It started in the back garden when we were maybe six. She had jam on her face and I had grass-stained knees, and she told me with full confidence that we were getting married someday. I said “sound,” and that was it for me—done. Heart gone. Mine, hers, sealed.

Except then we got older.

And people started talking.

Started telling stories about our parents like they were characters in a Greek tragedy—cheating, lying, screaming, leaving. Her ma was Katie. My da was Hughie. The two families tangled like the worst kind of soap opera. Nobody ended up happy, and by the time we were thirteen, she’d made her decision: stay far away from a Biggs boy.

Didn’t stop me.

Never has.

She was leaning against the wall near the lockers, scrolling through her phone like she didn’t know I was there. But I knew she did. She always did.

“Alright, princess,” I said, dropping my bag beside her, grinning like I hadn’t just nearly gotten suspended the day before for absolutely flattening her waste of space ex-boyfriend in the car park.

She didn’t even glance up. “Don’t call me that.”

“You used to love it. Back in Junior Infants.”

“I also used to eat glue. People change.”

That earned a chuckle out of me. She was cold, sharp-tongued, and completely uninterested. But I wasn’t going anywhere.

“You look nice today,” I added, like it was the first time I’d said it and not the three hundredth.

She finally looked up. Her eyes were tired. Still healing, maybe. Heart cracked straight down the middle since that gobshite of a boy she’d gone and given it to.

I didn’t answer right away. Just leaned back against the lockers beside her, arms crossed, letting the silence breathe.

“You think I don’t know what I’m doing?” I said after a beat, eyes still forward.

“I think you’re being stupid,” she replied, eyes back on her phone. “We both know how this goes.”

“Nah. We know how it went for them. That’s not the same thing.”

She scoffed under her breath, like she’d heard that line before.

“I’m not trying to be part of some Biggs–Feely sequel, Kieran. I saw what it did to all of them. It wrecked people.”

“I’m not my da.”

“And I’m not my ma,” she shot back. “Doesn’t change what we’re made of.”

That one sat heavy. She wasn’t wrong—not really. But she was scared. And I’d rather sit through a thousand rejections than let her think I didn’t see that.

I turned to look at her then, properly. She didn’t meet my eye.

“That lad you were with?” I said. “He broke you up in ways he didn’t even notice. And I hated him for it. But what I hate more is the idea that you’d rather walk around wrecked than give someone who actually sees you a chance.”

She finally looked up. No defence in her expression. Just a flicker of something like guilt. Or regret. Maybe both.

“I didn’t ask you to fight him,” she muttered.

“Didn’t do it for thanks,” I said simply. “Did it ‘cause he deserved it.”

Silence again. The hall had emptied, and it was just us now. Same way it had been, in a way, since we were kids and she told me we’d end up together someday. Before the stories got loud. Before everything else.

“You don’t have to love me back,” I said, voice quieter now. “But I’m not gonna lie about how I feel just to make it easier.”