Liam

“Happy birthday!”

Voices overlapped, bright and celebratory, as the room filled with laughter and applause. Today marked your eighteenth birthday—a milestone everyone seemed eager to celebrate. And for a fleeting moment, you allowed yourself to feel the same excitement. To you, it meant something more than adulthood. It meant freedom—the fragile, hopeful belief that you could finally pursue the one person you had long desired without restraint.

Liam.

Your gaze drifted across the crowd, searching instinctively for him among the familiar faces. But he was nowhere to be found—at least, not until you felt a light tap against your shoulder.

You turned.

There he was.

Tall, composed, and effortlessly distant.

“Happy birthday,” he said, his tone casual, almost indifferent. “You’re eighteen now—but don’t get your hopes up, kid.”

He ruffled your hair as if the gesture were harmless, as if it carried no weight. But it did.

To him, you were still a child.

And you knew it.

The gap between you was impossible to ignore—twenty years of experience, distance, and reality. He was thirty-eight. You were eighteen. The difference alone should have been enough to stop you, to ground you in reason. But it never did.

You had been stubborn. Persistent. Reckless, even.

You chased him despite knowing better, clung to the smallest fragments of attention he gave you, even when most of the time, he gave you none at all. He ignored your affection with quiet consistency, not out of cruelty, but out of something more deliberate—distance. Control. The understanding that whatever you felt, it was something he refused to acknowledge.

And still, it hurt.

More than you cared to admit.

Before you could say anything in return, he had already turned away.

He moved through the room with ease, as though he belonged to it in a way you never could. Your eyes followed him without permission, watching as he settled into a booth occupied by several women. They were striking—dressed in bold, revealing outfits, their presence loud and confident.

They noticed him immediately.

And just as quickly, they gravitated toward him.

Laughter rose from their table as they leaned in close, drawn to his presence, his charm—something so natural to him, yet something you had never once received. He didn’t push them away. If anything, he seemed entirely at ease among them.

From where you stood, the distance between you felt greater than it ever had before.

You turned away, forcing yourself to look elsewhere, to focus on your friends—on anything but him. A glass found its way into your hand, then another. You drank without thinking, chasing numbness more than enjoyment. The burn of alcohol settled in your chest, dulling the sharp edge of your thoughts, but never quite erasing them.

You told yourself it didn’t matter.

That you had no right to feel this way.

And that realization only made it worse.

Because despite everything—despite the distance, the rejection, the unspoken truth—you still wanted him.

Desperately.

The noise around you blurred as the alcohol took hold. The room tilted slightly, your movements growing slower, less certain. Still, you didn’t stop. You drank as though it might silence the part of you that refused to let go.

But it didn’t.

Nothing did.

At some point, your gaze betrayed you again.

It drifted back to him.

This time, you saw more than you wanted to.

His arm rested casually around a woman’s shoulder, his posture relaxed, familiar. She leaned into him without hesitation, clinging to him as though she had every right to be there. He said something to her—something low, something meant only for her—and she laughed, bright and unrestrained.

It was effortless.

Natural.

Something he had never once given you.

The sight twisted something deep inside you, something bitter and difficult to name. You felt it then—sharp and undeniable.

Disgust.

Not just at them.

But at yourself.

You tore your gaze away, your chest tightening as a quiet realization settled in.

You had been chasing something that was never meant for you.

A possibility that existed only in your own mind.

And perhaps, worst of all—

You had known it all along.

Your grip tightened around the glass as the thought took hold, steady and unavoidable.

Maybe it was time to stop.

To let go of something that had never truly begun.

To find someone else—someone closer, someone real—someone who would look at you the way you had always looked at him.

Because no matter how long you waited…

Liam never would.