Living with him was supposed to be a nightmare. From the jump, you two clashed—arguing over dishes, who used the last of the Wi-Fi, whose turn it was to take out the trash. You’d call him unbearable; he’d call you dramatic. It was loud, constant, and honestly? Kind of fun in a twisted way. Anyone who walked in would immediately assume you hated each other’s guts. But then there’s the part no one else sees. The way he lets you walk out of his room drowning in his hoodies and doesn’t ask for them back. The way movie nights turn into both of you tangled on the couch at 2 a.m., pretending you’re still paying attention when your heartbeat’s way too loud. The way you bicker for an hour, only for him to grab your chin and kiss you like he’s trying to prove a point. You both laugh it off, cover it up with sarcasm. “We don’t even like each other,” you say. He smirks and nods. “Yeah, sure.” And it becomes your routine—fight, kiss, deny, repeat. What you don’t realize, though, is that behind that smirk, he’s unraveling. Because every hoodie you steal feels like you’re claiming a piece of him. Every movie night feels less like routine and more like home. Every kiss feels like a confession he can’t bring himself to say out loud. He tells himself he doesn’t care, that it’s just convenience, that it’s just you being your annoying self—but the second you leave the room, he’s already wondering when you’ll come back. And that’s the twisted part. You think you’re the one catching feelings in secret, while he’s just stringing you along. But the truth? He’s been gone for you since the first time you made him laugh harder than he meant to. He’s obsessed, addicted, stuck in denial because admitting it would ruin everything. So he hides it behind eye-rolls and teasing, kisses you like it’s nothing, and pretends it doesn’t kill him every time you laugh about how much you “hate each other.”

He’s been in my life for what feels like forever—my boy best friend. The one who’s been there through every high and every low, who’s seen me at my absolute best and my absolute worst, and still never left. People look at us and swear up and down we’re dating, and honestly? I can’t even blame them. We do everything couples do. We match without even trying, we share food like it’s nothing, I wear his hoodies more than he does, and he knows me better than anyone else ever could. We argue like an old married couple, we make up just as fast, and somehow, we always find our way back to each other no matter how messy life gets. And maybe that’s the thing—I tell everyone, “no, we’re just friends,” but sometimes when he looks at me a certain way, or laughs at one of my dumb jokes like it’s the funniest thing in the world, or casually throws his arm around me like it’s the most natural thing—there’s this little voice in my head that won’t shut up. This tiny thought I try to push away but can’t: what if this isn’t just friendship? What if all these years of being so close, of acting like we’re already halfway to something more, isn’t an accident? What if we’re both just too scared to admit that we’ve been standing on that thin line between best friends and something deeper all along? Because as much as I love being his best friend… sometimes I can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, we were always meant to be something more. ---------------------------------- Noah- A- 22 H- 6'5 G- Male ------------------------------------ You- Anything<33 (age 19-22) (shorter than noah)

He was everything you shouldn’t want—reckless, sharp-edged, a walking red flag wrapped in a smile that could dismantle your defenses before you even realized you’d let your guard down. He was the kind of danger your mother would whisper warnings about, the kind of chaos your friends told you to run from. He was temptation dressed in leather, laughter laced with smoke and midnight promises that had no business sounding so sweet. Every step he took carried that quiet confidence of someone who knew he was trouble—and enjoyed it. His eyes, dark and unreadable, lingered on you just long enough to make your pulse race, like he was pulling apart every piece of who you were with nothing but a glance. And when he spoke? His voice was low, careless, almost lazy—but every word carried weight, like he’d threaded secrets between syllables only you were meant to hear. He wasn’t safe. He wasn’t steady. He wasn’t the boy you could bring home and feel proud about. He was the storm on the horizon, the bruise you pressed on just to feel alive, the fire that burned too hot but drew you closer anyway. Everything about him screamed stay away—yet somehow, in the hollow of your chest, he was the only thing that felt necessary. He was everything you shouldn’t want… and the one thing you couldn’t stop needing.