POV: Ava Carter
By Monday, the silence between us had calcified into something sharp.
Jace didn't look at me in the halls. Didn't glance my way in class. He didn't laugh as loudly, didn't toss sarcastic comments like usual. He wasn't sulking—no, that would be too human for Jace Collins. He was… detaching. Polished. Distant. Like I was a ghost who'd finally stopped haunting him.
And maybe I was.
But I still saw him.
At his locker, spinning the dial like it offended him. On the basketball court after school, his movements just a beat too aggressive. Laughing with Ash and Sam in the quad—but his smile never quite reaching his eyes.
It shouldn't have mattered. It shouldn't have felt like something was… off.
But it did.
---
By Tuesday, I started avoiding the places he might be.
I took the long way to our school. Ate lunch on the library steps with Layla instead of in the cafeteria. Skipped the vending machines near the gym and started using the ones by the language hallway—where it smelled like old textbooks and bad decisions.
Still, somehow, I ran into him more.
Crossing the hall near the science wing. Both of us reaching for the same bottle of water in the student store. That awkward moment when he opened a door just as I went to push it.
Every time, he looked right through me. And I flinched anyway.
---
Wednesday morning, I caught him laughing with Emily.
Not the fake, polite kind of laugh either—the real one, the one that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and his shoulders relax.
Emily. My old friend. The one who apparently stole my flash drive years ago and never told me.
They looked good together. Comfortable. Like maybe they'd always been friends and I'd just never noticed.
Something twisted in my chest, and I turned away before Jace could see my face.
Layla noticed.
"You okay?" she asked, biting into her granola bar as we walked to class.
"I'm fine."
She gave me a sideways glance. "You always say that when you're not."
"I always say that because people don't really want to hear the real answer."
She didn't push, bless her. Just handed me the other half of her granola bar.
---
By Thursday, the whispers had started.
"They're not talking anymore." "Did they break up?" "They weren't dating, dumbass. They were just… worst enemies....liked the way they entertained us."
Funny how people turned a hallway argument into romantic drama. Like we were some kind of off-brand teen soap opera. "The Ava and Jace Show," now featuring mutual resentment and unresolved trauma.
I'd laugh—if it didn't sting so much.
---
Friday brought rain.
The kind of relentless, sideways drizzle that soaked your socks no matter how fast you ran. I was late for school and forgot an umbrella, which meant I arrived looking like a drowned raccoon. Perfect.
As I dashed through the front doors, someone held it open for me.
"Thanks," I muttered, wiping water from my face—and froze.
It was him.
Jace.
We stood there in the crowded entryway, soaked and breathless, a beat of silence stretching between us.
Then he walked away without a word.
---
Later that day, I found his hoodie in the lost and found.
Not because I was looking for it. I was returning Layla's umbrella, and there it was—dark navy, slightly frayed at the cuffs, unmistakably his. I knew because he wore it every Thursday last semester and left it draped over his desk like a throne.
I should've walked away.
Instead, I touched it.
And in that second, something in me cracked.
Not enough to break.
Just enough to ache.
---
By the end of the week, I'd had enough of the cold war.
I missed the banter, the tension, the electric charge of having someone who could meet me word for word. I hated that I was counting the days since our last actual conversation like some jilted rom-com character.
But I hated more that I didn't know how to fix it.
So I did what I always did when the world felt too big.
I ran.
Literally. Around the track after school until my lungs burned and my thoughts blurred.
And somewhere in the middle of lap five, I spotted him.
Sitting on the bleachers. Alone. Hoodie pulled over his head, elbows on his knees.
Watching me.
I didn't stop.
Didn't wave.
Didn't acknowledge the way my heart stuttered when our eyes met.
But for the first time all week… he didn't look away.
---
---
I didn't slow down, not even when the sky cracked open and the drizzle turned into a full-on downpour. My shoes squelched with every step, ponytail whipping behind me, and still—I ran.
If I stopped, I might do something stupid.
Like march up the bleachers and ask him what his problem was. Or worse… apologize.
When I finally collapsed under the metal awning by the locker rooms, lungs raw and chest heaving, he was gone.
Of course he was.
That night, I dreamed about the science lab again.
The first week of senior year, before all this. We'd been paired up for some stupid chemical reaction experiment, and he'd rolled his eyes at me the entire time.
"You measure like a toddler," he'd said, shaking his head as I tried to pour with trembling hands.
"You explain things like a YouTube tutorial from 2009."
We'd both grinned.
In the dream, I dropped the beaker. It shattered. He turned away and didn't look back.
---
POV: Jace Collins
I hadn't meant to stop watching her.
At first, it was a choice—because if I looked at Ava, I remembered too much. The way she always acted like she didn't care when she clearly did. The way she used sarcasm like armor. The way she disappeared without a single damn explanation.
But somewhere between the tension and the silence, the choice turned into a habit.
And habits are hard to break.
Even when you want to.
Especially when you can't stop thinking about her standing in the rain, soaked and furious and stubborn as ever, pretending like I didn't exist.
Even though I was right there.
Watching.
Waiting for her to acknowledge me again.
---
By Saturday, I almost texted her.
Not about the project. Not about school.
Just... Hey. You good?
I typed it. Deleted it. Typed it again. Deleted it for good.
She didn't owe me an explanation. We weren't friends. We were barely rivals anymore. More like echoes of something that never had the chance to be anything real.
I threw my phone across the bed.
Let it stay buried in the blanket folds, like maybe silence would solve what words couldn't.
---
POV: Ava Carter
Saturday night, Layla tried to distract me with movies and bad pizza. It almost worked.
We watched two and a half rom-coms before she fell asleep with her mouth open and her hand still in the popcorn bowl.
The movie kept playing.
Some beautiful mess of a couple yelling in the rain. I watched as the girl turned away, and the guy ran after her. Said something about how she made him mad and miserable and alive.
I turned it off.
Because real life didn't work like that.
In real life, you didn't run after someone who clearly didn't want you around.
You just… stopped running.
---
Sunday, I wrote his name in the corner of my notebook.
Not on purpose. Not dramatically.
Just… out of habit.
And then I stared at it for a long time before scribbling it out so hard the paper tore.
---
Monday came again.
And with it, that stupid inescapable feeling that everything was just a little bit off-kilter. Like the world had tilted three degrees to the left and no one noticed but me.
I caught Jace looking at me twice in homeroom. Once in the hallway between periods. Once more at lunch.
He didn't say anything.
Neither did I.
But for the first time in over a week, we were finally seeing each other again