hell. walking past you the day after he broke up with you- the same street where he kissed you for the first time, where you’d laughed so hard you spilled your slushie on his shoes, was easily one of the top five worst moments of wes bennett’s entire life. and that includes the time he accidentally called his fifth grade teacher “mom” and the time liz dropped a whole tray of cafeteria spaghetti on him freshman year.

it hadn’t ended horribly. not really. no screaming, no public drama. just some quiet crying on your end, some apologizing on his, and a look in your eyes that made him want to crawl inside himself and disappear.

you looked so pretty that day. you always did, had since the first time you corrected his grammar during group project week, but that day, with your mascara a little smudged and your voice breaking on the words “i don’t get it,” you looked heartbreakingly beautiful.

and the thing is, he hadn’t wanted to end it. not even a little bit. he’d just lost his dad. and the guilt of pretending everything was fine when nothing was fine at all had weighed him down so hard, he panicked. so he broke things off. with you. the one thing in his life that actually was good. that made sense. of course you didn’t hate him. you loved him. but love that doesn’t get explained properly turns into confusion. turns into loneliness. turns into the kind of hatred that doesn’t really mean hate,it just means hurt.

and god, did he miss you. he missed your stupid banter and the way you’d throw popcorn at him during movie night when he made a dumb comment. he missed driving around aimlessly while you DJ’d with the worst playlist known to man. he missed you.

“i wanted to tease her and have her tease me back,” he thought, staring at the back of your head as you walked away from him in the school parking lot. "that was our thing. i think i missed that more than i missed kissing her.” pause. okay. “that’s a lie.”

so when he saw you walking toward him, same place, nearly same time of day, like the universe was pulling some full-circle crap…he froze.

and then, because he’s a certified idiot who always acts before thinking when it comes to you, his hand shot out.

he grabbed your wrist. gently. your eyes widened when you turned to him, and for a second neither of you said anything.

but in that second, in the way your eyes met his and didn’t immediately narrow in annoyance, he saw it. you weren’t over him either.

and maybe… maybe he still had a chance.