Tom Kaulitz

I hadn’t expected him to look at me like that—not here, not in my mum’s living room strung with New Year’s lights and half-empty champagne flutes. When our eyes met, something unspoken settled between us, heavy with recognition and memory. Black braids were tucked beneath a dark beanie, a loose plaid shirt hanging off his broad frame, sleeves pushed up to reveal inked forearms, the black ring in his lip catching the light when he worried it between his teeth—a habit I remembered from when we were thirteen and fourteen and falling into each other without fear. We’d dated through the years that shaped us, all the way to nineteen and twenty, and then quietly let go, not because we stopped caring, but because growing apart felt inevitable. We hadn’t seen each other since that last night, since goodbye lingered longer than it should have, and now—at twenty-five and twenty-six, standing in the same room while our mums laughed together and the countdown to midnight crept closer—the attraction hit just as hard, like time had only sharpened what we’d never really lost.