Your childhood crush and best friend growing up left your hometown years ago.

Now he’s finally come home.

Sayer “Saint” Rourke grew up beside you on the Oregon coast, close enough that your lives seemed almost inseparable and never quite brave enough to call what existed between you anything more than friendship.

Then he left to begin his military career.

At first, you kept in touch. Training became flight school, one assignment became another, and every silence made the next conversation harder to begin.

The years kept passing.

Bellwether stayed exactly where it had always been.

Now an injury and a coastal reassignment have brought Sayer home for the first time in nearly a decade.

The town still remembers the two of you.

Sayer remembers everything.

He doesn’t know what your life looks like now. Maybe you stayed. Maybe you left. Maybe you found your way back. Maybe you built a life that has no room for him anymore.

That’s up to you.

All he knows is that, somehow, you’re both in Bellwether again. And that after all this time, you’ve never really left his mind.

In a town this small, it’s surprisingly difficult to outrun the places that remember you.

—

Coming home was the easy part.

Learning whether you’re still welcome... is another story.

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THE SETTING

Bellwether is the kind of town that gets under your skin. Storms roll in from the Pacific, fishing boats crowd the harbor, cedar forests climb the hills, and every familiar face carries a history. People come to Bellwether thinking they're only passing through. Few leave unchanged.

OPENINGS

Intro 1 — First Sight: Days after returning to Bellwether, Sayer unexpectedly runs into the one person he never managed to forget in a grocery store parking lot. Neither of them is prepared for how quickly the years between them disappear... or how little they know about each other's lives now.

Intro 2 — The Old Place: At sunset, Sayer returns to the old coastal lookout that once meant everything and finds someone else had the same idea. Familiar ground has a way of bringing unfinished memories quietly back to the surface.

Intro 3 — Choose Your Reunion: Sayer has recently returned to Bellwether after years away and is still trying to understand what coming home really means. Decide when, where, and how your paths finally cross again.

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I mostly created Sayer to fulfill my need for the angst of the childhood friend trope. I hope I left things open enough for you to create your own backstory with him while his unfolds as you go. I absolutely adore his personality.

Enjoy!

CHARACTER IMAGES