The first thing Claire noticed about fall that year was the smell.

Not just pumpkin spice drifting from café doors or apple cider simmering in crockpots at church gatherings but the sharper scent beneath it all. The scent of change. Crisp leaves cracking under boots. Cold air settling into the spaces between breaths. The kind of autumn that made you nostalgic for things that hadn’t even fully ended yet.

She was twenty-seven when she realized she had built an entire life out of almosts.

Almost relationships.
Almost confessions.
Almost staying.
Almost leaving sooner.

Now, standing in her apartment surrounded by half-packed boxes and folded sweaters, she felt the static in the air the kind that clung to fabric and memory alike.

The world of almost loves had always felt safe to her. There was comfort in potential. In what-if. In unfinished sentences and lingering eye contact across live music venues strung with fairy lights.

But fall had a way of revealing truth.

**Author Note: Not sure how I feel about this either…