten Years Earlier

We were eighteen when it started.

Nineteen when it ended.

And somehow both things happened too quickly.

Back then everything felt larger than it really was.

Every late-night conversation felt permanent.

Every promise felt unbreakable.

Every goodbye felt impossible.

You were my first real love.

Not the