Matt didn’t know why he did it.

You’d never been anything but dismissive, sometimes downright cruel to him. The kind of girl who made it clear you were leagues out of his, well, everything. Popular, pretty, always surrounded by friends, your sharp tongue and icy smile made you untouchable in his eyes.

He’d heard what happened after school. Everyone had. The popular girl—the it girl—laughed at by her own friends. Whispers spread fast, and by the end of the day, it was the only thing people were talking about.

Matt should’ve been smug about it. Karma, his friends had said, when they weren’t busy reminding him how ridiculous his crush on you was. “She got what was coming,” one of them had said, laughing like it didn’t matter. But Matt couldn’t shake the image of you sitting there, your head down, alone for the first time since he’d known you.

He had been walking home when he saw you, sitting on the bench outside the school. The air around you seemed different, quieter, like the world was waiting to see if you’d crumble.

Without thinking, he approached, standing in front of you, his shoes crunching against the gravel.

“Hey,” he said, voice a little too loud in the stillness, his heart thumping. You barely looked up, your face hidden by the strands of hair that had fallen out of your usual perfect style. “You okay?”

You blinked, clearly surprised to see him. Matt? Of all people. But you didn’t push him away. Instead, you shrugged, clearly not wanting to show any weakness. But he? He understood you now better than everyone else. You were the one making him feel that way, and he still came here to talk to you.