There was a wedding at the old courthouse that weekend. Not Sophie's. Not Jake's. Just a couple of strangers who held hands like the world might end if they let go.
Sophie and Jake sat on the steps across the street, sipping iced tea and watching guests stream out with flowers in their hair.
Jake leaned closer. "They look young."
"We were once," Sophie said with a smirk.
Jake chuckled. "Were we ever that sure?"
"No," she said honestly. "But we're something better now. We're steady."
He kissed her temple, and they sat like that until the crowd thinned and the sun slid behind the buildings.
Later, back home, she found Jake in the garden with dirt on his jeans and a grin on his face.
"You'll never believe what bloomed," he called.
She followed him past the tomato vines and the row of herbs to the corner where the soil had always been stubborn.
But there it was: a small, defiant flower. Pale yellow. Frayed at the edges. And absolutely alive.
"Didn't think it would take," Jake said.
Sophie crouched beside it. "Sometimes it just needs time. And a little quiet."
They cooked dinner together—chopping and stirring to the sound of that old cassette again. Her mother's humming filled the kitchen like steam. Familiar. Comforting. Less like a ghost, more like a thread running through them both.
Jake made too much rice. Sophie forgot the salt. But it didn't matter.
They had stopped trying to get everything right. They just wanted to be together when it went wrong.
After dinner, she opened her journal to a fresh page and wrote:
"Some days still ache. But most of them don't.
And I'm learning to love both."
That night, the wind picked up. Leaves skittered across the porch, and the screen door clattered gently in its frame. Jake got up to check the latch, and Sophie sat by the window, knees pulled to her chest, listening.
In the quiet, she realized she wasn't waiting for the next disaster anymore.
She was simply here.
Alive. Present.
Still choosing this life. Still choosing herself.
As she climbed into bed beside Jake, he whispered, "Do you ever think about what would've happened if we hadn't come back?"
She reached for his hand under the covers. "All the time."
"And?"
"And I think the best parts of us were always going to find their way home."
Outside, the storm passed.
Inside, nothing broke.