Ezra

I was about to head home when they arrived. Patrick rushing forward, Aria slowing down at the sight of me.

"How is she?", he asked still several feet away from me.

"Calm down buddy, she's going to be fine."

"She is?"

"Yeah, it turned out to be a minor stroke. But they expect her to fully recover. They are keeping her here for a few days though. Just to make sure she's ok."

"Where is she? And where is everybody else?" confused he looked around the hospital floor.

"She asleep. And the others went home, after it was clear that she was going to be alright", I caught the disapproval in Patrick's eyes, "It's five o'clock in the morning, your parents have been here for hours! You just missed them. Didn't they call you?"

"They probably did, but we left in such a hurry that we forgot his phone", Aria informed me, who had caught up with us.

"You remember Aria?", Patrick asked.

"Um… yeah, I think I do", I said shaking her hand, feeling like an idiot.

"We met briefly at the party", she added. Clearly she hadn't told him anything about us.

Patrick rubbed his temples, "I really need some coffee now, anybody else?"

We both shook our heads.

"Well, I'll be right back then", he said and walked down the hall, away from us.

I sat down on one of the chairs again, Aria followed my example, carefully letting one chair empty between us. We both stared at the wall in front of us, where a poster I had already been looking at for the last few hours informed us how to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

"I'm glad your grandma is going to be fine", she broke the silence.

"Yeah, me too."

"Patrick was really scared."

"They've always been very close."

Aria nodded but didn't respond.

"So how have you been?" I asked.

"Pretty good", she said and gave me a little smile, "I'm a teacher now, too"

"You are? Where?"

"At an Elementary school"

"Elementary? Really?"

"I know what you think, but I've always liked children and it's quite fun actually."

"I wasn't judging", I quickly told her.

"It also gives me a lot of time to write, which is great."

"What do you write?"

"Books for young people, nothing special, not a life-changing novel…"

"Aria that's great! I only wrote a couple of short stories and never even finished a whole book and you've written a few! That's amazing! You don't have to be a Chloe Copperfield to be proud of yourself!"

Aria looked at me surprised and let out a little laugh.

"I am Chloe Copperfield!"

"What?" now she caught me off guard.

"After I wrote the first one, I felt so self-conscious… somehow I was convinced people would laugh at me for writing such a stupid book and I decided to use an alias. Then it became successful and I was stuck with the name"

"Wow", I felt so unimportant sitting next to her, being the same old me, who taught at some high school and wrote meaningless short stories, while she had conquered the world.

She gave me one of her heart-warming smiles, "What have you been up to lately?"

"Missing you", I though.

"Same old stuff", I said.

She didn't respond and we sat there in silence.

"I should probably look for Patrick", she mumbled after a while and got up.

"I'll be waiting here", I said, sensing she wanted to get away from me, "it was really nice to meet you again." Boy, did we sound formal.

She didn't say anything just smiled and then walked down the hall.

"Aria!" I shouted and she turned around again. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, that I missed her and that I had never stopped loving her. "I'm glad you're doing so well", I said instead.

"Thank you", she smiled again proudly, but there was a glimpse of sadness. Then she walked around the corner and was gone.