Chapter 1: The Welcome Home Party
The air in Austin clung to everything like a second skin, thick and warm and tasting of cut grass and grill smoke. Alexandra balanced a paper plate on her knees, the flimsy thing bowing under the weight of potato salad and a burger that was leaking juice through the bun. Her mother’s backyard was a time capsule dressed for a party. Golden fairy lights, the same ones from every childhood birthday, were strung in lazy loops from the oak tree to the porch eaves. Their glow caught on the rusted chains of the old swing set, making the flaking paint look like constellations. Over by the fence, the rosebushes her mother had loved were wild now, a tangled mess of thorns and deep red blooms that still, somehow, held the faintest ghost of her perfume in the evening heat.
“I just don’t get why you’d leave D.C. for this,” Jessica, her friend since third grade, was saying, waving her plastic cup of wine. “No offense, Mrs. Sinclair!”
Alexandra’s mom, passing by with a tray of lemon squares, just laughed. “None taken, honey.”
“The job,” Alexandra said simply, pushing a stray strand of dark brown hair behind her ear. “And… it’s home.” She looked around at the clumps of neighbors and old friends laughing in the low light. It felt right. It also felt like a lot.
The sliding glass door from the kitchen opened, and a new wave of sound spilled out—deeper laughter, the clap of a hand on a shoulder. She knew it was him before she even turned her head. The cadence of his voice was a melody she’d forgotten she knew by heart.
Mark Phillips stood framed in the light from the kitchen, his head thrown back in a laugh at something his cousin Leeland was saying. He looked older. Of course he did. It had been years. But the handsomeness of him was more defined now, the easy charisma he’d always carried in the hallways of Bowie High refined by a life lived, largely, in front of cameras. He was dressed down, just dark jeans and a simple black t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders, but he moved through the gathering with a quiet gravitational pull, stopping to greet her dad, accepting a beer from a guy she vaguely remembered from the football team. He was a local celebrity, Austin’s own, famous to ten million people online for making them laugh at skits about Dragon Ball Z and failing at video games. To her, he was just Mark. The boy next door. Literally.
Her heart gave a slow, heavy thump against her ribs.
He finally scanned the yard, his gaze skating over the faces until it landed on her. For a second, his smile—the one he used for Instagram and TikTok—faltered, replaced by something more genuine, more surprised. He said something to Leeland and started making his way over, his path a series of pauses and handshakes.
Jessica leaned in, her whisper conspiratorial. “Oh my god. Is that…?”
“Yes,” Alexandra muttered, setting her plate aside. She wiped her palms on her jeans.
He reached her just as she stood up. The fairy lights caught the warm honey of his eyes. “Alex?” he said, his voice a mix of disbelief and a warmth that felt private, meant just for this bubble of space between them. “Holy crap. I heard someone was back, but… wow.”
“Hey, Mark.” Her own smile felt stiff. “Yeah, moved back last week. Starting at the clinic over on South Lamar.”
“A nurse?That tracks. You were always the one patching up skinned knees.” His smile softened. He looked at her, really looked, his eyes taking in her face. “You look great.”
“You too.” The words were inadequate. He looked like a completely realized version of the boy she’d loved, which was somehow harder than if he’d gone bald or soft. “I see you everywhere. Can’t scroll for five minutes without RDC popping up. It’s amazing, what you’ve built.”
He shrugged, a flicker of the old modesty she remembered surfacing. “Man, it’s wild. Never thought… you know.” He took a sip of his beer. “So you’re back for good?”
“For good.”
A silence fell, not exactly awkward but charged, buzzing with all the things unsaid—the frantic, fumbling love of sixteen, the tearful but resolute breakup at eighteen when her acceptance letter to Howard arrived, the long-distance calls that slowly faded into polite, occasional likes on social media posts.
He opened his mouth to say something else, but then a graceful hand slid around his bicep, manicured nails resting against the black cotton of his sleeve.
“Babe, you just disappeared on me.”
The woman who appeared beside Mark was a splash of expensive cream against the backyard’s warm, worn tones. Sabrina. Alexandra knew the name. She’d seen the pictures. In person, she was shorter than she looked online, her face heart-shaped and delicate under expertly styled waves of caramel-highlighted hair. Her dress was simple but screamed money, and her smile was brilliant, practiced.
“Sabrina, this is Alexandra,” Mark said, his arm shifting to accommodate her grip. “We grew up next door to each other. Alex, this is my fiancée, Sabrina.”
The word ‘fiancée’ landed between them with a physical weight.
“So nice to finally meet you!” Sabrina chirped, her voice a polished silver bell. She extended a hand, her grip cool and light. “Mark talks about his childhood here all the time. You must be the one who beat him at Mario Kart relentlessly.”
Alexandra managed a laugh. “Guilty as charged.”
“She just moved back to town,” Mark added, his eyes flicking from Sabrina back to Alexandra. “She’s a nurse practitioner.”
“Oh, how noble!” Sabrina said, her gaze already drifting past Alexandra to survey the party. “I tried nursing school for, like, a semester. All those bodily fluids? No thank you.” She gave a delicate shudder and squeezed Mark’ Err arm closer. “Babe, Des is trying to tell me about his new car. Come be my translator? All the horsepower talk goes right over my head.”
Mark hesitated, just for a second. But then he smiled, that public smile again, and Alexandra watched the familiar, easy-going mask settle back into place. “Duty calls,” he said to her, an apology in his eyes that his tone couldn’t convey.
“It was great seeing you, Alexandra,” Sabrina said, already tugging him gently away.
“You too,” Alexandra said to their retreating backs.
She stood there, the laughter and music of the party seeming to warp and fade into a dull hum.Fiancée. The word echoed. She watched as Sabrina led Mark to a group of his friends—Desmond, Aff, the whole crew—and Sabrina instantly became the sparkling center of their attention, tossing her hair, touching Mark’s chest when she laughed.
Her mom appeared at her side, a fresh plate of lemon squares in hand. “You okay, honey?” she asked quietly, her eyes knowing.
Before Alexandra could answer, Mark broke away from his group, returning alone. He held up a finger to Sabrina who pouted playfully but stayed where she was.
He stopped in front of Alexandra again, his hands shoved in his pockets. “Look, I’m… it was really good to see you,” he said, lower now. “Listen, Sabrina and I are getting married in December. In Hawaii. It’s… you should come. I’d really like you to be there.”
He fumbled in his back pocket and pulled out his phone. “Let me get your number. Seriously. We should catch up properly.”
It was an olive branch. A lifeline tossed into the churning, confusing sea of the last ten minutes. Her heart stammered, a frantic, hopeful beat. She recited her number, watching as his thumbs flew over the screen.
A notification chimed on her own phone, still in her hand.
Unknown Number: Hey, it’ As mark.
She saved the contact, a painful thrill running through her.Mark Phillips.
“Got it,” he said, looking up. The warm light from above caught the gold in his eyes, and for a fleeting moment, it was just the two of them again, teenagers under the same Texas sky. “I’m really glad you’re back, Alex.”
“Me too,” she whispered.
With a final nod, a smile that seemed meant only for her, he turned and walked back to his fiancée, his friends, his famous life. Sabrina instantly wrapped her arms around his waist, looking up at him adoringly as he rejoined the circle. Alexandra watched as Mark leaned down and planted a soft, public kiss on Sabrina’s forehead.It was tender. It was possessive.
She looked down at her phone, at the new contact in her list. The screen blurred. She blinked, hard, and took a deep breath of the rose-scented, smoky air.
From across the yard, under the soft glow of the fairy lights, Sabrina glanced over Mark’s shoulder. Her beautiful, practiced smile never wavered, but her eyes, cool and appraising, met Alexandra’ lt. They held for just a second before Sabrina turned back, burying her face against Mark’𝘴 chest with a contented sigh.
The party swelled around Alexandra, a wave of sound and nostalgia.She was home. Everything had changed.
The party settled into a low, buzzing hum, a sound that seemed to vibrate in Alexandra’s teeth. She helped her mother clear a few plates, the clatter of ceramic a welcome distraction from the noise in her own head. The fairy lights blurred into golden smears when she looked at them too long.
Back in her old room, now a guest room with neutral paint and spare linens, the silence was a relief. She changed out of her party clothes, the fabric smelling of smoke and other people’s perfume, and pulled on soft cotton pajamas. She unpinned her hair, let it fall around her shoulders, and stared at her reflection in the dark window.A nurse practitioner. A grown woman. Back in her childhood bedroom, feeling like a teenager who’d just seen her crush with his perfectly manicured prom date.
Her phone, facedown on the nightstand, gave a single, definitive buzz.
She stared at it. It was just a text. Probably Jessica, asking if she was okay. Or her mom, checking if she wanted leftover burgers. She picked it up.
The screen glowed in the dark room.
Mark Phillips: Hey. Hope it’s not weird I’m texting so late. Or at all.
Her breath hitched. She sat down on the edge of the bed, the springs letting out a familiar groan. The light from the phone painted her face in cool, shifting tones. She watched the three pulsing dots as he typed something else.
Mark Phillips: Tonight was… really good.And weird. Felt like a time warp.You looked beautiful.
A flush of heat crawled up her neck. It wasn’t the polished compliment of a celebrity. It felt like a note passed in class, fumbled and sincere. She typed, deleted, typed again.Alexandra: Not weird. Time warp is right. Felt like I should be worrying about AP Bio.You look happy.
She sent it, then immediately wondered if the last part was too pointed, too loaded.His reply came quickly.
Mark Phillips: Yeah. Yeah, things are good. Busy. The guys are planning a big shoot next week, some big Dragon Ball skit. All I do is eat, sleep, and yell Kamehameha.
She smiled, a real one this time. Her thumbs flew.
Alexandra: Still living the dream, huh? I have to watch that one. Even if I still don’t understand half of it.
Mark Phillips: You never did. I remember explaining the entire Chunin Exams arc to you and you fell asleep.
Alexandra: In my defense, your voice is very soothing.
The three dots appeared. They lingered. She could feel the shift through the screen, the digital space between them thickening. The easy nostalgia was receding, making way for the present, with all its complications.
Mark Phillips: So.Hawaii. The wedding. I meant it. I’d really like you to be there.
Her heart hammered against her sternum. What was she supposed to say? Sure, I’d love to watch you marry the woman who looked at me like I was a smudge on her dress? She couldn’t say yes. She couldn’t say no.
Before she could formulate a reply, another message came through. This one felt different, the words stripped of the earlier lightness.
Mark Phillips: It’s not like how it looks.
The sentence hung there, stark and simple. A confession, or the beginning of one. The air in the room felt thin. What did that mean? Sabrina’s perfect, adoring face flashed in her mind, followed by the cool appraisal in her eyes. It’s not like how it looks.
She started to type a question, something neutral like What do you mean?but stopped. She wasn’t sure she wanted that door opened. Not now, in the dark, alone. Not when he was engaged. Not when she was just starting to rebuild her life here, brick by fragile brick.
She pressed her lips together. The phone was warm in her hand.
She typed back, her movements precise, deliberate.
Alexandra: Hawaii’s a long way from Austin for a wedding guest. But I’ll check my schedule. Welcome home parties are exhausting. Going to sleep.Goodnight, Mark.
She put the phone down, screen to the mattress. She didn’t want to see the dots appear again. She didn’t want to know if he had an explanation, or another confession, or just a simple “goodnight.”
Down the hall, she could hear the soft murmur of her parents’ television. Outside, a car door slammed, an engine started—the last of the guests departing. The party was over.
She lay back on the bed, staring at the faint pattern of streetlight shadows on the ceiling. It’s not like how it looks. The words echoed, a persistent, troubling hum beneath the quiet of the house. They were a loose thread, and pulling on it felt dangerous, inevitable. Her phone remained silent and dark on the bed beside her, a tiny, potent secret in the still Texas night.