Chapter Two — Gravity Doesn’t Ask Permission

Colton always got what he wanted.

That was the unspoken rule at Northridge High.

Star athlete, student council favorite, smile sharp enough to make teachers go soft. He was the kind of boy people expected Amelia to fall for — clean, polished, predictable.

And, in a way, she did.

It started innocently. Study sessions. Walks home. Inside jokes that made her laugh until her stomach hurt. Colton was easy to like — and easy to be liked by.

He noticed her first, officially. Asked her questions no one else had. Offered her his hoodie the first time she shivered in the library.

But what Amelia didn’t know was that Micah had already offered it once.

Silently.

From across the room.

In a look he never let her see.

Micah watched it all happen like a film he couldn’t pause. Every time she smiled at Colton, something inside him knotted tighter. He wasn’t angry — not really. Just… hollow.

He told himself it was fine. That she deserved someone like Colton. Someone who didn’t live in the quiet edges of other people’s lives.

Still, his sketchbook began to fill with her.

Her smile. Her posture. The shape of her hands when she turned a page.

Lines and shadows that captured her better than any photograph could.

Ellis started noticing, of course.

“Micah,” she said one night, peering over his shoulder. “Why are you sketching the new girl again?”

He closed the book too fast.

“I’m not,” he lied.

Ellis raised a brow but didn’t push. She knew her brother too well — when to tease, when to leave him be.

Amelia and Colton made their relationship official two months later.

Micah was there when it happened — a bonfire behind the school after a football game. The smell of smoke and burnt marshmallows in the air. The laughter. The cheers.

And Colton, grinning like the world had handed him a prize, pulling Amelia in for a kiss.

Micah turned away before it happened, staring into the flames instead.

He could still hear her laugh behind him.

Ellis nudged him.

“You okay?”

He nodded once. “Yeah. Just tired.”

But he wasn’t tired. He was unraveling.

Later that night, he walked home alone, earbuds in but no music playing. His thoughts were loud enough.

He told himself he’d stop drawing her. Stop looking. Stop thinking.

But when he reached his desk, he opened his sketchbook anyway.

And in the dim glow of his lamp, he wrote under her latest portrait:

“If gravity had a face, it would look like hers.”

Micah learned early how to disappear.

It wasn’t something he practiced — it was instinct. The art of blending in, of being the shadow in other people’s stories.

So when Amelia transferred to Northridge and began lighting up every hallway she walked down, he already knew his place.

He’d watch. He’d remember. He’d stay quiet.

He didn’t mean to notice her that much at first.

It started small — a glance during art class, the way her hair caught sunlight like it was trying to keep her for itself. The way she tilted her head when she read, as if the words were whispering secrets meant only for her.

And then one day, she dropped a pencil.

Someone else might’ve just picked it up and moved on.

But Micah noticed the way her fingers trembled slightly when she reached for it — not from nerves, but from thought. She was somewhere else. He wanted to know where.

He started memorizing details without meaning to.

How she always carried two notebooks — one for notes, one for something else.

How she chewed her lip when she was deep in thought, but only the right side.

How she wore mismatched socks on days she looked happiest.

It wasn’t fascination anymore. It was rhythm.

She became the steady pulse in the background of his days.

Sometimes, he’d linger near her locker after last bell, pretending to text while she chatted with Colton.

Colton’s laugh filled the hall, big and confident — it drew attention.

Amelia’s laugh was quieter, the kind you had to lean in to catch.

Micah leaned in, even when he wasn’t close.

He didn’t hate Colton. He couldn’t. Colton was good to her — everyone saw that.

But there were moments that didn’t sit right.

Like when she’d look at Colton with a polite smile, not a full one.

Or when she’d stay quiet after a joke that wasn’t funny but felt expected.

Micah noticed all of it. He saw the fractures no one else did.

He never told Ellis. She’d call him dramatic. Maybe she’d be right.

Instead, he drew.

His sketchbook became confession and observation all at once — Amelia reaching for a book, Amelia tucking hair behind her ear, Amelia standing too long at the window during rain.

He told himself it wasn’t obsession. It was art.

Art needed truth, and she was the truest thing he’d ever seen.

Sometimes, he’d walk past the library just to make sure she was there. Not to talk — just to see her alive in real time.

Her presence was proof that the world still worked.

He didn’t need her to notice him.

He didn’t even want her to, not yet.

Because if she did, she might ruin it — the stillness, the mystery.

He’d rather keep her like this — a study in distance.

At night, when the world quieted, Micah replayed the days in his head.

How she brushed past him without realizing. How she smiled at someone else. How she didn’t see him.

He could live with that.

He told himself he could.

But deep down, he already knew the truth:

There would come a day she’d finally look at him — really look.

And when that happened, he wouldn’t know how to look away.

By winter, the secret was no longer a secret.

Amelia and Colton were official — not in a flashy or loud way, but in the way everyone already knew before they said it.

He’d walk her to class, hand brushing her shoulder like second nature.

She’d save him a seat in the cafeteria, pretending not to notice the grin that always crept across his face when he spotted her.

Their names started coming together in conversations, as if people couldn’t say one without the other.

It felt easy. Comfortable. The kind of high school love people said would fade by graduation — but that, for now, felt unshakable.

One afternoon, they were at Ellis’s house for a movie night. Everyone was piled on couches and beanbags, laughing over old inside jokes.

Colton leaned close, whispering something ridiculous in Amelia’s ear that made her burst out laughing so hard she nearly spilled her drink.

It wasn’t anything romantic — it didn’t need to be. Being around him was simple like that. She could just be herself. No pressure, no overthinking.

When he looked at her, he didn’t study her like she was a mystery to solve; he looked at her like she was already understood.

At school, the relationship took on a routine of its own.

They met between classes, sometimes walking in silence, sometimes talking about everything — music, plans, jokes, future dreams that sounded too big to say out loud.

Colton wasn’t the type to make big declarations. He wasn’t loud about how he felt. But he showed it in small ways.

A sweatshirt left in her locker when she forgot hers.

A text that just said you good? on the days she looked tired.

A small gesture — his hand resting against her back as they walked through the crowded halls — that said more than words ever could.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was real.

By spring, their relationship had become part of the background noise of high school life.

Everyone had opinions — they always did.

Some thought they were too serious, others said they looked inseparable. Amelia didn’t care either way.

She’d catch her reflection in passing windows and think, So this is what happy looks like.

Not the big, dramatic kind of happiness. Just quiet. Steady. Hers.

Ellis teased her constantly, but never unkindly.

“You’re glowing again,” she’d say at lunch, nudging her shoulder.

Amelia would roll her eyes. “It’s just hot outside.”

“Sure,” Ellis said with a grin, “hot because of Colton.”

Amelia would laugh, shake her head, and let it slide.

Because maybe it was true. Maybe she was glowing — not from anything dramatic, but from the simplicity of being seen and cared for.

By the time the year started to wind down, their connection had deepened quietly. They weren’t the couple making scenes in the hallways or posting every photo together. They didn’t need to.

There were moments — soft and unspoken — that said enough.

The way he looked at her when she was talking to friends.

The way she reached for his hand without realizing she’d done it.

The way they didn’t rush anything, didn’t need to prove what they already knew.

For the first time, Amelia felt like she belonged exactly where she was — not performing, not pretending, not searching for meaning.

Just being.

And that was enough.