Bren woke to sunlight bleeding through his curtains and his phone buzzing weakly on his chest, half buried in the dark mess of his comforter.

He blinked against the light, groggy, limbs heavy with sleep and a brain fog that hadn't yet cleared. The lake trip had been on his mind all week. Maybe longer. Maybe since winter when it was first brought up. He'd been half-dreaming of pine trees and marshmallow bonfires, of squeaky dock boards and someone's laughter echoing across the water—familiar, but distant, like trying to remember a melody he used to hum as a kid.

Still half-asleep, he picked up his phone, that's when he saw it. A flower—floating just above the screen. Holographic. Gently pulsing, petals curling open like a sigh and he froze.

Lavender with a blue shimmer at the edges. And then it disappeared. Flickered and blinked out like it had never been there. Bren sat up slowly, still staring at his screen.

What the hell?

He'd never seen the app activate before. Everyone talked about it like it was a magic trick—soulmate this, destined that, flowers blooming like fate was just a swipe away. He always figured his would never go off. Maybe his person had already found someone else. Maybe they were on the other side of the world. Maybe they were a myth.

Or maybe...

He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced toward his suitcase. The lake trip. He hadn't thought about them in years—not really—but something about the dream lingered. A kid with wide eyes and grass-stained knees. Always racing him to the water. Always smiling.

He shook it off. Coincidence. Just a weird dream and a weird glitch and too much nostalgia in my head.

---

The lake hadn't changed.

It still smelled like pine sap and smoke and sunscreen. The dock still tilted slightly to the left. The water still looked like it belonged in a movie—glassy and gold in the daylight, black and bottomless under the stars.

The group had shown up with coolers and towels, laughing too loudly and cramming into beach chairs like they were still sixteen. Bren was smiling most of the day. It was good to be there again, even if everything around them was older now. Faded in the way that time softens things, but not enough to forget.

They'd grilled as the sun slipped behind the tree line, long shadows falling over the sand like they'd been waiting all year for this exact moment. Smoke curled from the pit, slow and sweet, drifting through the humid air alongside the scent of beer and citronella. Someone had dragged out an old guitar—one of the strings buzzed out of tune, but no one seemed to care. The lake, like everything else, was exactly how they'd left it years ago and that made pretending easier.

Bren laughed when the others did. He drank what was passed to him and let the music, the heat and the comfort of old company soften the edges of his thoughts. It wasn't hard to slip into the rhythm. This kind of familiarity had a way of dulling even the sharpest memories.

But the feeling was still there. Tucked in the back of his chest. Not painful, exactly—just persistent. A quiet weight that made his eyes wander more than they should, again and again, toward the dock. Toward the water. He caught himself doing it halfway through someone's story and didn't bother to hide it.

When the conversation lulled and someone mentioned the kid—"the one who drowned, remember?"—the words landed like a stone in the center of the circle.

There was a flicker of silence. The kind people don't like to admit they caused. Someone tried to laugh it off. Another shifted the subject before the air could get too heavy, but it was already done. The fire crackled as if to fill in the space where a name should've gone.

Bren hadn't thought about them in a long time. Not in a focused way. But the memory never really left, not completely. That summer had always felt unfinished. He couldn't recall how it ended, just that one day the usual camp routines stopped and the adults got quiet. Whispers behind hands. Head counts done more often. Someone cried behind a cabin wall. Then camp ended early.

No funeral. No explanation. Just absence. He remembered the way it felt more than the details—a sudden gap, like someone had pressed pause on a moment and forgotten to hit play again.

The group started to break up not long after that. Some wandered off toward tents, others disappeared into the woods with flashlights and half-finished drinks. Bren stayed by the fire for a while, letting the heat soak into his skin before the embers began to die out. The bottle in his hand had gone warm and flat, but he kept it anyway as he stepped away from the circle.

The lake was quieter now. The surface smooth, moonlight brushing across it like a held breath. The sand was cool beneath his feet as he walked down the slope toward the edge, bottle swinging loosely at his side. He stopped just before the water, squinting up at the sky.

There were two moons.

At first, he thought it was just his eyes. He blinked. Rubbed them. Looked again. Still there. He thought, brow furrowed. One full and high. The other slightly smaller, almost mirrored to its side. A twin, hovering just off its axis.

Bren frowned and laughed under his breath. "Jesus, maybe I have had too much."

He tilted the bottle toward the moons in mock salute, then took another slow drink and let the strange sight sit in his mind for a minute. He wasn't exactly an expert on the sky. Maybe it was some kind of rare atmospheric reflection. Or maybe the alcohol was doing more than he gave it credit for.

He didn't have long to consider it. Something moved in the water. At first, it didn't register. Just a ripple. Then a splash—sharp, not playful. Not a fish or a breeze.

His body reacted before his mind could finish catching up. The bottle hit the sand without ceremony as he broke into a run. He sprinted toward the dock and dove into the lake without hesitation.

The shock of the water hit him like a wall. Cold. Heavy. It sucked the breath from his lungs, but he forced himself down, eyes straining to make sense of the darkness. In the dim moonlight he caught sight of a shape just beneath the surface—limbs barely moving, hair fanned out in a cloud, sinking.

He reached them, got an arm around their chest and kicked upward—hard.

Dragging them back felt slower than it was. His lungs burned. His arms ached. But he didn't stop, not until he pulled both of them onto the sand and collapsed beside them, soaked and shaking.

For a terrifying moment, they didn't move and then they coughed. A rough, spluttering gasp that cracked the silence like the surface of thin ice.

He turned toward them, trying to catch his own breath and watched as they rolled slightly to the side, spitting lake water onto the beach. Their skin was cold against the air, but they were breathing. Their eyes fluttered open.

Bren didn't realize how tense his body had been until it let go. Then something glowed in the corner of his vision. His phone—half-buried where he'd dropped it near the edge of the water—was lit up. The screen had cracked, but the projection was still working.

A flower hovered in mid-air above it. Pale lavender and blue, its petals soft and glowing with a kind of warmth the night didn't have.

He stared.

The same flower from that morning. The same quiet bloom he'd convinced himself was a glitch or dream. Except it wasn't fading now. It pulsed softly above the screen, undisturbed by wind or water or logic.

Bren turned his head, slower this time. Looked down at the person beside him.

Hair clung to their face. Their chest rose and fell, more steady now. Their eyes were open, unfocused, dazed—but familiar in a way that stole his breath all over again.

The shape of their jaw. The curve of their mouth. Different now. Older. But unmistakable.

It was them. The kid from the lake. The one everyone had whispered about but never named. The one he'd never quite stopped looking for.

And they were alive. Right here. Under the same moonlight. The same sky. With that same impossible flower blooming above them both.

Bren sat back in the sand, water soaking into his jeans, heart thudding too hard in his chest.

Whatever this was, it wasn't a trick of the light. It wasn't the alcohol. It was real. And it had waited...All this time.