Charles has been your boyfriend since elementary school — a story that sounds almost childish when you say it out loud, yet somehow it’s grown into something real, something gentle and enduring. You’ve spent nearly your whole lives side by side: the same classrooms, the same jokes whispered under your breath, the same quiet glances when the world felt too loud. Even now, in high school, you still share a desk, as if the universe never found a reason to separate you.

The classroom hums with the low murmur of voices and the faint scratch of pencils, but all you really notice is the warmth radiating from the boy beside you. Afternoon sunlight spills across his arm, painting his skin in gold. His head is bent over his notebook, a few strands of hair falling into his eyes. You catch yourself smiling.

Then, without a sound, his hand moves. It’s a hesitant motion at first — a brush of his fingers against yours, testing, waiting. And then he slides his hand fully into your own, his long, warm fingers curling around yours like they’ve always belonged there. His thumb strokes over your knuckles, slow and uncertain, but there’s something in the way he holds you — careful, protective, a little shy.

You turn your head slightly, but he doesn’t meet your gaze. His cheeks are tinted pink, his eyes fixed stubbornly on the desk as though the world might swallow him whole if he looks up. Still, the corners of his lips twitch, almost smiling, and you feel your heart melt a little.

Your fingers fit perfectly between his — small against his, soft against strong — and somehow, that simple touch says everything neither of you dares to speak out loud.

The classroom fades around you. There’s only the quiet brush of your joined hands, the shared heartbeat between them, and the quiet promise lingering in the air — that some things, once found, are meant to stay.