Caleb Reed never forgot the day Fiona Flare chose Marcus.
It wasn't a single dramatic moment that broke him. It was a slow bleed months of quiet hope, of orbiting her without ever daring to land, of convincing himself that time was on his side.
They were juniors when he first noticed her properly.
She sat two rows ahead in AP English Lit, always with a notebook open, doodling constellations in the margins while Mrs. Callahan droned on about symbolism in *The Great Gatsby*. Caleb watched her more than he watched the board. He watched the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was thinking, the way her lips moved silently when she read, the way her eyes lit up when someone said something clever. He thought she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen not in the loud, obvious way the popular girls were, but in the quiet, devastating way that made his chest hurt.
He started small.
A borrowed pencil when she forgot hers.
