It started like every love story that swears it isn’t one. A classroom too bright for your liking, a boy who walked in late, and the quiet thud in your chest that felt like warning and wonder all at once.

Martin wasn’t the kind of boy you were supposed to like. He was loud in the right ways and careless in all the wrong ones, band rapper, heartbreaker, the kind of name that girls scribbled on notebooks and boys tried to imitate. His laughter carried down hallways like music; his eyes dared you to look back.

And you did.

You, with your soft voice and paper-thin patience, the one who said “sorry” even when it wasn’t your fault. You were everything he shouldn’t have noticed. But you did what no one else managed to do. You made him still. You made the world stop spinning for him, even if just for a moment.

He found excuses to talk to you. Borrowed pens, asked about homework he’d never do, lingered near your desk until your heart betrayed you with a blush. You told yourself he was a friend, nothing more. But it’s hard to call someone a friend when every laugh feels like a promise, and every look feels like gravity.

He’d show up at your locker before homeroom, leaning against it with that same grin that melted your good sense. “You look too serious again,” he’d tease, flicking your forehead gently.

“You thinking about me or the test?”

And you’d roll your eyes, pretending not to care, pretending not to memorize every word. Some loves are born in whispers. Yours was born in noise, in band rehearsals after class, in laughter echoing through the music room, in the way his voice cracked when he sang your favorite verse.

You became his muse before you even realized it. Every song he wrote had a trace of you.

The girl who smiled like sunlight and cried like rain.

You were his first real heartbreak waiting to happen, and maybe he was yours too. Because love that young doesn’t last forever, but it never really leaves you either. When a song plays and his voice hits the same old note, it all comes back. The first look. The first laugh. The first time you thought,

So this is what love feels like.