The Bad Boy and Miss Checklist

Chapter 4: Paper Hearts

Author's Point of View:

The drive home was quiet, too quiet. David had kissed her cheek in the restaurant parking lot, wished her good night, and promised to call tomorrow. She’d smiled, given the expected reply, and slid into her car.

Now, with the hum of the engine and the faint buzz of the radio filling the silence, her mind replayed the evening on a loop. David’s careful plans. His crisp button-up and measured words. His steady smile, reassuring in its predictability.

It should have been comforting. Safe. Exactly the kind of life she’d always told herself she wanted. But instead, it felt like she’d been sitting in a perfectly decorated room with no windows, no air.

At a red light, her fingers drummed the steering wheel restlessly. She hated herself for it, but her thoughts drifted—not to David’s steady voice, but to the deep, rough-edged laugh she’d heard that morning. Not to the candlelit table, but to the glint of sunlight on dark leather.

Jaxon Romano.

She said his name in her head like it was a curse, but it didn’t sound like one. It sounded like trouble. The kind of trouble you knew better than to touch but couldn’t stop staring at anyway.

She shook her head sharply, forcing her focus back to the road. He wasn’t worth the thought. He was reckless, rude, the embodiment of every bad choice she’d worked her whole life to avoid. The kind of man who left chaos in his wake and called it living.

And yet.

By the time she pulled into her driveway, her chest was tight with frustration. She shut off the engine, sat there for a moment in the dim glow of the dashboard, and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel.

"Why am I even thinking about him?" she whispered to herself.

Inside, her apartment was neat as always. Shoes lined by the door, a scented candle waiting on the counter, her planner sitting open on the desk with tomorrow’s tasks already color-coded. Comfort in order. Security in routine.

She set her bag down and tried to shake off the unease, flipping through her planner as if staring at tidy bullet points could erase the image of dark eyes and a crooked smile. Tomorrow was already laid out: class, library, errands. No Jaxon Romano. No disruptions.

And yet the thought of not seeing him again tugged at her in a way she refused to name.

She sank onto the couch and picked up her phone. A new message from Miley blinked on the screen:

Miley:So, how’s Mr. Perfect? Did he sweep you off your feet or bore you to tears?*

She typed back slowly.

Elise: Dinner was fine. Then I added, You were right. I might be a little bored.

She quickly teased the last two sentences, denying her thoughts.

Miley’s reply came seconds later.

MIley: Sorry if I came off as pushy today. I just want you to live a little, Eli. You need to step out of this box you got yourself in.

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Because even as she set her phone aside and curled beneath a blanket, her pulse betrayed her, beating faster at the thought.

Her eyes closed, but sleep didn’t come easily, the thought of them being separated by the thin wall of the dorm apartments. Her mind kept circling back to the same moment—the sight of Jaxon standing outside her, eyes closed rubbing his temples from the hangover, as he accused her of being in his apartment. She was refusing, but now she wish she had been. She quickly brushed the thoughts away.

Tomorrow, she told herself firmly. Tomorrow will be ordinary again. She wouldn’t see him.

But deep down, beneath the layers of denial, a small part of her hoped fate wouldn’t listen.

---

She found herself back in the tiny kindergarten classroom, with its alphabet charts peeling at the corners and the faint smell of glue sticks and crayons heavy in the air. Sunlight spilled across the floor in dusty rectangles, catching in the jar of paintbrushes by the window. The plastic chairs were far too small for her now, but in the dream she was five again, with uneven pigtails and scuffed sneakers, clutching a drawing she’d worked on all morning.

A crooked heart in red crayon.

Her stomach twisted even in the dream, the same nerves she’d felt then. She’d wanted to give it to him—Jaxon Romano, the boy with untied shoelaces and grass stains on his knees, who laughed too loud and climbed the jungle gym higher than anyone else dared.

She shuffled toward him across the play rug, the paper heart clutched behind her back, her words already stumbling in her head.

“I like you, Jaxon. I like you a lot.”

But when she reached him, nothing came out. Just a squeak, followed by silence.

He turned, blinking at her with wide brown eyes, then grinned, the kind of grin that was both mischievous and careless. “What’s wrong, Checklist? Cat got your tongue?”

She frowned, cheeks burning. He always called her that, even back then. *Miss Checklist.* Because she lined up her crayons in rainbow order, because she had a snack plan, because she raised her hand before answering every question.

“I—I just…” she stammered, looking down at her sneakers.

He tilted his head, then leaned back in his hands with a confidence only a five-year-old Jaxon could muster. “If you can’t say it, write it.”

Her gaze snapped up. “What?”

“That’s what my brother Daniel says,” Jaxon replied, puffing his chest out just a little. He adored that older brother, and it showed in every word. “He says an unprepared man is a man set for failure. So if you can’t say what you mean, write it down first. Then you’ll be ready.”

His words lodged in her heart, sticky and permanent. She’d carried them away like treasure. That night, she’d copied her little confession in her best handwriting, each letter careful and neat. And from then on, she’d written everything—her dreams, her worries, her plans. A life lived in lists.

The dream shifted, blurred, and when it cleared again, she was older. Taller.

Lockers slammed in the distance. The echo of sneakers squeaked against waxed floors. Bright banners fluttered in the gymnasium, announcing the end of 8th grade and the start of summer.

She stood by the bleachers, heart pounding, clutching a folded sheet of lined paper. Her handwriting had grown neater, sharper, but the nerves were the same. Today was the day. The last day. If she didn’t confess now, high school would swallow them both, and the chance would slip away forever.

She spotted him across the gym. Jaxon Romano, taller now, his hair messier, his smile less frequent. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, expression dark. A week ago, Daniel had died. The news had spread through town like wildfire: a police officer had gone too soon. And Jaxon… he hadn’t been the same since.

Still, she told herself, this was her moment.

She walked up to him, the paper crinkling in her sweaty grip. “Hey, Jaxon. Can I… can I talk to you for a second?”

His eyes flicked up, guarded, and he gave a half-shrug. “Sure. What’s up?”

Her throat locked. The words she’d practiced a hundred times tangled like knots. So she unfolded the paper and began to read.

Her voice wavered but stayed steady enough as she recited how she had liked him since kindergarten, how she admired him, what she wanted him to know before they went to high school.

But she barely looked at him. Her eyes stayed glued to the sheet, afraid of messing up, afraid of forgetting.

When she finished, silence stretched between them.

Then his jaw tightened. His hands curled into fists at his sides.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, his voice sharp, too sharp for the moment.

She blinked. “What?”

“You couldn’t even look at me?” His words cracked with something raw, something deeper than teenage anger. “You just read it. Like… like it didn’t even mean anything. Do you know how they told me about my brother?” His voice broke, low and ragged. “Two officers. Reading it off a damn sheet of paper. No eye contact. No feeling. Just… words. Like I was nothing.”

Her heart stopped. The paper trembled in her hands.

“Jaxon, I—”

“Forget it,” he snapped, turning away. “If you can’t even say it to my face, don’t bother.”

The gym buzzed around them with laughter and goodbyes, but to her, it all fell away, muffled under the weight of his rejection. She stood frozen, the words she’d prepared suddenly hollow, meaningless.

And at that moment, she understood too late: the advice he’d once given her, the thing she had built her whole self around, had become the thing that tore them.

—

The paper lay on the ground between them, and Jaxon turned away before she could say anything else. His grey eyes were unreadable now, a storm sealed shut, and then—just like that—he walked off, shoulders stiff, leaving her alone with her confession scattered across lined pages.

Elise stayed frozen for a moment, her throat aching, until the tears finally spilled. She knelt to gather the paper, but her vision blurred, the words she had written smearing with wet drops as if they themselves were crying, too.

That night, she buried her face in her pillow and sobbed until her chest hurt. Her mother found her like that—red-eyed, clutching the ruined pages in her fists.

“Elise, honey…” Her mother sat beside her, smoothing her hair back gently. Elise collapsed against her, burying her face in the comfort of her mother’s shoulder, the dam breaking all over again.

“I shouldn’t have read it!” she choked between sobs. “I should’ve looked at him, I should’ve just said it out loud—I should’ve memorized it. I ruined everything!”

Her mother’s hand moved in slow, steady circles on her back. “Sweetheart, you didn’t ruin anything. You were brave. Braver than most people your age.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Elise cried harder. “I was a coward. I looked at the paper instead of him. And now—now I can’t fix it, because he’s leaving. We’re not even going to the same high school! He’s going to East Ridge, and I’m stuck at Westview! The district line is right between our houses—it’s not fair.”

Her mother sighed softly, kissing the crown of her head. “Sometimes life pulls people apart, Elise. It doesn’t mean it's forever.”

But at fourteen, forever felt very real. Elise cried until her throat was raw, her words repeating over and over in her mind like a curse:"I should have looked at him. I should have looked at him.*

---

And then, just as suddenly as the memory had started, the dream dissolved into darkness.

Elise woke with a sharp gasp, sitting bolt upright in bed. Her sheets clung to her skin, damp with sweat, her heartbeat drumming wildly against her ribs.

For a moment, she couldn’t place herself—was she still that girl in 8th grade with a crumpled note in her hands, watching Jaxon’s storm-grey eyes close against her? Or was she here, now, in the silence of her tidy apartment, the city’s hum just outside her window?

Her trembling hands reached for the glass of water on her nightstand, but she couldn’t bring herself to drink. Her chest ached the way it had that night, as though the dream had peeled back a scar she thought had healed.

She whispered into the quiet, almost afraid of her own voice.

“Miss Checklist.”