The Boy who broke me

Non-encounter

His smile was faint, almost mocking, like he knew I’d been staring. Like he was asking, Had enough?

My pulse jumped. Every second stretched unbearably long, the café’s noise dimming until all I heard was the uneven rhythm of my own heartbeat. The scrape of chairs, the hiss of the coffee machine, Anna’s spoon clinking against her glass—they all fell away.

Coffee in hand, he moved toward me. Measured steps. Unreadable expression. His gaze didn’t falter, didn’t even blink, and for one breathless moment, I thought he would stop right in front of me.

I dropped my eyes to the open textbook in front of me, pretending to study the bold headings. But the words blurred into a mess of black and white. My throat tightened. My palms pressed against the table. “What do I do? Smile? Apologize? Pretend I don’t exist?”

I risked a quick glance upward. He was still coming. Straight toward me.

Anna was buried in her phone, thumbs flying across the screen. Jane was digging through her bag with the frustration of someone looking for a pen that had fallen into another dimension. Neither of them noticed. Of course they didn’t.

They weren’t the ones caught in the crosshairs.

To them, he was just a rumor, a headline waiting to be written.

To me, he was something else entirely—something I couldn’t name but couldn’t look away from either.

My chest ached with nerves. “Okay, fine. I’ll just apologize. Hi, sorry I stared at you like you’re a human eclipse. Please don’t kill me.” Anna would have a field day writing that headline: “Girl Turns into Ashes Under Boy’s Death Stare.”

Closer. Closer. The air shifted with him. I caught the faintest trace of his cologne—clean, sharp, and ocean-deep. It reminded me of standing on a cliff edge where the sea raged below. A scent that promised both calm and danger.

My fingers tightened around the edge of my notebook. I braced myself.

And then—

He passed.

Right by me. Straight to the exit.

No words. No pause. No glance. Nothing.

The breath I’d been holding escaped in a shaky rush, my whole body trembling with the mixture of relief and something else—something dangerously close to disappointment.

“Okay, ‘what’ was that?” Anna finally asked, catching the way my eyes lingered toward the door.

“What was what?” My voice pitched too high, too quickly.

Jane smirked, finally victorious in pulling out a pen. “Don’t even try. You stared at him like he was your long-lost soulmate. Or a ghost.”

“I did not.” Heat crept across my face before I could stop it.

Anna leaned across the table, her grin infuriating. “Sarah, you’re blushing.”

“I’m not,” I snapped, but the denial only fueled their laughter.

Jane clutched her chest in mock drama. “Oh no. Our little Sarah has fallen for the brooding transfer student. This is how horror movies start.”

I scowled, stabbing my straw into my iced tea. “You two are insufferable.”

They kept laughing, Anna already typing something suspiciously fast into her notes app, probably drafting the headline: “Shy Girl Spotted Pining After Bad Boy in Glennfield Café.”

I tried to laugh it off with them, but the truth pressed against me too tightly to ignore. I didn’t tell them about the way my chest still felt constricted, like I’d been holding my breath even now. I didn’t tell them how his scent still lingered faintly in the air, like smoke after a firework.

Or how, that night, when I sat at my desk and flipped open my psychology notes, his face intruded between the lines of text. The sharp angle of his jaw. The shadow of his cap. Those eyes that had caught mine without effort.

Every time I tried to focus, the memory replayed—like a painting you couldn’t unsee once you’d looked too closely.

It wasn’t really an encounter. Not even close.

But it was enough to leave a mark. And something in me knew—it wouldn’t be the last.