I never meant to sit next to her.
I'd picked the window seat in homeroom like always quiet, tucked away, safe. My headphones were in, hoodie up, doing my best impression of someone invisible. That was until the door creaked open and she walked in like the sun forgot it wasn't supposed to shine indoors.
Isla Foster. Gold hoops, lip gloss, and confidence like a perfume you could choke on.
"Hey," she said, sliding into the seat beside mine like it belonged to her. "All the other seats taken?"
They weren't. Not even close.
I nodded anyway.
She raised an eyebrow but smiled, like she could see right through the lie. "Cool. I like the view."
We both looked out the window. I wasn't thinking about the sky. I was thinking about how her knee had bumped mine when she sat down and she didn't move it.
People like her weren't supposed to notice people like me. Not when I dressed in oversized sweatshirts and kept my head down. Not when I only spoke when called on and never, ever looked girls like her in the eye.
But Isla noticed things. She noticed when I dropped my pencil and picked it up before I could. She noticed when the teacher mispronounced my name and quietly corrected it under her breath the next day. She noticed me and I hated how much I wanted her to keep doing that.
It wasn't like I'd never had feelings for a girl before.
I had. Plenty.
But those were feelings that lived in locked boxes, buried in secret folders on my laptop, written in journals I burned in my backyard when I was twelve.
This? Isla Foster sitting next to me every morning, laughing too loudly, smelling like coconut and vanilla this was dangerous.
"You're quiet," she said one day, midweek, chewing on the end of her pen. "But not like…boring quiet. More like 'mysterious main character' quiet."
I blinked. "Uh. Thanks?"
She grinned, and I nearly forgot how to breathe.
"Do you like girls?"
The pen dropped from her hand and hit the floor with a soft clatter.
My stomach turned to ash.
"What?" I asked, voice thinner than paper.
She leaned back, too cool, too casual. "Sorry. That was blunt. I justI figured. You looked at me. That first day."
I felt the walls closing in. My pulse was a war drum. I thought I'd done so well. No rainbow pins. No stickers. No telling signs. Only the safe silence of "maybe she's just shy."
I stood up too fast, nearly knocking over my chair.
"II have to go."
"Wait," she said, and her voice cracked. Just a little. "I didn't mean to"
I was already walking away.
I didn't go to lunch that day. I sat in the library, behind the biography section, knees to chest, counting ceiling tiles and wondering why it hurt so much to almost be seen.
She knew. Or maybe guessed.
And that scared me more than anything.
Because if she was right, then it wasn't just a secret anymore. It was real.