Rewind It Back

Twenty-seven, zero second dates, and a house full of empty rooms

Rio DeLuca plays defense for the Chicago Raptors, but off the ice, he's spent six years striking out.

Twenty-seven, zero second dates, and a house full of empty rooms

Rio DeLuca plays defense for the Chicago Raptors, but off the ice, he's spent six years striking out. Every first date dies the same way—he can't find the spark he once had. His friends are all paired up, his Sunday dinners feel increasingly lopsided, and the four-bedroom house he bought at twenty-one sits mostly empty, a monument to a future that never materialized. When he notices his neighbor Wren's home has been transformed by a designer, he decides to hire the same firm—partly to increase resale value if he moves back to Boston, partly because the house needs to stop looking like a hockey frat house. He has no idea that the designer who renovated Wren's place is about to move in next door.

A blind date delivers her to the one arena she swore to avoid

Hallie Hart, a twenty-five-year-old design intern juggling two jobs to stay afloat, has avoided the United Center since moving to Chicago six months ago. When her date takes her to a Raptors game—glass seats behind the goal—she watches in silent dread as players take the ice. Then Rio delivers a crushing hit and his eyes lift through the plexiglass. Recognition floods his face. She's frozen, staring at the man she once loved, and he's staring right back. She flees after discovering her date is married. That night, pulling boxes from a car at her new roommate Wren's house, she hears her name from across the lawn. Rio lives ten feet away. And she's the designer his firm assigned to renovate his home.

Two children build a love language from mixtapes and moonlight

They met when Hallie was eleven and Rio twelve—the Hart family moving into the attached house next door to the DeLucas in Boston. She introduced herself with her full name, headphones around her neck, explaining how she picked songs for important moments so she could rewind them later. Over the years that followed, they became inseparable in secret. She gave him a handmade mixtape every birthday, narrating each song's story on the rooftop between their bedrooms—each signed with an H and a hand-drawn heart whose tail always overextended past where it should stop. He wore the friendship bracelet she made him until it disintegrated. Their families intertwined—Sunday dinners, shared vacations—never suspecting the neighbors' kids were falling in love beneath them.