She sobers, her expression turning guarded before she gives me her back, busying herself with hanging up her jacket. “I have a confession,” she says.
I straighten, hit with a nauseating sense of déjà vu. Suddenly, I’m thrown back to that day in this very dorm room months ago, when I was supposed to tell her how I felt. Back then, she beat me to the punch, informing me that she was transferring schools to be near Ethan. But this time, I’m not taking chances. I’m not letting another second go by without telling her how I feel.
“Tatum, look at me.” My voice cracks with emotion as I stand, crossing the room to her in two strides.
She turns, biting her lip as she tips her gaze up to meet mine.
“I’m in love with you,” I tell her.
The words hang in the air between us, five syllables carrying the weight of everything I’ve felt since the moment I met her.
“I’ve always loved you, but I got comfortable. I didn’t want to risk what we had, but watching you with Ethan . . . it nearly killed me. And when you made that friends with benefits proposal, the only reason I even hesitated was because I was scaredto death of what it would do to me to have you and then lose you again.”
I reach out, cupping her face in my hands, and praying like hell it’s a good sign when she doesn’t pull away. “Because I can’t lose you, Tate. Not now. Not ever. And the thought of you with someone else—”
I stop, swallowing hard against the lump in my throat. My heart hammers so violently I’m certain she can hear it. I close my eyes, steeling myself for rejection, for her gentle letdown, for the end of everything.
But the blow never comes.
When I open my eyes, she’s staring at me, lips parted in shock, tears glistening in her eyes. “You’re in love with me?” she whispers, her voice trembling.
“More than anything.” The truth of it resonates in my chest, a certainty I’ve only ever felt when it comes to her.
“Brandon,” she breathes, leaning into my touch. “I can’t—” Her voice cracks, and my heart splinters.
I drop my hands, certain the throbbing, stabbing pain in my chest is what it feels like to die of a broken heart. “It’s fine,” I say, not wanting to upset her. “I get it. Really.”
She blinks up at me, a crease in her brow. “No.” She shakes her head. “You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say I can’t lose you, either.” She reaches out, placing her hands in mine as hope balloons in my chest. “Because I’m in love with you too.”
The breath leaves my lungs in a violent rush as if I can’t believe my ears.
Gripping her waist, I pull her against me, afraid this is all a dream and she might disappear. “Say it again,” I murmur into her hair. “Please.”
“I’m in love with you. I love you so much it hurts.”
I pull back to meet her eyes, and her fingers trace the line of my jaw. “God, I love you.”
I capture her lips with mine, pouring every ounce of longing, every sleepless night, every moment of jealousy and wanting into the kiss. She tastes like apples and salt, tears neither of us bothers to hide.
I keep her close, clutching the back of her head, afraid I might wake up and find myself still on the sidelines, still waiting and wanting and swallowing down all the things I never let myself say.
My feelings for Tatum weren’t instantaneous. There wasn’t some cosmic shift the day I met her. Instead, it was a slow accumulation, a snowball that started with sharing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich all those years ago, rolled all the way here—all these years later—to the edge of my fucking sanity. There are so many versions of Tatum catalogued inside me I could build a museum: her teeth glowing with blue sherbet at thirteen on the Fourth of July; the way she hums when she’s trying not to cry, clutching her knees in the beanbag chair at three in the morning on game nights as she tries to stay awake; the time she didn’t have a phone stand yet and necklace-chained her phone to her bra so she could record a hands-free video for BookTok that involved uncoordinated choreography and I nearly combusted watchingfrom the window. There’s the Tatum who texts me pictures of pugs in sweaters at 2 a.m., the one who learned to throw a perfect spiral just to shut me up, the one who never missed a game in high school because she knew my parents wouldn’t be there.
For years the wanting was its own kind of background radiation—never lethal, just always there, a low ache in the bones. Sometimes, when I was feeling particularly stupid, I’d convince myself to kill it off with logic: She’s your best friend. She needs you. Don't fuck this up by making it weird. In every version of my internal calculus, I’d rather lose a limb than lose her over some misfired confession. Even tonight—up to twenty minutes ago, in the lot, with Ethan slunk beside her like a shadow—I questioned my plan to tell her how I really felt.
But thank fuck I did, because I’m here with her against me, both of us shaking. The impossible has become possible.
Even as her lips meet mine, soft and hungry, my brain can’t compute it. There’s a part of me still waiting for the punchline—still waiting to wake up alone in my own bed, heart kicked to shit while the morning sun slants through the window. But Tatum is here, pressed against me so tight it’s like she wants to fuse us together. My hands tangle in her hair, and I fight the urge to collapse with her right here on the floor, just to anchor myself in the reality of her.
She tastes like victory and hope and all the hours we wasted not doing this. I see it play like a movie—the months, the years, the small seconds that built this thing between us while I toldmyself I didn’t care—we were better off friends because I was so damn scared of ruining us.
Her lips move against mine as if she can transmit everything in all the words we’ve both left unsaid, and I kiss her back, slow and deliberate, until her arms circle my neck and something infinite opens beneath my feet.
We move toward her bed and collapse onto it. I hold her, needy and relieved as her arms wind around my neck, her body melting into mine as if she belongs there. Because she does. She always has.
For the first time in years, everything goes quiet—the noise, the what-ifs, the fear of losing her. All that’s left is this—the steady rhythm of her heart against mine, the warmth of her breath on my skin, the certainty that we finally got it right.
Tomorrow there’ll be practices and exams and a world that won’t stop spinning, but tonight, it’s just us. No pretending. No almosts. No secrets or words left unsaid. Just the two of us, tangled up in a promise we never had to say out loud but finally did.
