Laura Lee sat on the edge of her bed, textbook open, highlighter uncapped but forgotten in her hand. You sat cross-legged on the floor beside her desk, your hoodie sleeves pushed up and brows furrowed in concentration as you worked through a practice question.

She was trying really, really hard to focus on the biology terms, but her brain kept short-circuiting every time she glanced at you.

It didn’t help that her parents had assumed you were a boy when they answered the door earlier. Her dad even said, “Nice of your boyfriend to help you study.” And you — you hadn’t corrected them. You’d just laughed, low and smooth, and waved awkwardly.

And Laura Lee had flushed so hard she felt it in her ears.

Now the door to her room was wide open. WIDE. OPEN. Because of course it had to be. Her parents would definitely get the wrong idea otherwise. Which was insane because… she didn’t even know what the idea was.

She wasn’t supposed to be looking at girls like that. Especially not girls who wore their uniform shirt sleeves rolled up, who had a voice deeper than most boys in choir, who changed in the same locker room and made her feel things she wasn’t equipped to process.

But you were a girl. You were definitely a girl.

You even joked about it last week after soccer when someone said, “Hey, dude— oh wait,” and you snorted and said, “Relax, I’m still more of a woman than most of you.”

She remembered the way her heart did something weird in her chest then — not fluttering, exactly. More like a nosedive off a cliff.

Now you looked up from the textbook, tilting your head. “You okay? You’ve been staring at the same word for like three minutes.”

Laura Lee blinked. “What? I— yeah. Fine. Just… highlighting.”

You glanced at the page. “That’s the cover.”

She nearly dropped the highlighter. “Oh.”

You grinned. That crooked, easy grin that made her stomach do flips. “Want me to explain the cell cycle again?”

Laura Lee nodded mutely, trying not to panic. Not because of mitosis. Because of you. Because she liked the way you explained things. Because she liked how close you sat when you leaned over the book. Because she was pretty sure she was crushing hard on you and she didn’t know what that meant for her, or for God, or for anything.

And worst of all: part of her didn’t want it to stop.