CHAPTER 6: Echoes of Yesterday

         ✦ 𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐓 ✦

I woke up the next morning a full ten minutes before my alarm was set to go off.

The house was dead silent, but my mind was already racing. Without even sitting up, I reached out in the dim light and grabbed my phone off the nightstand. My thumb swiped the screen open, my eyes instantly darting to the message thread.

He had replied. The timestamp said it came in sometime past two in the morning.

Xavier: Sleep well.

I stared at the two words. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't flirty. It was just a simple, standard response. Yet, for some completely ridiculous reason, I found myself staring at the glowing text far longer than I should have. My heart gave a tiny, stupid flutter.

My thumb hovered over the screen for a second. It would have been so easy to reply. Just two words. Morning. Thanks. Anything.

Instead, I locked the phone.

I tossed the device onto the mattress and told myself sharply as I threw the covers off my legs, You are reading way too much into two ordinary words. He was just being polite.

I spent the next several hours trying to force that exact mindset to stick, throwing myself entirely into my classes and my fellowship preparation. This was where my focus belonged. My future was on the line, and I couldn't afford a single distraction.

But as the day wore on, keeping my head down became exhausting. During my early seminar, the professor started a discussion about the psychological foundations of trust and interpersonal breakdown. Out of nowhere, my chest tightened. The image of Xavier standing beneath that tree, with his jaw clenched and those storm-grey eyes full of unsaid things, flashed vividly behind my eyelids.

I didn't hear another word the professor said after that. By the time I realized I'd stopped taking notes, half the slide had already changed.

I blinked rapidly, cursing under my breath, and forced my eyes back down to my notebook. I pressed my pen so hard against the paper that the ink bled through the page, aggressively writing down definitions I already knew by heart. I was furious with myself. I had spent years learning how to keep my thoughts locked down, and now a ghost from my past was breaking through the walls effortlessly.

"Don't look now, but you're giving your screen the serial-killer stare again," Leo's voice broke through my internal frustration.

I snapped out of it, realizing we were sitting at our usual lunch table. I had my phone gripped tightly in my left hand, my thumb hovering right above the power button.

"I'm just checking my schedule," I lied smoothly, slipping the phone into my pocket.

Leo grinned, leaning his elbows on the table as he picked up a fry. "Right, your schedule. Don't tell me the premium-package stepbrother is already living rent-free in your head, Julian. Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're waiting for a text."

"He is not living rent-free anywhere," I shot back immediately, my face heating up as I took a defensive bite of my apple. "I'm thinking about the Vanguard fellowship."

Leo’s grin widened. "That's exactly what someone says when somebody is living rent-free."

He let out a loud, dramatic laugh, completely unbothered by my glare. Luckily, he was nice enough to let it go, instantly pivoting to a ridiculous story about his roommate's failed attempt at cooking pasta, giving me a much-needed chance to breathe.

Once lunch was over, we packed up our things and split up for our afternoon sessions. I walked across the quad toward the business building, trying my best to clear my head before entering the lecture hall.

The next couple of hours passed in a blur of slide presentations and heavy note-taking. But right before the final class dismissed, the room quieted down as Professor Harrison walked up to the podium to deliver a brief reminder to the shortlisted students.

"The committee is looking for more than just perfect test scores in the next stage," Harrison noted, his sharp eyes scanning the rows of desks. "They are evaluating consistency, professional maturity, and how you carry yourselves under scrutiny. Keep your standards high."

I kept my gaze fixed forward. Tristan was sitting a few rows ahead of me, but I didn't care about him today. This wasn't about our rivalry. It was a grounding reminder that my dream was still moving forward, completely independent of the chaos happening at home.

When I walked through the front door that evening, the academic pressure instantly melted into the warm, frantic energy of wedding preparations.

The living room looked like a paper factory had exploded. My mom was sitting on the rug, completely surrounded by elegant cardstock samples, silver ribbons, and half-finished guest lists. She looked exhausted, but the moment she looked up at me, that light, radiant happiness was right back in her eyes. It was a version of her I was still getting used to seeing.

Without saying a word, I dropped my backpack by the door and sat down on the floor across from her. I reached over, grabbing a stack of envelopes, and quietly began sorting them by zip code to help her organize.

She looked surprised for a brief second. Normally she would have had to ask me twice before I stopped studying to help.

"Oh, thank you, sweetheart," she breathed, leaning back against the couch with a grateful sigh. "Richard and I are trying to finalize the old family invitations tonight, but I keep getting distracted."

We worked in comfortable silence for a while, the steady rhythm of sorting paper calming my lingering anxiety. But as we dug deeper into one of the storage boxes filled with old documents, my fingers brushed against a heavy, worn leather edge.

I pulled it out. It was our old family photo album—the one we hadn't opened since we left our old neighborhood.

My mom smiled softly as I placed it on my lap. I flipped the cover open, and the years came rushing back in a flood of glossy color. There we were. Page after page of a life that felt entirely detached from my current reality.

I paused on one specific page. In the photo, a ten-year-old Xavier and I were completely covered in dark mud from head to toe, holding up a basket of fresh mangoes after climbing the tree in our old backyard. We were both laughing so hard our eyes were squeezed shut, our families standing in the background of the frame, smiling at our antics.

I could almost smell the ripe mangoes baking beneath the afternoon sun and hear Xavier laughing because I'd slipped trying to climb down.

Without realizing it, a genuine, bittersweet smile broke across my face. The kid in that photo didn't have heavy, guarded shoulders or a cold, silent mask. He was just Xavier. My best friend.

The nostalgia twisted into a familiar, quiet ache in my chest. I stared at the happy faces, the unanswered questions from yesterday roaring back to life. I looked up at my mom, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them.

"Mom... after they moved away, why did everything just stop?" I asked, my voice dropping quietly. "Why didn't we ever see them again? We were so close."

My mom’s smile instantly vanished. Her hands went completely still over a wedding invitation. An unusual, heavy silence stretched through the living room, and for a second, she wouldn't look me in the eye.

She took off her reading glasses, folding them slowly. "Sometimes, Julian... adults have to make difficult decisions that children aren't meant to understand."

"But—"

"It was a complicated time," she interrupted softly, her voice carrying a sudden, fragile sadness that made me freeze. She looked down at the photo album, her eyes filled with a deep regret. "We all did what we thought was best."

It wasn't the answer I wanted. It sounded more like the end of a conversation she'd been having with herself for years.

She didn't elaborate. She didn't give me a single detail, and it was entirely obvious she was hiding something major about the past. But seeing the tight, pained look in her eyes, I knew I couldn't push her. I swallowed the rest of my questions down and quietly closed the album, letting the mystery hang heavily between us.

Later that night, I was sitting at my desk, trying to force my mind back into an economic textbook. The house was dark, and the quiet rejection from my mother's conversation was still weighing heavily on my mind.

Suddenly, my phone vibrated violently against the wood.

I picked it up, expecting a notification from Leo. Instead, the screen showed a direct message from Xavier.

There was no text at first—just an image file.

I tapped it open, and my chest tightened so suddenly that I had to look away from the screen for a second before looking back.

It was an old photograph, slightly faded at the edges, clearly taken on a smartphone camera of a physical print. It showed the exact same day from our mango-tree adventures—but it was shot from a slightly different angle. It was his family's copy of the photo. A ten-year-old me was leaning heavily against his shoulder, grinning wildly at the lens.

A second later, a single line of text popped up beneath the image.

Xavier: Thought you might want this. Found it while unpacking.

I stared at the photo, my heart hammering against my ribs. I remembered that exact afternoon perfectly. I remembered the heat, the sticky sweet taste of the fruit, and the absolute certainty that we would be friends forever.

My fingers hovered over the screen. The defensive walls I had built all day felt incredibly thin. Without letting myself overthink it, I typed out a quick reply.

Julian: I remember this.

I sat there, holding my breath, watching the screen. A few seconds passed, and then the typing bubbles appeared.

Xavier: So do I.

Nothing else came after that. No long-winded paragraphs, no trip down memory lane, no explanations. Just those three words. But in the quiet darkness of my room, they carried a staggering, suffocating amount of weight. He hadn't forgotten either.

I slowly set the phone down on my desk, right beside the old leather photo album I had brought up from the living room.I looked from the physical photograph on the page to the glowing screen of my phone.Same afternoon, Same muddy shirts,Same bright, effortless smiles. Two families who used to share everything, and two boys who had been completely inseparable before the world tore them apart.

I leaned back in my chair, staring into the dark corners of my room. For the very first time since he had crashed back into my life, I stopped asking the question that had fueled my anger for twelve long years. I stopped wondering, Why did he leave me behind? Somewhere between the old photograph and the silence we'd shared, the anger I'd carried for twelve years no longer felt as certain as it once had.

What really happened to us?