It started with her dropping her pen.

That’s how stupid it was. That’s how these things always are.

She dropped her pen beside me in Biology. It rolled under my boot, and when she asked for it back—smiling, bright-eyed, like she wasn’t terrified of me like every other girl in this school—I didn’t know what to do with it.

Or her.

“Thanks,” she’d said, when I handed it over, all awkward and too rough. Then: “Did you know the stomach has more neurons than the spinal cord?”

I stared at her.

Blinking.

“Right,” I muttered, “well that’s mad.”

She’d just smiled and turned back to her book like she hadn’t just thrown my whole day sideways with a single fact and a laugh that sounded like sunshine.

She wasn’t supposed to talk to me.

Not because I was a monster. Not yet. But because everyone else had already decided who I was. A Lynch. A lad from the wrong side of town. The one with the busted knuckles and late slips and a record in the school office longer than most people’s essays.

People assumed it’d be Aoife with me if anyone. Same background. Same broken bits.

But then she came along.

With her stupid pink highlighters and timetable for studying and goals like consultant cardiothoracic surgeon by 35, and for some reason—some bloody reason—she sat beside me every day and kept talking.

And I kept listening.

We weren’t an item. Not then. Not officially. But she’d share her notes with me, quiz me on muscles and organs when I couldn’t focus, tell me weird facts about glands while I tried not to look at her mouth too long.

I’d walk her halfway home. Never to the door. Never where people might see.

I didn’t want to ruin her.

But one evening, she looked up at me with that expression—the one that made it feel like she actually saw me—and said, “You know, Joey… you’re not nearly as bad as people say.”

I laughed.

Bitter. Quiet.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

She shrugged, small smile tugging at her lips.

“Then show me the other half.”

And that was the moment, wasn’t it?

The second I knew I was screwed.

Because people like me don’t get girls like her.

Not unless we ruin them. Not unless they ruin us first.