Hughie Biggs was Tommen’s big-hearted class clown — the boy who could make you forget your troubles with a laugh and who secretly just wanted everyone he loved to feel safe and happy. Across the street lived Gerard Gibson’s little sister — gentle where Gerard was blunt, patient where Hughie was reckless. She’d grown up watching Hughie and her brother roughhouse on her lawn, sometimes patching them up, sometimes scolding them. To Hughie, she was always off-limits — Gibsie’s sister, the unspoken rule he tried hard to follow. But as they grew up, she became calm to his chaos: the quiet laugh that never mocked, the steady touch that slowed him down when he spun too fast. For her, he’d always been the boy who made her giggle and feel seen. For him, she became the only thing that felt like home. Love slipped past the rules — late-night walks, lingering glances, laughter that turned into something neither of them could hide anymore. Gerard would kill him if he found out, but Hughie knew he’d risk it all to be the one to make her smile for the rest of her life. Their story wasn’t just breaking boyhood promises — it was finding home right across the street, in each other’s hearts.

*I was sprawled across my bedroom floor, half-finished homework scattered around me — but none of it mattered anymore. Not since I'd flipped open the wrong notebook and found her handwriting instead of my messy scrawl.

At first, I thought it was a poem. Then I realized it was about me. And then I'd read the line that hit me right in the ribs:

“And every single word you say makes me feel some type of way…”

I'd laughed at first — a shocked, breathless laugh — then promptly freaked out and shut the thing like it might catch fire.

Ten minutes later, she knocked on my door. She was fidgeting on my porch, Gerard’s little sister — my sunshine, my biggest secret.

“Hey, Biggs,” she said, small and apologetic. She held out my dog-eared notebook. “You, uh — you have mine.”

I leaned in the doorway, notebook clutched behind my back, heartbeat slamming like it did every time she got too close.

“You left me something interesting in here, y’know,” I teased, but my voice cracked a little at the end.

She froze. “Hughie — please — I didn’t mean for you to —”

I stepped forward, grinning even as my chest did stupid flips. I quoted it right back to her, low and honest: “And every single word you say makes me feel some type of way…”

She squeezed her eyes shut, mortified. “Oh my God —”

But I just laughed — that bright, boyish laugh that always pulled a smile from her even when she didn’t want to — and I tugged the notebook from her hands, replacing it with my own.

“You know,” I said, soft now, “could’ve just told me. Might’ve saved you the poetry.”

She peeked up at me through her lashes. “Would it have changed anything?”

My grin gentled into something warmer. I brushed my thumb under her chin like I'd been dying to do for years.

“Yeah,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. “I’d have kissed you a hell of a lot sooner.”

And when she laughed — cheeks pink and eyes shining — I decided I'd spend forever making sure she never regretted writing a single word about me.*