Ezra did not jump.
He decided to wait for a year, just like she said.
Everything else returned to normal.
Life did not rearrange itself. School continued. Exams came and went. People still wanted to be friends with him and assumed he was doing great. The world did not pause to acknowledge that he had almost disappeared from it.
But Ezra, he noticed the difference.
After that evening, he started going back to the bridge but now, he didn't go there when he felt hopeless. He went there with hope.
That surprised him.
A stupid, unreasonable hope.
He sat on the same edge, feet safely planted this time, not tilting, not leaning, he didn't imagine falling and dissapearing, his eyes scanning the path behind him. He just waited.
He went there with the hope of seeing her again.
Salvia.
The one who covered her eyes.
He replayed that moment more times than he would ever admit. The way her hand had grabbed his shirt like she had known him forever. The way she talked without stopping, like silence scared her more than her falling down with him.The logic of her panic.
The absolute absurdity of it.
"If you jump, I get charged with pushing you and I go to jail. "
Ezra chuckled whenever he thought about it so his mind replayed it more because there weren't a lot of things he could genuinely smile at.
That sentence alone had saved him.
She had not seen his face. Had not known his name. Had not known anything about him at all. And yet she saved his life. Just because he was there.
Ezra did not understand when it happened, but that was the moment something inside him shifted.
She was the first girl he had ever thought about like this.
Not admired. Not crushed on. Thought about.
He wanted to see her eyes.
That was it. That was the whole obsession. He had seen everything else. Her hands. Her hair. The small birthmark on her cheek. The way she turned away when she thought she was done saving him.
But not her eyes.
And it bothered him more than it should have.
He sat on that bridge for weeks. Sometimes months. He went in the evenings. Sometimes earlier. Sometimes late but she never came back.
Eventually, the bridge stopped feeling like a place of waiting and started feeling like a reminder and the hope faded but hopelessness never crept in again like it did before.
That was how acting found him.
It all started as an accident.
A school notice. An open audition. Ezra read it without interest at first. Acting felt unnecessary. He already played enough roles. The good student. The smart one.The perfect son.
But something about it lingered.
On stage, he realized, he would not have to be Ezra at all. Nothing was related to him.
People wouldn't see Ezra, they would see a character completely unrelated to him.
So he tried it once. Just once.
And it fulfilled him in a way nothing ever had.
Because for the first time, he was allowed to be without explaining himself. He could be a character. He could be the bad guy.
People wouldn't judge him, they would judge the character he was potraying.
People watched him and believed him.
Not because of who he was.
But because of what he showed them.
That felt dangerous. And addictive.
So he kept going.
Auditions became quiet escapes. Acting became the place where he put everything he never said. The loneliness. The need. The wanting to be chosen.
Fame did not arrive all at once.
It came in small pieces. A callback. An email for a second audition. A role so small it didn't even matter but it did because he played it.
Salvia didn't even see him clearly, but she could see, he was good looking. Very good looking and that caught everyone's eye so he was given bigger roles.
Roles that started to matter.
Ezra told no one at first.
Acting was his secret. Something he did not want turned into another expectation, another reason to be measured. He auditioned quietly, learned lines at night, practiced expressions in mirrors.
He was good.
That surprised everyone except him.
Because acting was how he went through his life. He was always acting. He was always playing a role. What's different about this was, He did not have to be impressive. He just had to be someone he was not which was natural for him.
People liked him on screen.
They liked his face first. That was unavoidable. Casting directors knew his face would bring audience. Cameras loved him in a way people always had. The halo effect followed him into this world too, wrapped in compliments and opportunity.
But then he acted,
Then he looked at someone like he meant it.
And suddenly, it was not just his face anymore.
Roles grew. Interviews followed. His name started appearing in places he had never searched for. Someone called him 'The Promising Star' Someone else called him rare. Ezra nodded politely through all of it, learned how to smile without revealing too much.
He became careful.
By the time people started recognizing him on the street, he had already learned how to disappear inside himself. He was acting again.
Success was loud. Too loud.
It filled rooms, more than when he was in school. Everyone wanted something from him. An autograph. A picture. A piece of him that proved they were close to something special.
Ezra gave it easily.
He had always been good at giving people what they wanted.
But at night, when he stopped acting, his mind would drift to the same place.
The bridge.
He did not go there anymore.
He told himself it was because he was busy. Because life had changed. Because there was no reason.
That was a lie.
He stopped going because he was afraid she would never show up.
And that somehow hurt more than the waiting ever had.
"Salvia..."
Her name lived in his mind, He Never tried to search for her.
How would he even begin?
A girl with a birthmark on her cheek? With a voice that shook when she tried to sound brave. A hand that grabbed him like the world depended on it? Whose eyes he didn't see?
That was absurd.
She had seen nothing of him.
And yet she had seen everything that mattered to him.
Ezra wondered if she still thought about that day. Replayed it like he did. If she remembered him as a stranger, or if he had faded into the background of her life like a weird story she remembered and then forgot.
The thought unsettled him more than rejection ever could.
Because if she had forgotten, then the moment that saved him existed only in his head.
And that felt unbearable.
At premieres and parties, surrounded by lights and laughter, Ezra sometimes felt the same hollow quiet he had felt before everything changed. The difference was that now, no one noticed. No one was covering their eyes. Everyone was staring.
He had everything people said should make him happy.
And yet, the only thing he wanted was something he could not even describe properly.
A pair of eyes he had never seen.
He did not know it yet, but the world was already tilting again.
And this time, it was moving toward her and that is when he heard...
"My name is Salvia. "