Sunset

Prologue

Los Angeles, California
March, 2021

If anyone asked, I'd say it started with Claudia asking me to pick someone up from the airport. No big deal. Just a small favor—her cousin, in town for med school visits, needed a place to crash. Three days, maybe four. That's it.
And I said yes, because... why wouldn't I?

That morning was like any other. Finneas annoying the hell out of me to wake up, sunlight punching me in the face thanks to my wide-ass windows, my body aching from the Grammys after-party like I'd been hit by a tour bus made of glitter and tequila.

Same chaos, different day.

But somehow—somewhere in between the bleary routine of waking up too late, eating reheated food while Shark circled my feet, and laying down a new verse on a demo I barely felt attached to—it all started shifting.
I didn't notice it then. Not really.

When Claudia and Finneas came home from grocery shopping, it felt like any other Sunday afternoon. Claudia gave me hair dye like a joke wrapped in a dare, and we baked brownies just because. She filmed it like she always does, collecting tiny memories like someone who knows exactly how fragile time is.

And then, somewhere between laughing too hard at Finneas pretending to be Gordon Ramsay and Claudia scolding me for letting the pasta stick to the pot, she said it:
"Would you mind picking up my cousin from the airport tomorrow morning?"
Simple words. Just like that.

I remember tilting my head, eyebrow raised, food halfway to my mouth. "Sure," I said, with the casualness of someone who had no idea her whole week—maybe her whole self—was about to shift.

Claudia told me Y/N's name, where she was coming from—Italy, half-American, future med student, messy sometimes, but trustworthy. I laughed and told her I didn't have rules in my house, just "strong suggestions." Claudia said we'd probably get along. I didn't think anything of it. People always say that. Most of the time, it's just a polite guess.

But something in her voice—maybe the way she softened when she talked about Y/N—felt different. Like she was handing me a match without realizing the room was already filled with gasoline.

At the time, I didn't see it coming. I didn't think three days would matter.

But time has a funny way of bending when the right person walks into your life.
Sometimes it stretches out, slow and deliberate, like the silence between two people who don't need words. Sometimes it collapses in on itself—moments rushing together like waves, each one harder to ignore than the last.

I didn't know it then, but something was already shifting inside me.

And tomorrow, when I'd stand at the arrivals gate of LAX, tired, hoodie pulled low over my head, and see her walking toward me for the first time with her suitcase in hand and that uncertain smile—
Something would click.

And nothing would be the same again.