Work Text:
“You know, if you stayed around here... you think we’d be together? Like today, now?”
Mike asked, his voice low. He said it with a surprising confidence, like he'd been holding onto the thought for years, polishing it smooth in the corners of his mind.
Billie Joe didn’t know how to respond.
It was that question. The one that had haunted him for a decade. A problem he could never solve, no matter how many sleepless nights he spent trying to work it out—like some elusive equation with no constant, no clean solution. Only variables that changed every time he thought he understood them.
Ten years. It had been nearly ten years since he left Rodeo on his own. Alone. Crying quietly in the airport terminal in San Francisco, wiping his face with the sleeve of his denim jacket after Mike said he wasn’t coming.
“I'm not ready,” Mike had told him then.
But Billie Joe had been. Or at least, ready enough to try. Ready enough to want. He’d begged—God, he hated remembering that part—begged his best friend to come with him. To leave their sleepy California town and start fresh together. Not just as best friends. Not just as something undefined that hovered painfully close to love. But something real. Beautiful even. Mike had said no. So Billie boarded the plane alone, heart breaking quietly in his chest, while the intercom called out final boarding for his flight to New York.
Now here they were, ten years later. Older, maybe wiser, maybe not, more tired, burnt out maybe.
Sitting on the hood of Mike’s truck, the same one he had bought at seventeen, it was a marvel that Mike managed to keep the same truck running for so long Billie had commented on it earlier. Parked under the same stars that had once seen them sneak out late at night to talk about life and dreams and everything that lived in between silence. And the same dirt road that suffered through their late night rowdiness, and old discarded cigarette’s and alcohol bottles, they didn’t care much for anything but themselves back then. He sighed at the memories, before looking over at Mike.
Same smile. Same eyes. Same frustrating, intoxicating gravity. He was twenty eight now, and despite being older, he wasn’t particularly wiser—but something changed as he inched closer to thirty years, a quiet kind of homesickness had begun to grow inside him—persistent, aching, taking over like a cancerous tumor. Each year, it pulled a little harder, until it finally brought him back here.
Back to the town. Back to the familiar streets and quieter nights.
Back to Mike.
And he still didn’t know which one he’d missed more.
“I don’t know,” he said finally, his voice low. “I used to think so. Back then.”
Mike didn’t say anything. Just nodded slowly, staring out into the dark. Billie could almost see the what ifs swimming through his mind.
“I never stopped wondering,” Mike said. “What it could’ve been.”
Billie felt something crack open again inside him—some old wound that had never really closed.
“Me neither,” he whispered, his chest burned, and his hands began to tremble just slightly at the honesty leaving his mouth for the first time in a decade.
And for a moment, they just sat there. Both looking into the distance, the old railroad tracks, the familiar broken down fence of the neighboring abandoned land. Not speaking. Just existing in the quiet ache of everything they almost were.
The cicadas hummed somewhere in the distance, The night air had cooled, but Billie felt warm—heat rising in his chest like it always did when Mike looked at him too long, or said the exact right thing too late.
“Sometimes I think we were just... off by a few years,” Billie said finally, the words rough like sandpaper against his throat. “Like if we’d met at a different time, or if you’d been ready when I was.”
Mike exhaled through his nose, a soft laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah,” he said.
“But we didn’t.”
Mike’s truck rumbled down the old road, the headlights carving through the dark. They didn’t talk much after that—The engine hummed beneath them, steady and familiar, and every so often Billie Joe would glance sideways at Mike’s hands on the wheel, strong and lean, the same hands that used to pluck the strings of his bass until near dawn in his mom’s garage. The same hands that had let go of him, once.
They turned down streets Billie could’ve driven blindfolded. Every crack in the pavement, every leaning mailbox, every porch light still flickering in the dark—time had worn them down, but they hadn’t changed. Neither had the ache in his chest.
For a moment, it was seventeen again. He could feel the pull of teenage gravity—Billie stayed in the passenger seat, eyes fixed on the glow of the kitchen window. He didn’t need to go inside to know how it would feel. The smells, the sounds—they were already alive in him, stitched into the fabric of who he was.
He could almost hear his mom calling his name, her voice half a question, half a reminder. He could see the mismatched plates stacked on the table, the old salt shaker that had been refilled so many times it no longer closed right. The sauce simmering on the stove, heavy with garlic. Mike slouched in the corner chair, lanky limbs sprawled out, trying to look like he wasn’t starving while waiting to be served.
Billie Joe remembered the sound of laughter, loud and unguarded, rising up between bites of food. The thrum of his heart whenever Mike’s knee brushed his under the table. The secret thrill of it, teenage gravity pulling him closer, faster, than he knew how to handle.
And then, just as quickly, the memory slipped through his fingers, melting like snow, fading into the quiet hum of the present. He opened his eyes, realizing he’d been holding his breath.
The house in front of him wasn’t quite the same. The muted green paint was more worn. The porch sagged heavier. Even the porch light flickered weaker than he remembered. Billie let his head fall back against the seat, staring at the worn truck ceiling. For a heartbeat, he wished he could crawl through time and stay there, suspended forever at that dinner table, seventeen years old and still certain that anything was possible.
But he wasn’t seventeen anymore. And the weight of everything unsaid pressed down harder than the night air itself.
Mike didn’t push him to move. Didn’t say a word.
Billie Joe turned his head, just enough to see Mike’s profile in the faint glow of the blue-green dashboard lights. The curve of his jaw, the slight furrow between his brows, the mouth that had once told him I’m not ready.
Maybe he never would be.
Billie swallowed hard, pressing the memory back where it belonged. He let it sit in his mind, it was an intangible pain, yet one he swore he could trace like a permanent scar.
“Thanks for the ride,” he said finally, voice low.
Mike nodded, fingers drumming once on the steering wheel before going still again. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Anytime.”
Billie lingered another beat, staring at the house, at the faint shadow of his mother moving through the kitchen. Then he opened the door, the night air rushing in cooler than it felt by the old train tracks and damp, and stepped out onto the cracked driveway.
He didn’t look back right away. He couldn’t. Not yet. The engine hummed behind him, waiting, holding him in its orbit a moment longer. Finally, he turned, just enough to meet Mike’s eyes through the side window of his truck. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t need to.
Then Mike shifted the truck into gear, the headlights sweeping across the lawn as he pulled away, swallowed back into the dark.
Billie stood there, hands in his pockets, watching until the sound of the engine faded. The house loomed behind him, warm and familiar. But for a moment—just one suspended moment—he was still seventeen.
He could see it like it was yesterday: himself on the patchy front lawn, sneakers damp with dew, shouting after Mike as he walked backward down the street to his old beat up truck, grinning under the glow of the streetlight. I’ll see you tomorrow! Billie’s voice cracked a little, more from excitement than anything else. And Mike—careless, golden—had just laughed, tossing him a lazy salute before disappearing into the dark. Back then, tomorrow had felt endless. Certain. A promise.
But the memory dissolved as quickly as it came, and when Billie blinked, he was twenty-eight again, standing in the driveway with an ache in his chest that felt heavier than it had in years. The house behind him was smaller than he remembered. The night air was colder. And Mike was gone, swallowed back into the dark.
Billie exhaled, slow and unsteady, the ghost of seventeen still tugging at him as he finally turned toward the front door.