When Jake wakes up to his alarm clock blaring through his sleep, his first though is fucking hell. His second thought - the more important one - is oh, shit. It's today.

He rolls out of bed, knocking the alarm clock to the floor in his attempt to blearily hit the off button. There's a crack, and the sounds cuts out. Oh, well - he'll get another one later. Besides, he has bigger things to worry about. Bigger things, like what's going to be happening in less than twelve hours. He takes a deep breath. Twelve hours. Okay. He can do this.

He goes to pick up his suit - his first ever black-tie suit. As if this weren't nerve wracking enough. He stands in line for a while before paying a truly stupendous amount for the bag handed to him by one of the saleswomen - drop-dead gorgeous, but a redhead. He tends to avoid redheads when it comes to dating.

Ten hours to go. He paces his apartment, reciting his piece out loud over and over again. Every time, he forgets a different line, a different word - and it crumbles down. He should've been able to recite this thing in his sleep by now, but these fucking nerves are changing the game entirely.

He forgets to eat, so when the sun finally starts to go down and there's less than two hours to go, he heads out. God knows they've got to have burgers at the venue.

They don't. Instead, they have a stupidly high-end restaurant that he has no intention of eating at, so he slips out and goes to the burger stand across the street.

He's finishing up his burger when a single drop of ketchup falls and lands on - of all parts of this penguin suit - his crisp white shirt.

"Shit." He blurts out, dabbing at it with a napkin. "Damn it."

"Hey, do you need any help -" a voice cuts in, and then three things happen all at once.

First: Jake recognizes the voice, like something from a long-lost dream.

Second: He looks up to see the speaker.

Third: He finds himself staring into the face of Cassandra Cillian, the girl he hasn't seen in nearly ten years.

"Cassie?" The word spills out of his mouth before he can help it, and the rush of emotion that hits him is astonishing, considering the amount of time since he's last seen her.

"Jake?" Her jaw drops, equally stunned. "I -"

"I can't believe it's actually you." Jake says, then laughs at his own awed voice. "I just mean - the chances of running into you, in New York of all places."

"Well, I mean, it's a little less coincidental then that." Cassandra says with a soft smile that sets off a million memories. "I was coming to watch you speak."

"No kiddin'?"

"Well, I saw it in the paper, and I mean, I know we haven't talked in - wow, has it really been ten years? - but I was just so happy that you - you got out, you followed your dream. So of course I came." Of course I came. It's so matter-of-fact, like there isn't ten years of not-speaking between them, ten years trying to forget the month that he knew her. Just cut-and-dry. Of course I came.

"I actually - I should get inside, clean myself up." Jake says regretfully. "But do you want to catch up, after? Go get some coffee?"

"I'd love to." Cassandra says, her face lighting up. "Break a leg."

"Thanks." He replies with a quick flash of a grin, before darting across the street and into the building.

It's terrifying.

It's every bit as bad as he'd imagined - and then, suddenly, it isn't. Suddenly he's talking about Tennyson and Lord Byron and Faulkner and blurting out quotes about King Arthur and Rome at a lightning speed, and there's the feeling of a weight being lifted off of his chest.

When the audience starts clapping, it jolts him out of his reverie. He'd completely forgotten everything except the fascination of these things he was speaking about. And he can't quite tell because of the lights, but he thinks he sees a very enthusiastic redhead up in the balcony, standing and cheering like no tomorrow.

He meets her outside, after he's finished shaking hands and talking art history with what seems like every professor and expert in the New York area. She's reading, leaned up against the side of the building, and in the lamplight the sight of her takes his breath away.

"Hey, Cassandra."

She looks up from her book, a smile lighting her features as she sees him. "Jake, that was brilliant. It was beyond brilliant. It was - it was like I was watching Plato, or Aristotle. It was inspired."

"Really, thank you, but we have so much more to talk about than tonight." Jake waits until she's finished stuffing her book into her purse before he starts walking down the crowded street. People are rushing around, undaunted by the fact that it's nearly midnight, and he wonders again at his choice for a home. But he loves it, too. He loves the starting-over and the invisibility and the fact that no matter what's happening to you, there are over eight million people with their own lives and worries and plans who won't be affected by it at all.

"Alright then." Cassandra falls into step beside him. "What else have you been up to?"

"Not much." Jake shrugs. "That presentation took up most of my time - and by the looks of it, I'll be doing a lot more of them."

"Come on." Cassandra nudges him. "It's been ten years. Something interesting has to have happened. How are Zeke and Lamia? How's Naomi?"

"Zeke is somewhere in France. We aren't really sure what he's doing - he's been intentionally vague about all of it." Jake starts. "Lamia and Kaitlyn moved to Oklahoma City, and they got married five years ago. Naomi is going to college at the same spot, for mechanical engineering."

"Wow." Cassandra says, as they step around the corner and into the quiet coffeeshop Jake had picked out. "Seems like everyone moved on from Annicks."

"It does, sometimes." Jake admits with a pang of homesickness. "But we all come back for holidays, so it isn't too awful."

They settle into a dark corner booth once their steaming cappuccinos are handed to them over the counter, complete with hearts swirled into the foam.

"So tell me about you." Jake says, and with it comes a million unsaid questions. Like why did you leave without saying anything, and why did it take you ten years to come see me. Questions that have a lot less hurt attached to them than they did ten years ago, but still hurt nonetheless.

"Well, we moved back to Manhattan." Cassandra swallows and stares down at the cappuccino. "I, um - I had some health problems. So it was kind of urgent."

"Health problems?" Jake doesn't want to push, but a certain part of him is begging for answers.

"I had a brain tumor." Cassandra blurts, setting the cup down on the table with a little more force than is probably necessary.

Jake can feel the blood draining from his face. "Cassandra, I'm so -"

"It's fine." She cuts him off. "I had to go through a bunch of chemo, and then I had a surgery two years ago to get rid of it. There's still the possibility of it coming back," she shrugs, "but I don't see the point of thinking in what-ifs. When you're dying you kind of learn to get rid of that habit, y'know?"

"So that's why you left." Jake says calmly, even though his head is still reeling. "And you didn't call me, because - because you didn't want to hurt me? Or because you didn't want to hurt yourself?"

"A little of both." Cassandra says, a relieved expression crossing her face. "And I can't even say how sorry I am -"

"No, please. Don't." Jake reaches over to clasp her hands with his own. "Ten years is a long time - and you had some damn good reasons."

"Yeah, well." Cassandra shrugs. "I could've called."

He understands why she didn't, though. It's the same reason he looked up the list of Cillians in Manhattan, but never called any of the numbers. Wrong place, wrong time. Maybe some part of him had known that, even then.

They talk until it's three in the morning, and the staff starts giving them dirty looks, and then they head out to the lamplit street and the cool night air.

"It was really nice seeing you, Jake." Cassandra says, as she stands outside an open cab door.

"You, too." Jake replies, and for some reason a part of his throat is clenching up. It doesn't go away as she gives him one last parting smile, and closes the door behind her.

The cab's engine putters up, and starts to pull away.

And suddenly, Jake realizes what is causing his shortness of breath and the rush of nostalgia rising in his throat. And then he's running, boots slapping across pavement, pushing through the heavy crowd.

"Wait! Wait up!"

And then the cab is pulling to a stop, and Cassandra is stepping out with a look of utter incredulity on her face. "Jake, what -"

He winds his hands in her hair, and he kisses her.

He pulls back, after a second. "Was that okay?" He asks, because he knows this is spontaneous and crazy and something he'd never have normally done in a hundred years.

Cassandra nods mutely. "Yeah." She says after a second. "Yeah, that was really - better than okay."

"Do you want to go to dinner next Saturday?" He blurts, and suddenly he's 17 years old and her smile is the same as it was ten years ago.

"Yes." She replies, scribbling down a number on a sheet of paper she'd pulled out of her purse, and crushing it into his hand. She stands up on her tiptoes to press one more short kiss to his lips, before slipping back into the cab.

Jake stands under the lamplight, taking in the busy street and the scent of perfume and the piece of paper crumpled inside his hand.

He breathes in the night sky, and when he goes down into the depths of the subway station, a part of him is still up with the stars.