We’d been best friends since we were five. Everyone knew we were in love except us.

I met Leo when his family moved next door and my mom made me bring over cookies to be neighborly. He was sitting on his front steps looking miserable about leaving his old friends, and I told him he could share my friends if he wanted. He said girls had cooties, and I dumped the entire plate of cookies on his head.

We were inseparable after that.

For the next thirteen years, we did absolutely everything together. He walked me to school every morning, even when the guys made fun of him for hanging with a girl. I went to every single one of his baseball games, even the away ones that meant three-hour bus rides. We had this whole routine where I’d paint his jersey number on my face and scream louder than all the actual girlfriends in the stands.

People always asked if we were dating, and we’d both laugh like it was the most ridiculous thing ever. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. We were Leo and Julia, which was somehow bigger and smaller at the same time.

High school was when everyone really started pushing it. His teammates kept telling him I was obviously in love with him, and my friends swore he looked at me different than other girls. We’d roll our eyes and explain for the hundredth time that growing up together made us basically siblings. I knew everything gross about him, like how he ate cheese directly from the block at two a.m., and he’d seen me with chickenpox, braces, and that unfortunate perm sophomore year.

You don’t date someone who helped you bury your hamster in third grade.

College almost broke us, though. He got into State University for engineering, and I went to the art school forty minutes away for graphic design. The first month was brutal. I’d call him crying because my roommate was psycho, and he’d drive over at midnight to bring me soup when I got sick. He’d text me during lectures because his lab partner kept hitting on him, and he didn’t know how to make her stop without being mean.

We made this pact to have dinner together every Sunday no matter what. Sometimes that meant meeting halfway at this crappy diner that had terrible food but was exactly twenty minutes from both schools. Those Sundays kept me sane.

Junior year, everything changed when Leo started dating this girl named Becca from his program. She was smart and pretty and actually really nice, which made it worse somehow. For the first time in sixteen years, Leo had someone else who came first. He still made Sunday dinners, but now he’d spend half the time texting her. When I called upset about failing a project, he was at her place and couldn’t talk long.

I told myself this was good and normal and I was happy he found someone. I started dating too. This guy Daniel from my painting class was sweet and funny and absolutely not Leo.

The four of us would go on these awkward double dates where everyone was trying too hard to make it work. Becca would ask how long Leo and I had been friends and then comment how cute it was, like our friendship was some novelty. Daniel kept trying to compete with inside jokes he didn’t understand. Leo and I couldn’t even look at each other properly because it felt like betraying the people we were with.

Everything exploded senior year when Becca got accepted to grad school in California and wanted Leo to move with her after graduation. She gave him this whole speech about how it was time to leave childhood things behind and start their real life together.

The childhood thing was me.

Leo told me about it during our Sunday dinner, and I said he should absolutely go because Becca was amazing and California had great engineering jobs. He stared at me for the longest time, then said, “Yeah. I was right.”

That night, I went back to my dorm and cried until my roommate threatened to call health services.

Daniel broke up with me two weeks later, saying I was clearly in love with someone else and he deserved better than being second choice. I wanted to argue but couldn’t, because some part of me knew he was right, even if I’d never admitted it.

The week before graduation, Leo showed up at my apartment at three a.m., which wasn’t unusual, except he was completely sober and looked destroyed. He said he’d ended things with Becca because she asked him to choose between California with her or staying near me, and he couldn’t do it.

I told him he was an idiot for ruining his future over a friendship, and he said that was the problem. I wasn’t just his friend and hadn’t been for years.

Then he kissed me.

I pulled back from the kiss, and my whole body felt like it was shaking. Leo was staring at me with this look on his face that was scared and hopeful at the same time, and I couldn’t breathe right. We had just crossed a line that we could never uncross, and I knew it.

My brain was trying to find the perfect thing to say, but all that came out was asking if he really broke up with Becca for me. He nodded like it was the most obvious answer in the world, and I felt my stomach flip.

We sat there on my apartment steps, not touching, just looking at each other, and I could hear my heart beating in my ears. His hair was messy and he had this tired look around his eyes like he hadn’t slept in days. I wanted to kiss him again and run away at the same time.

We ended up going inside and sitting on opposite ends of my couch because I was too scared to be close to him. The whole night we just talked without touching at all.

Leo told me he’d been in love with me since sophomore year of high school, when I showed up to his baseball game with the flu because I’d promised I’d be there. He said he convinced himself it was just friendship because I never seemed interested in him that way.

I sat there listening and feeling like an idiot because I’d spent years telling everyone we were basically siblings when apparently we both knew better.

When it was my turn, I admitted that Daniel was right about me being in love with someone else. I told Leo I just couldn’t admit it was him until he kissed me tonight.

We talked until the sun started coming up through my window, and at some point we both fell asleep on the couch with our feet almost touching in the middle.

Raina came home the next morning and found us like that, fully dressed and passed out. She took one look at us and started demanding to know what happened. I was still half asleep when I told her Leo and I kissed, and she actually screamed so loud my neighbor banged on the wall.

She kept saying everyone had been waiting for this since we were kids and she knew it would finally happen. Her reaction made the whole thing feel real in a way that scared me because now other people knew and there was no taking it back.

Raina made us coffee and sat there grinning while Leo and I avoided looking at each other. She asked when our first date was and I realized we hadn’t even talked about what this meant.

Leo left to go change clothes, and Raina told me I looked happy and terrified, which was exactly right.

Leo texted me later asking if I wanted to get coffee near campus, like an actual date. I said yes, even though my hands were shaking typing it.

We met at this coffee shop we’d been to a hundred times before, but suddenly everything felt different and weird. I kept catching myself falling into best friend mode, telling him about my design project and asking about his engineering lab, then remembering we were supposed to be romantic now.

I knocked over my coffee twice because I was so nervous, and the second time it spilled all over the table and Leo jumped up to grab napkins.

Walking back to campus, he reached for my hand and I let him take it. His hand felt warm and familiar and completely wrong at the same time, like we were playing pretend in someone else’s relationship. I kept thinking about how I’d held his hand a thousand times before when we were kids, but this was different and I didn’t know how to be different with Leo.

A week went by, and we were still trying to figure out how to be together instead of just friends. Leo came over to study and mentioned I should look for graphic design jobs near his school after graduation. I felt something snap inside me and told him I wasn’t Becca and I wouldn’t rearrange my whole life just because he decided we were together now.

He looked hurt and said he just wanted us in the same city, but I could hear what he really meant. He expected me to be the one to move and compromise and give things up.

We had our first real fight right there in my apartment with my textbooks spread everywhere. Leo said I was being unfair and I said he was being selfish, and we both knew we were really fighting about being scared.

He left without kissing me goodbye, and I sat there feeling sick.

The next few weeks were awful as graduation got closer and we had to make real decisions. I got a job offer from this amazing design firm in a city two hours away, and I wanted it so bad I could taste it. Leo got offers both locally and in my city, and when I told him about mine, he immediately said he’d take the local one. He said something about staying near his family, but I could see it on his face. He was already starting to resent the choice he made with Becca, and now he was making the same choice with me.

We had this long, painful conversation where I told him I needed him to want his own life instead of just following me around. Leo got quiet and asked if I even wanted to be with him, and I said yes, but not like this. Not with him giving up things and then hating me for it later.

Leo’s graduation party was at his parents’ house, and everyone kept congratulating us on finally getting together. His sister Azariah pulled me aside near the kitchen and asked if I was sure about this relationship. She said Leo had been making decisions based on what he thought I wanted since we were kids, and she was worried he didn’t know who he was without me.

Her words stuck in my head for the rest of the party. I watched Leo talking to his relatives and realized I’d been so focused on my own fears that I didn’t notice he might be losing himself.

When we were five, he dumped his juice box because I said I didn’t like that flavor. When we were twelve, he quit the chess club because I thought it was boring. At eighteen, he turned down California for me. Azariah was right, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

Two months after graduation, Leo was working at some local engineering firm and I could tell he hated it. I’d visit on weekends and he’d be tired and frustrated, complaining about his boss and the boring projects they gave him.

One night, I woke up to use the bathroom and caught him looking at California job listings on his laptop. I asked him directly if he regretted turning down Becca’s plan, and he was quiet for a long time. Then he admitted sometimes he wondered what his life would look like if he’d chosen differently.

We stayed up the rest of that night talking about what we actually wanted instead of what we thought we should want. Leo said he felt stuck, and I said I felt guilty, and we both agreed something had to change.

We decided to try long distance so Leo could take a better engineering job three hours away. The first month was terrible because we were used to being in constant contact, and now we had to schedule phone calls like strangers.

Leo would call during his lunch break and I’d be in the middle of a design meeting. I’d text him at night and he’d already be asleep because he had to wake up early.

I threw myself into work projects and started making friends with people from my firm. We’d go to art galleries on weekends and I’d realize I was having fun without Leo there. It felt like freedom and it felt like losing something at the same time.

I was surprised to find I actually liked having space to figure out who I was without Leo always around.

Four months into long distance, we were barely talking beyond quick updates about work. I went on a coffee run with my coworker Caleb one afternoon and we ended up walking around the city for an hour just talking about design and music and nothing important.

When I got back to my apartment, I realized I hadn’t thought about Leo all day.

That night when Leo finally called, our conversation felt forced and empty. He told me about some project at work and I told him about a client presentation, and we both knew we were just going through the motions.

After we hung up, I sat there staring at my phone wondering when talking to my best friend started feeling like a chore. I thought about texting him that I missed him, but I wasn’t sure if it was true anymore.

I signed up for a pottery class the following week because someone at work mentioned it and I thought, Why not?

The studio smelled like wet clay and there were maybe eight people sitting at wheels looking just as clueless as me. The teacher was this older woman with gray hair pulled back in a messy bun who kept saying things like, “Feel the clay, don’t force it,” which sounded fake deep but actually helped.

My first bowl looked like a sad pancake, but I didn’t care because for two hours I wasn’t thinking about Leo or our weird half relationship or anything except keeping my hands steady.

I started going every Thursday night, and by the third week I could make something that almost looked like a mug. The people in class were nice in that casual way where you chat while working but don’t exchange numbers. There was a guy named Noah who worked in accounting and a woman named Sarah who taught middle school, and we’d joke about our terrible pottery while we cleaned up.

On Fridays, I started hitting the art market downtown with people from my design firm. We’d walk through the vendor stalls drinking overpriced coffee, and I’d buy these little paintings or handmade jewelry that I definitely didn’t need. My apartment was filling up with stuff that had nothing to do with Leo—things I picked because I liked them, not because they reminded me of some shared memory.

My coworker Caleb invited me to his birthday party, and I went even though I barely knew anyone there. I ended up talking to his roommate about graphic novels for like an hour, and when I got home I realized I’d had actual fun without checking my phone once to see if Leo texted.

The weird part was it did feel like freedom, but also like I was betraying something. Every time I laughed at a joke Leo hadn’t heard or made plans he wasn’t part of, there was this small guilty feeling in my chest, like I was supposed to save all my good moments for him, even though that made no sense.

I’d been building my whole life around being Leo and Julia since I was five, and now I was just Julia. And I didn’t know if that was growth or loss or both.

Three months into long distance, my phone rang at eleven p.m. on a Tuesday, which was weird because Leo and I had stopped calling unless we scheduled it. I almost didn’t answer, but something made me pick up.

He was crying so hard I could barely understand him at first. He kept saying he felt stuck and invisible, like his life was on pause and nothing he did mattered. I sat on my bed holding the phone, trying to figure out what to say while he talked about how his job was fine and his apartment was fine and everything was fine, but he felt like he was disappearing.

He admitted he only took the engineering position because it was close enough to visit me on weekends, not because it was actually what he wanted for his career. He said he’d been making choices based on what would keep him near me since we were kids, and now he didn’t even know what he wanted anymore.

I asked him what he would want if I wasn’t in the picture, and he went quiet for so long I thought the call dropped. Then he said he didn’t know how to want things for himself because needing me had always felt like the only thing that mattered.

I realized we’d both been doing the same thing, making decisions out of fear instead of desire. I’d taken my job partly because it was far enough away to prove I could exist without him. He’d taken his job to stay close enough to keep me. We were both so scared of losing each other that we’d stopped building actual lives.

After we hung up, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling thinking about how loving someone shouldn’t mean putting your whole life on hold. But somehow that’s exactly what we’d done.

Six months after graduation, we had the breakup conversation over video chat. Leo’s face on my laptop screen looked tired and sad, and I probably looked the same. We’d been dancing around it for weeks, the calls getting shorter and more awkward until we were basically strangers who used to know everything about each other.

He said, “Maybe we rushed into romance when we should have just stayed friends.”

I agreed, even though hearing the words out loud felt like something breaking in my chest.

We talked about how we’d gone from best friends to couple without figuring out how to be both. How we’d assumed our history meant we could skip steps, but that’s not how it works. Leo said he needed time to figure out who he was without me, and I said I needed the same thing.

We decided on a real break with no contact for a while, not the fake kind where you still text every day pretending you’re giving space.

When we hung up, I closed my laptop and sat there for a minute just breathing. Then I started crying and couldn’t stop.

I cried so hard my roommate knocked on my door asking if I was okay, and I couldn’t even answer. I cried until my face was swollen and my throat hurt and my chest ached.

Losing Leo felt like losing a piece of myself, like cutting off a limb I’d had since I was five years old. I’d spent more of my life with him than without him, and now I had to figure out how to be a whole person alone.

At Thanksgiving, I drove home dreading the whole weekend. My mom had made her usual massive dinner and invited half the neighborhood like always. She mentioned casually while I was helping with the dishes that Leo was visiting his family too.

My stomach dropped and I spent the rest of the night hyperaware of every car sound outside. I kept looking out the window at his parents’ house next door like I was fifteen again, waiting for him to come over.

Saturday, I barely left my room because I was terrified I’d run into him getting mail or taking out trash.

Sunday morning, I woke up early and made myself coffee in the kitchen. I looked out the window and froze because Leo was sitting on his front steps. He was just sitting there in a hoodie and jeans staring at nothing.

When he looked up and saw me through the window, our eyes met and I couldn’t move. He looked different somehow, more solid and real than he’d been on our video calls, like he’d grown into himself in the months we’d been apart.

I stood there holding my coffee mug, trying to decide what to do. And then he raised his hand in this small wave.

Before I could think about it, I grabbed my jacket and went outside.

We ended up talking for four hours on his front steps like we used to when we were kids. At first, it was awkward, both of us being too polite and careful with our words. Then he told me about his therapy sessions, and I forgot to be nervous.

He said his therapist had helped him realize he’d been afraid to want things for himself because he thought needing me made him weak. He’d spent so many years being the person who took care of me that he’d forgotten how to let himself need anything.

I told him about my pottery class and the art markets and how scared I’d been that building a life without him meant I didn’t love him anymore. I admitted I’d pushed him away because I was terrified of becoming Becca, of being the person who made him give up his dreams.

He said he understood that now, that we’d both been so afraid of the wrong things that we’d run from the right ones.

We talked about our jobs and our friends and all the things we’d done in the past six months. It felt like being best friends again, that easy, comfortable way we used to talk before everything got complicated. But it also felt different because we weren’t pretending anymore. We weren’t trying to force something or hide from something. We were just Leo and Julia figuring out who we’d become.

Leo pulled out his phone and showed me a job offer he’d gotten in my city. It was with a really good engineering firm working on projects he actually cared about. He said he’d interviewed for it a month ago without telling me because he needed to know he was making the choice for himself. He was taking the position regardless of what happened with us because it was what he wanted for his career, not because of me.

Something shifted in my chest when he said that. For the first time since we were five years old, Leo had made a choice that was truly his own. He wasn’t following me or staying close or sacrificing anything. He was building his life and I just happened to be in the same city.

I asked him what this meant for us, and he said he didn’t know but maybe we could figure it out. He said he wanted to try again, but differently this time, without all the fear and guilt and history weighing us down.

I realized I wanted that too. I wanted to see who we could be when we were both whole people choosing each other instead of needing each other.

We agreed to start over slowly when Leo moved to my city in January. We’d date like normal people instead of assuming our sixteen years of history meant we could skip steps.

Our first official date was at this coffee shop near my apartment that I’d been to a hundred times but never with him. Leo showed up with flowers, which was so formal and weird that we both laughed.

We ordered drinks and sat at a tiny table by the window, and it was awkward in the best way. We were trying to be romantic, but kept falling into best friend mode, then catching ourselves and trying again. He told me about his new job, and I told him about a design project I was excited about.

When he walked me home, he kissed me good night at my door, and it felt completely different from that first desperate kiss in my apartment. This one was intentional and careful and less scared, like we both knew what we were doing this time.

The next six months were hard work. We had to learn how to be a couple while also being separate people, and it didn’t come naturally. We fought about making time for each other versus our own friends. I had to resist the urge to fall back into our old patterns where we did everything together. Leo had to learn to tell me when he needed space instead of just disappearing for days.

We had this huge fight in April because I made plans with my pottery class friends on a night Leo wanted to see me. He said I was choosing them over him, and I said that was exactly the kind of thinking that broke us up the first time.

We didn’t talk for three days and I was terrified we were going to end up back where we started. But then he called and apologized and said his therapist had helped him see he was falling into old fears. We talked it through and figured out a better way to handle scheduling conflicts.

Slowly, we found a rhythm where we could be close without losing ourselves. We had date nights and friend nights and nights where we did our own thing. It felt healthier and harder and so much better than before.

When Leo’s company offered him a promotion that would mean moving to their California office, he didn’t tell me for two weeks. I found out because he left the offer letter on my kitchen counter by accident.

I was hurt at first that he’d kept it secret, but then I realized he was trying to figure it out on his own like he should.

We talked about it one night over takeout on my couch. He said he’d been going back and forth for weeks because the promotion was amazing, but he genuinely loved the project he was working on here. I told him honestly that I’d be sad if he left, but I wanted him to choose what was best for his career.

I meant it this time. I wasn’t saying it because I thought I should or because I was scared of being Becca. I meant it because I wanted Leo to have the life he wanted, even if that life didn’t include me in the same city.

He looked at me for a long time and then said he was turning it down. Not because of me, but because he really did prefer his current project and the team he was working with. The California office would mean starting over, and he liked where he was.

I believed him, and that felt huge.

Two years after that first kiss, we were at the same diner where we used to have Sunday dinners in college. The food was still terrible, but we kept coming back because it was ours.

Leo was nervous through the whole meal, dropping his fork twice and barely touching his burger. I thought maybe we were going to have another hard conversation about our future. Then he reached across the table and took my hand.

He said he’d spent the last two years learning how to be his own person. And the best part was that being his own person made him want to be with me even more.

He pulled out a ring and asked me to marry him.

I said yes because I wasn’t scared anymore. I wasn’t scared that loving him meant losing myself or that he’d resent me later or that we were making a mistake. We’d both grown into people who could stand on our own, which made choosing to stand together feel right.

We’d done the hard work of breaking apart and building ourselves back up separately. Now we got to choose each other, not because we needed to, but because we wanted to.

Planning the wedding turned into this weird reality check about what we’d actually become. I sat at the venue with the coordinator talking about seating charts and realized I was scheduling separate friend tables for Leo and me because we’d built actual lives apart from each other—my pottery class friends who’d never met Leo, his work buddies from the engineering firm who barely knew me.

It hit me that we weren’t those desperate kids anymore who couldn’t function without each other nearby. We had our own hobbies and our own people and our own bad days that the other person didn’t fix.

Leo came home from work frustrated about a project and I listened but didn’t try to solve it because that wasn’t my job anymore. I had a gallery rejection that stung and Leo hugged me but didn’t take it personally like it was happening to him too.

We were choosing each other every single day instead of just defaulting to each other because we’d always been together. It was harder than I’d imagined that night on my couch when he first kissed me. Messier, too, because we had to actually communicate instead of just knowing what the other person needed.

But it was better than any fairy-tale version I’d been too scared to want back then.

The wedding day came and Azariah stood up to give her speech, looking exactly like Leo when she got emotional. She talked about watching us grow up next door, how she’d seen us spend sixteen years perfecting friendship and then two years completely rebuilding everything we thought we knew about each other. She said she’d never seen two people work harder for their relationship or fight more to figure out how to be both independent and together.

When Leo and I danced later, his hand steady on my back, I thought about how we’d almost lost each other completely, how we’d had to break apart and learn to be whole people separately before we could actually be together properly.

Every fight we’d had about space and every night we’d spent apart learning who we were alone had led to this moment where I knew exactly who I was and still chose him.

He looked at me and smiled, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

We’d done it the hard way, the messy way, the way that almost destroyed us.