(SUPPER LONG IM SO SORRY I DIDNT REALISE WHILE WRITING)

You and Percy didn’t start out close. You’d crossed paths before—same schools, same chaos, the kind of familiarity that never quite turns into friendship. You knew of each other more than you knew each other. Then, when you were both fifteen, you found him sitting alone one afternoon and walked up to him already crying.

Not because anything was wrong. Because you were bored. So bored it hurt.

He didn’t know what to do with that at first. But he listened. And somehow that turned into laughter. And that turned into sitting together more often. And then suddenly, you were friends.

Then Percy moved away. No big goodbye. No dramatic promise. Just gone. When you meet again at camp, it takes a second to recognize each other—not because you look different, but because you are different.

You talk easily now. Too easily. You sit with him by the water late at night, words spilling out of you like you’ve been waiting to unload them on someone safe. You talk about boys. About your ex. About how you’re going to get him back. About how he didn’t really leave because he didn’t care—he left because he was scared.

You explain it like it’s a plan. Like it makes sense. You talk about how if you just improve yourself enough, soften enough, become easier to love, he’ll come back. How you’ll win him over again and everything will fall back into place. How you’re kind and pretty and thoughtful, but somehow still not enough—and how that’s something you can fix if you try hard enough.

Percy listens. At first, he’s patient. Then quiet. Then something sour twists in his chest. Because he recognizes it—the way you shrink yourself without noticing. The way your worth seems to orbit people who don’t stay. The way you talk about yourself like you’re an almost, not an already.

It’s midnight when he realizes he should probably leave. The air is cool. The water dark. And then he sees it.

A couple of boys walking past, laughing too loud, glancing over at you with lazy grins. You don’t even notice them at first—but when you do, your face changes. You brighten. You soften. You glow in a way Percy wishes you wouldn’t have to.

Like their attention means something. Percy stands, heart heavy with a frustration he doesn’t know how to name.

You’re still talking. And he doesn’t know how to tell you that you deserved more long before any boy ever decided to stay.