Sweet Romance10 min read
"You Can't Run From Me" — A School Year That Changed Everything
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"I can't believe I ran into the wrong classroom."
I was breathless, skirt stuck to my knees, hair a mess, and my face bright red like I had sprinted through the sun. People stared. A teacher peered at me.
"You're late," she said.
"Sorry. Transfer student. Wrong room," I said, trying to bend words around my pounding heart.
They clapped because the teacher asked me to introduce myself. I said what new girls always say—where I'm from, what I like, a polite bow. Then she pointed to the empty seat at the back.
"Sit there," she said.
I walked in and found him.
He was sleeping with his head down, a jacket over his face. Even sleeping he looked sharp. I thought he couldn't be real at first.
"Hi," I said, too loud.
He lifted one brow and said, "Atticus Castro."
"Jayla Jacobs," I said. My voice went squeaky and I nearly ran away.
Lea Johansson smiled and offered me a comb as if I had a unicorn problem. Jaylee Delgado and Georgina Hart squeezed my hand and shrieked when they learned who he was.
"Your desk mate is Atticus?" Jaylee said.
"He's the school top," Georgina whispered to me.
"Looks like a comic book," I told myself. "Don't swoon, Jayla. You're here to study."
But then he pushed a math paper across to me.
"Do you want help?" he asked, like it cost nothing to care.
I tried to say no. I failed.
"Okay," I said. "Thanks."
After that, my life became a list of small, sharp moments. He was cold in hallways, blunt in class, and impossibly patient in math.
"Why do you sleep in class?" I asked once.
"Because it's boring," Atticus said without looking up.
"Then why the perfect scores?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I work fast."
"Teach me," I said before I thought.
He smiled the first real smile I'd ever seen from him. It was small and private, and I wanted to store it.
"Bring me your bad problems after school," he said.
"Yes, sir," I said like an idiot.
The rumor that would define my first semester started because I sat beside him and because I laughed once too loud when he did a small thing—a smile, a tease. Aurora Charles, our school beauty, saw us together and decided I was a threat. Aurora and Atticus had history everyone said: childhood promises, a family's plan. She was always there at his side in a way that made other girls quiet.
"Are you two together?" people asked me in hallways.
"No," I said.
"Right." They looked at me like I had a secret.
At lunch, Aurora came over with a soft voice and a harder look.
"Jayla," she said. "You and Atticus spend a lot of time together."
"We study," I said. "Really."
She put on a small, practiced hurt face. "I'm engaged to him. My family and his family agreed when we were children. Please, don't interfere."
I believed her then. I promised. I kept my distance. I lied to myself I could keep that promise.
But promises are messy. Atticus did not always let me keep distance. Once, in the dim light of class, I tripped over my own feet and fell into him. He steadied me and stayed close.
"Don't," he said quietly. "Don't walk away when we're working."
"I promised Aurora," I said, breathless.
"Why would you promise a girl you barely know?" he asked.
"Because she cried," I said.
He was silent for a long moment. "You made the wrong promise."
I didn't want to hurt anyone. I didn't want to lose my friends. I wanted to be honest and not ruin things for Aurora and Atticus if there truly was something between them. So I tried to hide what I felt.
Rumors spread like a small fire. Someone posted a photo of me handing Atticus a pen at his birthday. Someone else said I hugged him in the cafeteria. Voices grew louder. I stopped raising my head in halls.
"You can't let this go," Atticus said one afternoon. He had that look—quiet and dangerous—when he was serious.
"Let it go?" I said. "You don't know what they're saying."
"I do," he said. "And it's stupid. People say what people say. I told the teacher. But rumors don't stop because the truth is told."
"Then what?" I asked. "Do we just walk through and let them point?"
"No." Atticus sat very close. "We stand the same way we always stand. Together or apart, but honest."
I looked at him and the words I had been holding folded up into a smaller box inside me. They rattled but didn't come out.
Time kept doing its slow work. We studied. He drew step-by-step on my notebook until algebra stopped feeling like a monster.
"How do you make this look easy?" I asked.
"I don't want it to be easy for other people," he said. "I want it to be easy for you."
I learned it. I learned him. I learned that a straight line of math could bend into a softer shape: his patience, the way he put his hand on a problem and made it feel less daunting.
Then Eli Cameron arrived.
He was a transfer—tall, approachable, with the easy smile of someone who had been my neighbor in another life. He called me "Jayla" the way people who had been kids together called each other—no full names, no formalities. He remembered the rabbit plush I'd carried when I was six. He called it "the baby we had." He said "we" like he had been part of my old small world, and it broke something open in the middle of me.
"You're childhood friends?" Atticus asked the first day Eli walked into our English class.
"Yes," I said. "He grew up across the street from my grandma's house. We used to fight over orange slices."
"Orange slices," Atticus repeated like a small complaint and then nothing.
Eli smiled and went to the desk next to mine. He slid a carefully prepared notebook toward me.
"I made a study plan," he said. "If you want it, I'll help."
The two of them—Atticus and Eli—watched me like a pair of suns. Between them, the air was loud. I made a choice to accept help from both because I wanted to learn faster, because I felt safer with two people who cared. I didn't know I was opening a door.
Then a small war started—quiet, childish, sweet. A math problem, a joke, a small rivalry over whether I preferred orange slices or chocolate cake. They would trade barbs and then soften when I looked at them. They would challenge each other by doing extra sets of problems or staying longer at the library just to see if I would smile at one of their notes.
"You're the worst," Atticus told Eli one night in the library when Eli had sneaked chocolate for me.
"You started this," Eli said.
"Did not."
"Did too."
I watched them and felt odd and full at the same time. It should have been easy—one boy, one heart. But life isn't a single line; it's many lines crossing.
One evening, after a tutoring session, Atticus asked me a question that wasn't about math.
"Do you want to go to my birthday on Saturday?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. I didn't tell him I'd already packed a small pen with a bow. I had bought it because he had given me a math notebook on my first week, and I wanted to give something back.
The party was small. His friends were loud. Eli showed up with a calm smile. Aurora came in perfect dress and perfect smile. I handed Atticus the pen with shaking hands.
"I didn't know what you liked," I said.
He looked at the pen and then at me. "I like pens," he said simply. "And the people who give them."
Eli laughed and clapped. Aurora's smile was thin.
Later, the photo that started a rumor was taken: Atticus standing near me, me handing him the pen, Aurora watching. The next day the rumor grew from a fire to a small forest. People said I was stealing someone else's story. People said I was trying to split them.
"You promised her," Aurora said one afternoon. She was not mean. She was a little tired of acting. "You told me you would not—"
"Enough," Atticus said. He sounded different—something like a bell that doesn't ring often. "There was a morning when we were children. We said things because adults told us to. That doesn't change what I do now."
She cried a little—real tears that looked more honest than the whole school. She hugged me and told me to keep being my friend, but the hug felt heavy; it felt like she wanted something back.
"Please," she whispered. "Just don't make more problems."
"I won't," I said. But then the world asked more of me.
At the amusement park, we were supposed to have one day that belonged to no one and everyone at once. We rode a roller coaster that made my heart drop and laugh at the same time. We stood in line at the photo booth and took a picture with the rabbit plush. Everything was loud. I remember Atticus and Eli arguing about who screamed louder. I remember my friends retching at one ride and being giggly at another. At the haunted house, we hid together. Atticus's arm brushed mine and neither boy let go first.
"They're relentless," Aurora had said earlier when she saw us together. "You should pick."
"I can't pick," I said once to Atticus, because it felt like a test and like betrayal at the same time. "I promised."
"Who says you have to pick like that?" he asked. "Who says it's a line drawn by other people?"
He was right and he was wrong. The thing about feelings is you can't order them into neat compartments.
Things broke open after the haunted house. The park closed. The small group parted. Phones pinged. People talked. Rumors grew like small weeds.
The next week, something happened that felt like the end of a small, private world.
A photo of me in the library reached someone who thought the worst. Gossip spread until it reached the teachers. The principal called Atticus to the office and asked him to explain. He did. He said nothing more than the simple truth: "She's my classmate. We study together." The teacher seemed to accept it, but teachers can't stop everything that moves silently between students.
After the meeting, Atticus walked back to me in the empty hallway. The lights were dim. He took my hand—not the quick touch of a friend, but a careful hold.
"You're not allowed to run from this," he said.
"Why would I want to run?" I asked.
"Because you worry," he said. "You worry what people will say. You worry who you hurt. You worry so much you forget yourself."
"Then stop me," I said.
He looked at me and then kissed me, softly, like a math formula that suddenly made sense.
It was the first time someone said anything back to me in a way that felt like home.
We didn't scream. We didn't make a show. We just stood there, in the corridor that smelled faintly like old books, and the world kept turning.
After that, everything changed.
Eli didn't vanish. He stayed close, but there was a look in his eyes that was different—like a storm he decided to keep quiet for now. Aurora stopped smiling as much but she came by my desk sometimes and left small notes: "I'm sorry"—and "You deserve him if he truly wants you." She was trying to be brave.
"Are you happy?" Eli asked me once, alone on the school steps.
"I am," I said. "I didn't expect this."
"You deserve him," he said. "And if you hurt, tell me. I'm still your friend."
He hugged me like childhood and didn't ask for more. His kindness was a shelter that kept me sane.
The month of exams came and went. I studied hard. I did not fail. My math improved. I still made mistakes. Atticus still corrected me. He was patient until patience became simple.
On the last day of term, Atticus took my hand in front of the whole class and said, "Jayla Jacobs, will you keep being with me in a way that matters? Not for show, not for rumors, but for real?"
My mouth went dry. I could see Aurora's face in the back, unreadable. I could see Eli's small, steady smile. I looked around and chose the one who had stood closest when the rumors were loudest.
"Yes," I said, loud enough that the classroom quieted. "Yes, Atticus. I will."
He let out breath as if we had both been holding it for days. He leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. It felt like someone had put a warm pen into my hand and told me to keep writing.
The school whispered. People wrenched their heads around. Some clapped. Some scowled. Aurora came forward slowly. Her eyes were tired.
"Jayla," she said. "I made a mistake before. I thought, because of a promise, I could decide how others should feel. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to act like that."
"You were honest," I said.
She gave a small laugh. "Was I? I cried more than I wanted to. I thought I could win him back. I couldn't. Maybe I never could."
She turned to Atticus. "I want you to be happy."
He nodded. "I want that too."
Aurora left with a small pack of friends. I watched her go and felt a prickle—not of hurt but of something like pity and relief. Some endings aren't loud. They are just small doors clicking closed.
After that, the rest of the year felt different. Atticus and I were no longer a rumor. We were a small, honest story. I still sat with him in class. I still let him explain math like he had explained the world. I still laughed too loud in hallways.
Eli became the person I could call when I overthought things. He would tease Atticus in a way that made both men roll their eyes. He helped me study. He never asked for a trade. He was a friend.
One rainy afternoon, months later, I found a small wrapped box on my desk. Atticus had left a note:
"Keep this. Run your hand over it when you doubt. —A"
I opened it. Inside was the pen I had given him back on his birthday. He had carved tiny initials on the clip.
I held it and thought about the long, messy year: wrong rooms, wrong rumors, wrong promises, and right moments. I touched the pen and smiled.
Outside, the rain fell soft like a quiet drum. Atticus knocked on the window and looked in. He smiled, and his eyes reached mine even in that small way he reserved only for me.
"I told you," he said when I opened the window. "You can't run from me."
"I tried," I said.
He leaned in and kissed me—this time a little fuller, like someone who had been patient and then decided patience was the wrong thing to keep. "Good. Because I'm not going anywhere."
We walked home together with umbrellas and ramen steaming in our hands and notes in our pockets. Aurora waved from across the street, small and steady, and Eli offered to carry my extra bag like the good neighbor he was.
At graduation, I stood in the crowd and saw the same faces at the back of the hall—the ones who had watched me when I was small and foolish and brave. Atticus stood next to me, tall and quiet. He squeezed my hand and said, "Don't forget to keep solving problems with me."
"Only if you promise to keep giving me hints," I said.
"Deal," he said.
We laughed, and the world felt like a softly lit corridor full of books I wanted to read.
I had come to this school by accident, nervous and clumsy. I leave it with a steady math book, a pen with small initials, a rabbit plush that Eli once wrenched from a fair booth, and a boy who took his time to teach me everything—not just math.
The last thing I wrote in my notebook before the year ended was not a formula. It was the small line Atticus once said in the empty hallway.
"You're not allowed to run from this."
I drew a little heart beside it and then wrote underneath, "I won't."
The End
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