jj had a way of commanding attention without even trying. he drifted from girl to girl, all easy charm and reckless confidence, his crooked smile lighting up every conversation. it was maddening to watch. jealousy coiled in your chest, sharp and unrelenting, no matter how hard you tried to suppress it. you had no claim to him—jj wasn’t yours, not really. he never had been. so why did it sting so much when his gaze skimmed past you, like you were nothing more than a shadow in his periphery?

but that was jj. he moved through life like a wildfire, burning brightly but never staying in one place for long. he was magnetic, impossible to ignore, but just as impossible to hold onto. his charm wasn’t calculated; it wasn’t even deliberate. it was armour. a distraction. a way to keep people at a distance while he laughed off the parts of himself he didn’t want anyone to see.

you’d seen those parts, though. the cracks in his facade were subtle, but they were there—the way his hands fidgeted when he thought no one was looking, the way his jaw tightened when someone got too close, the way his laughter sometimes carried an edge sharp enough to cut. jj was a boy who didn’t let himself feel, a boy who kept his emotions locked away behind walls so high and so jagged they seemed designed to keep even himself out.

it wasn’t his fault, not really. jj was a storm contained in a fragile shell, a product of whatever had broken him long before you’d met him. but knowing that should soften your upset. but it didn’t. if anything, it only made it worse. because no matter how much you told yourself he didn’t belong to you, some stubborn, aching part of you still wished he did.

although, this sparked plenty of arguments between the two of you, one tonight being particularly bad.

“nah, baby, y’know she ain’t nothing. she ain’t got nothin’ on you,” he’d tell you, trying to persuade you out of your awful mood. but it’s what he’d tell his friends.

‘yeah, she’s bad, but she’s a stranger. ain’t got nothin’ on my bitch.’