Pairing: Garret Graham x reader
Warnings: angst, minor mention of a bad relationship, fractured view of love/relationships, minor arguing, not rlly edited, use of Y/N, reader being dumb
・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・゜
The arrangement had always been simple.
That was what you told yourself whenever Garrett’s name lit up your phone at one in the morning, bright and brief as a match struck in the dark. Simple was a word you held close, a smooth stone in your pocket, something solid to curl your fingers around whenever life threatened to become too much.
No asking where either of you had been before you arrived, or where you would go when the sun came up.
Just two people who knew how to find each other in the dark.
You had built your life around that kind of simplicity. Around exits. Around keeping every door unlocked and every window cracked open enough to climb through if the room became too warm, too close, too full of words that could not be taken back.
Love, to you, had once been a house.
It had been warm at first. It had been painted in soft colours and filled with music. It had smelled like coffee in the morning and someone else’s shirt draped over the back of a chair. You had believed, for a while, that you were safe there. That the walls would hold. That the person beside you had meant every gentle thing he had ever said.
Then one day, without warning, the house had burned.
Not all at once. Not in some dramatic blaze where flames licked the sky and everyone ran screaming into the street. It had burned slowly. Quietly. A cigarette left smouldering beneath the floorboards. A lie tucked beneath a pillow. A hand that stopped reaching for hers. A voice that became colder, sharper, unfamiliar.
By the time you understood what was happening, you were already standing in the ashes.
So you stopped building houses.
You started renting rooms instead.
Or at least, you thought he did.
He had never asked you for more than you could give. Never looked at you with those soft, hopeful eyes that made you feel like a thief before you had even done anything wrong. He did not send flowers. He did not call just to hear your voice. He did not ask what you were doing on a Sunday afternoon or whether you had eaten or if you had made it home safe.
At first, that had been the reason you liked him.
Later, it became the reason you could not stop thinking about him.
Garrett was beautiful in the careless way storms were beautiful.
There was nothing gentle about him from a distance. He had sharp cheekbones, a mouth that always looked like it was one second away from either a smirk or a fight, and eyes so dark they seemed to swallow light instead of reflecting it. He carried himself like someone who had learned early that the world would take whatever softness it found, so he had hidden beneath his hockey jerseys, sarcasm, and the kind of silence that made people nervous.
And that was supposed to make everything perfect.
You lay across your bed one Thursday evening, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned slow circles above you. The room was dim, washed in the pale blue-grey of approaching night. Your phone rested against your stomach, screen glowing in your hand.
You had already typed the message.
Nothing that could be misunderstood.
Nothing that could be used against you.
Her thumb hovered over the send button for a moment before you pressed it.
The message went through immediately.
At first, you did not think much of it. Garrett was probably busy. Working. Drinking with friends. Sleeping. Ignoring the world in the way he often did, as though everyone around him was a television show he had lost interest in watching.
Your phone stayed silent.
You told yourself you did not care.
You rolled onto your side and opened another app. Scrolled through photos you had already seen. Watched videos without hearing them. Liked a post from someone you barely knew. Checked your messages again.
By the time an hour had passed, something hot and ugly had begun to curl in your chest.
Anger had teeth. Sadness only had open hands.
“Fine,” you muttered to the empty room.
Your voice sounded too loud.
You tossed your phone onto the bed beside you and sat up.
It was not like Garrett owed you anything. That was the point. You were not together. You were not dating. There was no rule that said he had to answer you, no agreement that said he had to come running whenever you called.
You had known what you were from the beginning.
A number you could text when loneliness became too loud.
Still, when you checked your phone again ten minutes later and saw nothing, it felt like someone had pressed a thumb into a bruise you had forgotten you had.
By midnight, you had made a decision.
If Garrett was done, then Garrett was done.
You would not ask questions.
You would not become the kind of girl who stared at her phone waiting for someone to decide whether you were worth answering.
There were plenty of people in the world.
Plenty of boys with easy smiles and empty promises.
Plenty of ways to make yourself forget.
・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・゜
The party was at a frat house on the edge of campus, the kind of place that always seemed half-finished. The paint was peeling from the porch railings. The backyard was mostly dirt. Someone had hung fairy lights from the trees, but half of them had burned out, leaving the rest to flicker weakly like dying stars.
The air smelled like cheap alcohol, sweat, smoke, and summer.
You arrived with your friends wearing a dress that clung to your like spilled ink. Your hair fell over your shoulders in loose waves, and you had painted your lips a deep red because sometimes armour came in the shape of lipstick.
You did not ask if Garrett was there.
You did not look for him.
At least that was what you told yourself as you stepped inside.
The house was packed. Bodies moved around you in blurred colours. Someone shouted from the kitchen. Someone laughed too loudly in the hallway. A couple kissed against the wall near the stairs, their hands tangled in each other’s clothes like they were trying to hold on before the world ended.
You took a drink from someone you knew and swallowed half of it in one go.
It burned all the way down.
You wanted to feel something sharp.
Something that could cut through the strange heaviness in your chest.
Your friends disappeared into the crowd one by one. Someone dragged someone else toward the dance floor. Someone went looking for the bathroom. Someone found a guy they had been talking to online for weeks.
You stayed near the kitchen for a while, pretending you were not scanning the room.
Pretending you were not waiting for a certain dark head of hair.
Pretending you did not care whether Garrett had come.
He stood near the back wall, one shoulder resting against it, a drink loose in his hand. He wore black jeans and a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His jaw was tense. His expression was unreadable.
You knew it before your eyes even met.
There was a weight to being watched by Garrett. It was not like being looked at by anyone else. Other people’s attention slid across your skin. His settled beneath it. It felt like a hand at the small of your back. Like a warning. Like a question.
For one second, the noise around them seemed to fade.
The anger in your chest flared bright and clean.
If he wanted to ignore you, then you would show him exactly how little it mattered.
A guy approached you near the kitchen island not long after.
He was tall, blond, and smiling in the easy, uncomplicated way that made him immediately harmless. His name was Ethan, or Evan, or maybe something else beginning with E. You did not ask twice.
He complimented your dress.
He offered to get you another drink.
When he leaned closer to speak over the music, you tilted your head toward him. When he touched your arm, you did not move away. When he asked if you wanted to dance, you looked past him for only a second.
Garrett was still against the wall.
So you smiled at the stranger.
The dance floor was a sea of movement.
You let yourself disappear into it.
The music was loud enough to drown thought. The bass thudded through the floor and into your bones. The lights flashed across faces and bodies, turning everyone into fragments of colour and shadow.
The stranger danced close.
His hands settled at your waist.
He smelled like cologne and beer. He smiled down at you as though you were the only person in the room. He said something you could not hear, and you laughed anyway.
Every few seconds, you looked over his shoulder.
But his face had changed.
His jaw was clenched so tightly you could see the muscle jump beneath his skin. His fingers curled around his drink. His eyes were fixed on you with an intensity that made something in your stomach twist.
Let him understand that you were not waiting around for him.
The stranger leaned down.
His mouth touched yours, soft and unfamiliar.
For a moment, you tried to lose yourself in it.
Tried to make it mean something.
Tried to turn it into a distraction.
Like wearing someone else’s coat. Like sleeping in a bed that did not smell like home. Like hearing a song played in the wrong key.
Still, you kissed him again.
And that was when Garrett moved.
The stranger barely had time to pull back before Garrett was there.
One moment, you were standing beneath the pulsing lights with a stranger’s hands on your waist.
The next, Garrett had shoved the guy backward.
Not hard enough to send him flying.
Hard enough to make the message clear.
“What the hell?” the stranger snapped.
Garrett did not look at him.
You stared at him. “What?”
“Now.” His voice was low, rough around the edges.
The stranger stepped forward. “Dude, she’s fine.”
Garrett turned his head slowly.
The look he gave him was enough.
The guy raised his hands. “Whatever, man.”
Then Garrett grabbed your wrist.
Like he was afraid that if he let go, you would disappear.
He dragged you through the crowd, past the kitchen, past the hallway, past the stairs. You stumbled after him in your heels, anger rising with every step.
“Garrett,” you hissed. “What the fuck are you doing?”
He pushed open the back door and pulled you outside.
The night air hit you like cold water.
The backyard was quieter than the house, though the music still rattled the windows behind them. Fairy lights hung above the fence, trembling in the breeze. Somewhere beyond the trees, a dog barked once and then went silent.
Garrett finally let go of your wrist.
You yanked your hand back. “What the hell is wrong with you?” you demanded.
He ran a hand through his hair.
“You were making out with him.”
It was not a happy sound.
“Yeah,” you said. “I was.”
Garrett’s mouth tightened.
“You don’t even know him.”
“And he could be anyone.”
The words landed between them.
Garrett looked like you had slapped him.
You folded your arms over your chest.
“You ignored me all day,” you said. “What did you expect? You think I’m just going to sit around waiting for you to decide when you feel like answering?”
“You literally didn’t respond.”
“That is ignoring someone, Garrett.”
For the first time since you had known him, he looked uncertain.
It unsettled you more than his anger had.
“I saw your message,” he said quietly.
“And I didn’t know what to say.”
You let out a short, humourless laugh. “You could’ve said yes. Or no. Or busy. Or literally anything.”
The music from inside changed songs. The bass deepened, rolling through the ground beneath their feet like distant thunder.
When he finally looked at you again, something in his expression had shifted.
The anger was still there.
But beneath it was something worse.
“Because I’m into you,” he said.
The world seemed to stop.
For a second, you thought you had heard him wrong.
“I’m into you,” he repeated. “More than I’m supposed to be.”
The words hung in the air between them, fragile and dangerous.
You felt your chest tighten.
This was not what you did.
You were not supposed to say things like that.
You were not supposed to stand in backyards under dying fairy lights and look at each other like something was breaking.
You shook your head. “Dude,” you said, stepping back. “We don’t do relationships.”
“That’s the whole point of us.”
“Then why are you saying this?”
“Because I couldn’t watch you with him.”
Garrett looked furious with himself.
“I saw you kissing him and I just—” He stopped, dragging a hand down his face. “I couldn’t stand it.”
Your heart began to beat too fast.
You hated the way his words reached inside you.
You hated the way part of you wanted to believe him.
You hated the way another part of you wanted to run.
“You don’t get to do that,” you said.
Garrett frowned. “Do what?”
“You don’t get to ignore me and then show up acting like you own me because I’m talking to someone else.”
“I don’t think I own you.”
“You dragged me outside.”
“You know?” you snapped. “That’s your defence?”
“No.” His voice cracked slightly. “It’s the truth.”
The fairy lights above them blurred.
A moment that felt too honest to be false.
You had fallen for honesty once before.
You had trusted someone who had looked at you like you were everything.
You had believed in forever.
And forever had turned out to be a knife.
“You can’t be into me,” you said quietly.
“That doesn’t mean I can control it.”
“Yes, it does.” Your voice rose. “That’s literally why we agreed to this. No feelings. No relationships. No bullshit.”
“Then you should’ve stopped.”
His eyes flashed. “Stopped what?”
The words hurt as soon as they left your mouth.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The wind moved through the trees. Somewhere inside, people laughed. The party continued as though the world had not shifted beneath your feet.
Garrett looked at you with something close to disbelief.
“You think I haven’t tried?”
“I’ve tried to stop.” His voice was quiet now. “I’ve tried not answering. I’ve tried staying away. I’ve tried telling myself it’s just sex, just fun, just whatever the hell we said it was.”
He laughed once, bitterly.
“But then you text me, and I’m there. Every time. Because it’s you.”
You wanted to say something cruel.
Something sharp enough to cut the moment apart.
Something that would put the walls back where they belonged.
Instead, you stood there, frozen.
Not close enough to touch you but close enough that you could feel the heat of him in the cold night air.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this,” he said. “I don’t do relationships either. I don’t do feelings. I don’t do any of it. But you—” He stopped.
“You make me want things I don’t know how to have.”
You felt something inside your crack.
The first fracture in the wall you had spent years building.
“Then maybe this isn’t working anymore,” you said.
Garrett’s expression changed.
“If that’s how you really feel,” you continued, forcing the words out before you could stop them, “then maybe we should call it off.”
The silence afterward was unbearable.
For one terrible second, you almost took it back.
Almost told him you were scared too.
Then his expression hardened.
The word was a slammed door.
He looked like he wanted to say something else.
Like there were a thousand words trapped behind his teeth.
He turned and walked back toward the house.
You stood alone in the backyard beneath the flickering lights, your arms wrapped around yourself, your heart beating like it had nowhere left to run.
Inside, the music kept playing.
Inside, people kept dancing.
Inside, the world kept moving.
But you felt as though you had just stepped off the edge of something very high.
And you had no idea whether you were falling.
Or whether you had already hit the ground.
・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・゜
You woke with the kind of ache that did not belong to your body.
It sat beneath your ribs, heavy and unfamiliar, as though someone had placed a stone inside your chest while you slept. Sunlight spilled through the gap in your curtains in thin, pale strips, turning the dust in the air to drifting gold. Your room was quiet. Too quiet.
Your phone lay face down on the bedside table.
You knew there would be no message.
Still, you reached for it.
No stupid, half-hearted text from Garrett pretending that the night before had not happened.
Your thumb hovered over his contact for a long time.
Then you locked your phone and dropped it back onto the bed.
That was what you had said.
The word had tasted like blood in your mouth.
For the first few days, you told herself that nothing had changed.
You went to class. You met your friends for drinks. You laughed at jokes you barely heard. You wore dresses that made strangers look twice. You danced with people whose names you forgot before the night was over.
You did everything you had done before Garrett.
But everything felt wrong.
It was not dramatic at first.
The silence after a party, when you would usually check your phone and find some message from him asking where you were.
The drive home, when every streetlight seemed to remind her of the way Garrett had once leaned across the passenger seat to kiss you at a red light.
The cold side of your bed.
The empty space beside you on the couch.
The way your phone stayed silent when you were bored, lonely, tired, angry, drunk, or pretending you were none of those things.
Garrett had not been a constant in your life.
And habits were harder to break than promises.
At night, you would lie awake and stare at the ceiling.
You would tell yourself you missed the convenience.
The way he knew how you took your coffee, even though you had never told him. The way he always reached for your hand in the car without looking, like it belonged there. The way he pretended not to care when you stole his hoodies, but always left one behind anyway.
You did not miss Garrett.
You missed having someone.
You repeated it until the words became dull.
Until they sounded almost believable.
Across town, Garrett was doing worse.
The hockey house had never been quiet. It was always full of noise: skates thudding against the floor near the front door, someone yelling at a video game from the living room, music spilling from bedrooms, the low hum of the washing machine constantly fighting a losing battle against the smell of sweat, takeout, and hockey gear.
He lived there with three roommates, all of them teammates, all of them used to Garrett being sharp-tongued, restless, and impossible to read. Usually, the chaos suited him. It gave him somewhere to hide. In a house full of noise, no one noticed when he went quiet.
But lately, even the noise could not reach him.
The dishes sat in the sink longer than they should have. His laundry stayed piled in the chair by his bed. The mini-fridge in his room held little more than beer, leftover takeout, and a bottle of hot sauce he had bought months ago and never used.
His roommates filled the house around him, but Garrett felt alone anyway.
They asked him what was wrong. They threw jokes at him from across the kitchen. They invited him out, shoved beers into his hands, and tried to drag him into whatever stupid argument they were having that night.
He brushed them off every time.
Because the truth was harder to say than he expected.
The quiet was not the problem.
You were in every corner of the hockey house, even though you had never lived there. You were in the chipped mug you always used because you said coffee tasted better out of ugly cups. You were in the playlist he could no longer listen to without remembering the way you sang the wrong lyrics on purpose. You were in the small scratch on his bathroom mirror from the night you had dropped your hair clip and laughed so hard you nearly cried.
He had not realised how much of you had seeped into his life until you were gone.
Garrett tried to distract himself.
He went out with his friends.
He let people flirt with him.
A girl with silver hair kissed him outside a bar one Friday night, her hands sliding beneath the collar of his shirt. She was pretty. She smelled like vanilla and cigarettes. Under any other circumstances, Garrett might have taken her home.
Then he looked past her, down the street, where the lights blurred in the rain.
It was the first honest thing he had said in weeks.
Garrett had never been subtle when he was upset. He became quieter. Sharper. More likely to snap at people for things that did not matter.
One night, he sat in a booth at their usual bar, turning a glass between his hands.
His friend Mason watched him for a while before speaking.
“I mean it. You look like someone ran over your dog.”
“Then someone ran over your emotional support hoodie.”
Logan smiled slightly before his expression softened. “It’s Y/N, isn’t it?”
Garrett’s hand stilled around his glass.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he leaned back against the booth and looked toward the ceiling.
Logan let out a low whistle.
“I’m not saying anything.”
“I’m always thinking a lot.”
“You’re thinking stupid things.”
Garrett looked down at the drink in front of him.
But saying them out loud felt like tearing open something he had spent weeks trying to stitch shut.
Logan’s expression changed.
“Then why did you let her go?”
Garrett laughed once, without humour.
“Because she told me to.”
“She said we should call it off.”
“Yeah, but you’re Garrett. You argue with parking meters. You once fought with a vending machine because it stole your money.”
“You could have fought for her.”
Garrett stared at the rain sliding down the window.
“I know her,” he said. “Or at least, I know enough. She acts like nothing gets to her, but it does. Everything does. She just hides it better than anyone I’ve ever met.” He swallowed. “When I told her how I felt, she looked at me like I had handed her a weapon.”
Garrett rubbed a hand over his face.
“I couldn’t make her stay,” he said. “I couldn’t be another person who made her feel trapped.”
The truth sat between them.
Logan looked at him for a long moment. Then he said, “You know, being scared doesn’t always mean someone wants to leave.”
He knew you had been scared.
And he had let fear speak louder than everything else.
Summer began to lean toward autumn. The air cooled at night. Leaves gathered in gutters. The sky turned the colour of bruises before rain.
You kept telling yourself you were fine.
Your friends began to notice before you did.
You stopped staying out until sunrise.
You stopped dancing on tables.
You stopped answering texts from strangers.
You stopped laughing with your whole body.
It was not that you became sad exactly.
Like someone had turned the volume down on your life.
You would sit with your friends and watch them talk, their words floating around you like balloons you could not reach. You would smile when you were supposed to. You would nod at the right moments. But you felt like you were standing behind glass.
One afternoon, your friend Lena found you sitting on the floor of your bedroom with a pile of clothes around you.
“What are you doing?” Lena asked from the doorway.
Lena stepped inside and leaned against the wall. “You’ve been weird.”
Lena crossed her arms. “You haven’t been yourself.”
You looked back down at the clothes in front of you.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means you haven’t hooked up with anyone in, like, three weeks.”
You frowned. “That is not a personality trait.”
“It means you haven’t been sleeping. You keep forgetting what people say to you. You showed up to brunch in mismatched shoes last Sunday.”
Lena sighed. “Is this about Garrett?”
Your hands stopped moving.
The room seemed to narrow around you.
Lena did not look convinced. “Y/N.”
“Then why do you look like someone kicked your favourite puppy every time someone says his name?”
You laughed, but it came out thin. “I don’t.”
You looked at your friend.
For a second, you wanted to tell her everything.
About Garrett’s face when he said he was into you.
About the way you had pushed him away before he could hurt you.
About how every day since then had felt like carrying around a song you could not stop hearing.
But the words stuck in your throat.
The sound was full of patience and frustration.
“Okay,” she said softly. “But you don’t have to be.”
Because that was the thing.
You did not know how to be anything else.
The party happened on a Saturday.
It was at a friend-of-a-friend’s apartment downtown, high enough above the street that the city looked soft from the balcony. From up there, the traffic lights were tiny red and green stars. Cars moved below like veins of light. The skyline stretched into the distance, dark and glittering.
You had stood in front of your mirror for twenty minutes, staring at yourself in a black top and jeans, wondering why the thought of being around people felt exhausting.
Usually, parties made you feel alive.
They were noise and movement and possibility. They were proof that the world was still full of doors you could walk through. New faces. New stories. New ways to avoid thinking too hard.
But lately, every party felt like a room full of ghosts.
Still, Lena had dragged you out.
“You need to get out of the house,” she had said.
“You went to the grocery store.”
You stood in the apartment for a while, drink in hand, smiling at people you knew. Someone offered you a shot. You declined. Someone asked if you wanted to dance. You said no.
That alone should have been enough to make everyone concerned.
You did not say no to dancing.
Not unless something was wrong.
Eventually, you found a spot on the couch near the balcony doors.
Your friend Noah sat beside you, nursing a drink and watching the party with the detached amusement of someone who had already decided he was too sober for everyone around him.
Noah had always been observant.
He noticed when people were lying before they had even finished speaking. He noticed when someone had changed their hair, their perfume, their mood. He noticed when you were trying too hard.
Which was why you should have known he would notice this.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Music drifted through the apartment, slower than the kind you usually liked. People moved around you in clusters. Laughter rose and fell. The balcony door opened and shut as people stepped outside to smoke.
You stared into your drink.
Finally, he said, “You know sitting down at a party is a red flag for you, right?”
“You. Sitting. At a party.”
“No, you perch. There’s a difference.”
“You’ve been tired for weeks.”
“You’ve been avoiding everyone.”
“You’re physically here. Your soul is somewhere in a sad indie movie.”
Noah took a sip of his drink.
Then he said, more gently, “What’s going on?”
“You keep saying that like repetition makes it true.”
The city lights outside the balcony shimmered through the glass.
For some reason, they made you think of Garrett.
Of sitting in his car at two in the morning, watching streetlights slide across his face. Of his hand on the steering wheel. Of the way he would glance at you when he thought you were asleep.
“I’m just homesick or something,” she said.
“You have lived in Massachusetts your whole life.”
“I could be homesick for a different version of my home.”
“Okay, that was annoyingly poetic.”
He leaned closer, lowering his voice so only you could hear.
“You’re homesick for him.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
For a second, you could not breathe.
The room around you blurred.
The music became distant.
Your fingers tightened around your glass.
Noah’s expression softened.
“Then why do you look for him every time you walk into a room?”
“Why do you check your phone every five minutes? Why do you keep pretending you’re tired when you’re actually just sad? Why haven’t you been with anyone else since you two ended things?” Noah watched you carefully.
Noah looked toward the crowd.
“You don’t miss the hookups,” he said. “You miss Garrett.”
Your heart began to pound.
You wanted to stand up and walk away and bury the truth somewhere it could not find you.
But something inside you had already shifted.
It was as though a door had opened in a room you had forgotten existed and behind it was every moment you had been trying not to think about.
Garrett laughing in your kitchen.
Garrett kissing your forehead when he thought you were asleep.
Garrett waiting outside your apartment because you had mentioned, once, that you did not like walking home alone at night.
Garrett remembering your favourite song.
Garrett looking at you in the backyard like you were something precious and terrifying.
Garrett saying, “You make me want things I don’t know how to have.”
Noah did not say anything.
You had been missing him.
The way he understood you without asking you to explain every broken part.
The way he had looked at you like you were worth being scared for.
You lifted your head and there he was, across the room.
Garrett stood near the kitchen counter, a drink in his hand, his shoulders tense beneath a dark jacket. He looked different than he had weeks ago.
Or maybe you were only seeing him properly for the first time.
His hair was messier than usual. His eyes were shadowed. His mouth was set in that familiar line, the one that always made him look like he was holding back a thousand things.
But he was looking at you.
He had been looking at you.
The second your eyes met, neither of you moved.
The party continued around you.
Someone shouted from the balcony.
Someone started laughing.
But you heard none of it.
All you could see was Garrett.
All you could feel was the distance between the two of you.
But it felt like an ocean.
Garrett’s expression changed.
His fingers tightened around his drink.
Thinking had ruined enough already.
You set your drink down on the table and moved through the crowd.
Then you were almost running.
People stepped aside. Someone called your name. You did not stop.
Garrett’s eyes widened as you reached him.
For one breathless second, neither of you spoke.
You stood in front of him, your heart crashing against your ribs.
He looked at you like you were a dream he did not trust himself to touch.
The word nearly broke you.
His gaze searched your face.
You let out a shaky laugh.
Garrett’s expression tightened.
“No, listen.” Your voice trembled, you hated that it trembled. But you kept going. “I was scared.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“No, you don’t.” you swallowed. “I was scared because you said you liked me. And I wanted to hear it so badly, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”
His eyes did not leave yours.
“I thought if I let myself care about you, then I would lose myself again. I thought I would end up back where I was before. I thought I would get hurt, and I just—” Your voice broke.
Garrett set his drink down.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said.
“I wasn’t trying to trap you.”
“I just didn’t know how to pretend anymore.”
The room around you had faded into nothing.
“I don’t want you to pretend,” you whispered.
Felt the moment something changed.
When he opened them, they were bright.
“I miss everything. I miss you texting me dumb things at three in the morning. I miss you stealing my fries. I miss your stupid hoodie. I miss you acting like you don’t care when you obviously do.”
Garrett’s mouth twitched. “I do care.”
“For agreeing so quickly.” His voice was low. “For letting you walk away.”
You shook your head. “You were giving me space.”
“I thought if I pushed too hard, you’d hate me.”
The space between you disappeared.
Garrett looked at you like he was still waiting for you to run.
His fingers curled around yours immediately like they had been waiting.
Like they knew the shape of your hand by heart.
“I don’t know how to do this,” You admitted.
Garrett’s thumb brushed over your knuckles. “Neither do I.”
The honesty of it made you laugh softly.
“What if I freak out?” you asked.
“What if I push you away?”
“Then I’ll remind you that I’m still here.”
Garrett lifted his free hand and brushed a strand of hair from your face.
“You don’t have to promise me forever,” he said. “I don’t need that.”
“I just want a chance,” he continued. “A real one.”
The lights were still too bright.
People were still moving around them.
But you felt strangely calm like the storm inside you had finally found somewhere to rest.
Garrett searched your face. “Okay?”
Then, slowly, carefully, he leaned down and kissed you.
It was not like the kiss at the party weeks ago.
It was not meant to prove anything.
You kissed him back with both hands curled into the front of his shirt.
Around you, the party continued.
Noah, somewhere behind you, muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Finally.”
For once, you did not need an exit.
For once, you did not need to keep one foot outside the door.
Garrett’s hand settled at your waist, his forehead resting against yours.
“You sure?” he whispered.
You looked into his eyes.
Maybe you always would be.
Love was still a house that had once burned down but perhaps that did not mean you could never build another. Perhaps this time, you would build it differently with stronger walls and windows that opened.
With someone who knew how to stay.
And for the first time in a long time, you meant it.
