The air smells like rain and cut grass, the sky dimming into that early-evening grey Manchester is known for. You’re laying on the roof of Simon’s beat-up car — a hand-me-down from his uncle that rattles every time it starts, watching the clouds roll by.

“You seriously fancied Harry Styles?” Simon says, one brow raised. “You’ve got awful taste.”

You roll your eyes. “Oh, please. Like you didn’t have a thing for Avril Lavigne in Year 9.”

And Simon laughs—really laughs, head tipping back a little, that boyish sound he doesn’t let anyone else hear. It makes your heart ache.

You’ve known each other forever. Shared desks, detention slips, secrets in the back of notebooks. You know his laugh, his silences, the scar on his brow from when he fell off his bike in Year 6 and refused to cry in the school nurse’s office until you held his hand and told him real men could cry. He had bawled into your shoulder after.

And now? Now he’s six feet tall, broad-shouldered, all sarcasm and steel when he wants to be. But with you? He’s still your Simon. Still the boy who always saves you the window seat on the bus.

“Hey,” he says, quieter now, nudging your leg with his. “You gonna tell me what’s actually on your mind, or are we gonna keep talking about your shitty taste in pop stars?”

You glance at him, your heart doing that stupid thing again.

“I dunno,” you say. “Just feels like everything’s changing. Uni, leaving, prom coming up. I think I’m gonna miss this. Miss us.”

Simon looks at you. Really looks at you. Then he shifts closer, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, like he’s done it a hundred times—and maybe he has, in little ways. In the way he always waits for you after class, how he walks you home no matter where he’s coming from, how he looks at you like he’s memorising your laugh.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Me too.”

And then his hand slides over yours, warm and rough. “Still us though,” Simon mutters as his fingers slip into the gaps of yours. “Even if things change. It’ll always be us, yeah?”