Chapter 1: The Day Love Learned to Breathe
The first time I noticed Ethan Cole was on a Monday morning when the school bell rang too early and my heart rang with it.
Riverdale High always smelled of chalk dust and wet grass after the weekend rain. The corridors buzzed with the careless laughter of teenagers who believed life began and ended between lockers and classrooms. I was sixteen, carrying too many books and too many worries, walking fast so I wouldn't be late again.
That was the morning he collided into me.
My notebooks scattered across the floor like startled birds. Pens rolled in every direction. The bell rang again, louder this time, and everyone rushed past us as if we were invisible.
He knelt to gather my books before I could. His hands were quick and steady, and his uniform was wrinkled as if he had fought sleep and lost.
That was how Ethan Cole entered my life—on his knees in front of me, holding my physics notebook like it was something precious.
From that moment on, everything began to change.
By the end of that week, I learned that Ethan lived three streets away from me, hated mathematics, and carried a guitar he never played in public. He laughed with his whole body and walked like he had nowhere important to go, yet his eyes held stories too heavy for a boy our age.
We sat in the same row in English class. At first, we spoke little. Our friendship grew in quiet ways—in shared pencils, in exchanged glances when the teacher spoke on about poetry, in the way our shoulders touched when the desks were too close.
Riverdale High was not a place for grand romances. It was a place for whispered secrets and notes folded into tiny squares. It was a place where love learned to hide.
Soon, everyone noticed.
They called us "the twins" because we were always together. They teased us in the corridors. Teachers paired us for projects. And somewhere between homework and exams, between lunch breaks and late afternoons, I realized that Ethan had become part of my daily breathing.
I measured time by him.
Mornings were for finding him at the gate. Afternoons were for walking home together. Evenings were for thinking about what I would tell him the next day.
We never called it love at first. We called it comfort.
Our favorite place was the old mango tree behind the science block. It stood tall and crooked, older than the school itself. Students carved their names into its bark, leaving pieces of themselves behind.
Under that tree, the world felt smaller and safer. The noise of school faded into a distant echo. We talked about dreams we didn't yet understand.
Ethan wanted to leave Riverdale one day. He wanted to see cities that never slept and oceans that touched the sky. I wanted to become a writer, though I didn't yet know what kind of stories I would tell.
Under that tree, promises were made without words.
And slowly, quietly, our friendship crossed a line neither of us had planned.
It happened on a late afternoon when the sky turned gold and the school emptied too quickly. The wind carried dust and fallen leaves around us. We sat in silence, closer than usual.
I felt his presence before I felt his hand.
He reached for mine without looking at me. It was not dramatic. It was not rushed. It was gentle and unsure, like he was asking permission from the air itself.
My heart forgot how to beat.
We did not speak. We did not laugh. We simply stayed that way until the sun began to fall and the shadows grew long. That was the day friendship became something else. Something dangerous. Something beautiful.
High school love is fragile. It grows in secret and fears the future.
The rumors spread faster than we could stop them.
Teachers watched us with curious eyes. Friends whispered questions. My mother noticed the way I smiled too much at dinner. Ethan's father began to tighten his rules.
Life outside school was different.
Ethan's family struggled. His father believed dreams were useless things. He wanted Ethan to work after school and learn responsibility instead of reading novels and strumming his guitar in secret.
My family wanted stability. They wanted grades, not distractions.
We lived between two worlds: the world of bells and books, and the world of expectations and fear.
Still, we held onto each other like we were the only safe place left.
The night everything changed came without warning.
It was the night before final exams.
Rain fell hard against my window. My phone vibrated with a message that was too short and too heavy.
Ethan wanted to meet me.
I wrapped myself in a sweater and walked to the mango tree, my shoes soaked and my heart restless. The school grounds were empty and dark, the gates locked but the tree still standing like a silent witness.
He stood there already, his hair wet, his shoulders tense.
I knew before he spoke that something was wrong.
His father had found the guitar. The letters I had written him. The plans we made about leaving Riverdale together one day.
There were words that night that broke something inside us. Words about responsibility. About distance. About endings we were too young to face.
We did not cry loudly. We did not argue fiercely. We simply stood there while rain soaked through our clothes and the mango tree watched us lose our innocence.
That night, love learned what fear felt like.
After that, things were never the same.
We still saw each other at school, but the space between us grew wider. Our hands no longer touched. Our eyes no longer lingered.
The mango tree became just a tree again.
Graduation came too quickly. The bell rang for the last time, and the corridors that once held our laughter echoed with goodbyes.
Ethan stood on the opposite side of the crowd. We did not walk toward each other. We did not speak. We let the moment pass like a train we were too afraid to board.
And just like that, our story paused.
Not ended. Paused.
Years would pass before I understood what that first love had done to me.
How it shaped the way I believed in people.
How it taught me that timing is cruel and memory is faithful.
How some hearts meet too early, and some destinies wait.
I left Riverdale carrying unfinished sentences and a name I tried not to remember.
But love has a way of waiting.
And somewhere in the distance, the bell that once rang for us was preparing to ring again.