Jason and I had grown up next door to each other.
He was the kind of boy everyone noticed.
Brilliant. Handsome. Effortlessly popular.
The kind of boy who won awards, won arguments, won attention, and never seemed to lose anything at all.
Everyone liked him.
I did too.
More than I should have.
For years, I followed him around like a tail. I studied late every night just to get into the same schools he went to, just to stand a little closer beside him, just to make us look like we belonged in the same frame.
When we graduated high school, I confessed.
Jason had laughed—a bright, careless laugh—and rubbed my head.
“Our Chloe’s all grown up.”
His friends laughed too.
One of them said, “Wait, you didn’t know? Jason already has a girlfriend.”
I remember slowly shaking my head.
The night before, Jason had come to my house and talked about college. About the future. And in every version of it, I had been there.
Then another girl appeared.
A campus beauty who had confessed first.
They’d already been together for nearly a month.
Jason pinched my cheek and smiled like he was being kind.
“I’ve always thought of you as a little sister.”
I still went to the same college. It was the best school my grades could get me into.
But after orientation, I started avoiding him.
I needed time.
Space.
A place to bury all the feelings I had dragged through childhood like a secret wound.
That lasted until the day he cornered me outside the library.
He had dyed his hair light brown by then. It made his skin look paler, his features sharper. He looked even more striking than before, which felt deeply unfair.
“Chloe,” he said, arching a brow, “are you avoiding me?”
“No,” I said quietly. “I’ve just been busy.”
He smiled.
“If you’re not avoiding me, why did you block me?”
I looked at him.
If you don’t like me, why keep reaching for me?
You already had a girlfriend. Why do you still want me orbiting around you?
I made myself say it.
“You have a girlfriend. We should keep some distance.”
He looked almost amused.
Like he hadn’t expected me to really leave.
Like he thought I would hurt for a while and then come back, same as always.
Before he could say anything else, a hand reached out and pulled me aside.
“Move.”
The voice was cold enough to cut.
Ryan.
Jason’s expression darkened as he looked from me to Ryan, then down to the hand still gripping my wrist.
“Let go of her.”
I exhaled, not even realizing I had been holding my breath, and instinctively caught the sleeve of Ryan’s jacket.
Jason went still.
“Come here, Chloe.”
I didn’t move.
He tried to reach for me, but Ryan stepped between us.
Then Ryan said something I would remember for years.
“No one stays in one place waiting forever.”
Jason froze.
Ryan took me away.
When I looked back, Jason was standing where we’d left him, his face dark and unreadable.
Ryan brought me to a dessert café off campus.
The tears on my face hadn’t dried.
And even though I hated it, even though I was ashamed of how weak it made me feel, the pain in my chest still came in waves when I thought about Jason.
My parents had divorced when I was young. I lived with my mom.
She was beautiful. Too beautiful, according to other people. A divorced woman with a daughter was apparently public property for gossip.
Boys in the neighborhood used to sneer, “Your dad didn’t want you.”
I never knew how to fight that kind of hurt.
But Jason always had.
He’d stand in front of me and say, “I’m older than Chloe by two months. I’m the big brother. Big brothers protect little sisters.”
That was how I became the little tail behind him.
So when my heart first learned how to ache, it ached toward him.
I spent years hoping he’d turn around and see me.
He never did.
Or maybe he did.
Just not in the way I wanted.
Thinking about it made fresh tears spill down my face.
Ryan watched me in silence, his hands tightening once before loosening again. Then he passed me a stack of napkins.
“Don’t cry.”
I cried harder.
He exhaled softly, leaned forward, and wiped the tears off my face himself.
His eyes were unusually gentle.
“Chloe,” he said quietly, “you really are a fool.”
That day, he ordered half the dessert menu.
He barely touched anything.
He just sat across from me in silence, solid and still, like some impossible combination of winter and shelter.
Back then, every time I saw Ryan, Summer was between us, smoothing things over, filling the air, turning his coldness into something survivable.
That afternoon was the first time we’d ever really been alone.
And I was too embarrassed to know what to do with that.
I didn’t want to cry in front of him, but holding it back felt worse. I wanted to talk, but I was afraid if I opened my mouth, all the pain I’d swallowed for years would come pouring out and burden him.
Even the desserts I loved tasted dull.
Ryan seemed to notice all of it.
He lowered his gaze slightly.
“I texted Summer. She’ll come stay with you.”
Relief spread through me before I could stop it.
Then he added, “You don’t have to be afraid of bothering me. If you ever need me, you can call.”
I looked up at him in shock.
Ryan Carter had always been known for being cold, distant, arrogant—the kind of rich heir people admired from far away and never approached too closely.
Hearing something so soft come out of his mouth felt almost supernatural.
Especially because when we first met, he had not been soft.
The first time Summer dragged me over to introduce us, she’d grinned and said, “Ryan, isn’t my best friend gorgeous?”
He’d looked at me for a long moment and said, “She doesn’t look human.”
I had spent years assuming he didn’t like me.
So now, sitting across from me in the warm café light and telling me I could always call him, he seemed almost like a different person.
I was so moved I nearly cried again.
“Thank you, Ryan,” I said, voice trembling. “You’re the best brother ever.”
Something in his expression changed.
Very slightly.
I was too heartbroken to understand it then.
A week later, Jason’s friends called me.
“Chloe, come pick Jason up,” one of them said. “He’s drunk and keeps calling your name.”
“You should call his girlfriend.”
“They broke up already. Chloe, just come.”
Then, as if that wasn’t enough:
“The person he likes has always been you.”
After the call, I stared at my phone for a long time.
Then I went.
I should have known better.
But old feelings are like expired chocolate.
You know they’re bad for you.
Sometimes you still can’t help tasting them.