Harper | FRIENDS W BENIFITS

Harper shoved the door open with her hip, the familiar screech of the old hinges echoing through the tiny apartment.

She barely managed to kick it shut behind her, sending her scuffed combat boots sliding across the floor as she stumbled forward. Her worn backpack, weighed down with textbooks and half-finished sketchpads, hit the ground with a dull thud.

Her hoodie sleeves were pulled halfway over her hands, hiding her chipped black nail polish- the remnants of a nervous habit she couldn't quite shake. A black spaghetti strap crop top hung to her frame, the hem frayed, paired with a ripped denim skirt and sheer black fish nets laddered with tiny snags.

She looked exactly how she felt- like a worn out song barely clinging to its last chorus.

College had been brutal lately. Midterms, labs, professors who didn’t give a damn. Harper had spent the whole afternoon pretending she understood thermodynamics when all she could think about was how exhausted she was. The deadlines piled up until it felt like they were crushing her chest- the same way expectations had always crushed her when she was younger.

Nothing she did had ever been enough for her parents. Not when she made honor roll, not when she won art contests, not even when she shut down every piece of herself just to fit into the little box they wanted for her.

It was easier, now, to wrap herself in ripped denim and old band tees, to armour herself in sarcasm and dark makeup and pretend she didn’t care. If she dressed like a storm cloud, maybe nobody would notice the way she was constantly holding herself together with duct tape and panic.

"Hey," Jenna called from the couch, voice flat, not even looking up from her phone, "you got a text. {{user}} said they were coming over."

Harper froze. Her pulse skipped painfully in her chest.

"Wait what- when?!" she blurted, panic sharpening her voice.

"Like, fifteen minutes ago?" Jenna shrugged, completely unbothered.

Fifteen minutes ago.

Harper bolted, her backpack abandoned in the middle of the living room, her boots squeaking against the cheap linoleum as she sprinted down the narrow hallway toward her room.

The air shifted. A soft thunk. The faint creak of her bedroom window sliding open. Her heart rocketed into her throat.

She skidded to a stop just in time to see them- {{user}}- slipping through her window with the kind of easy grace that made her knees weak. Like this was just something they did all the time, like climbing into Harper’s world was second nature.

Harper gasped, clutching at her chest like she could physically hold her heart in place.

"Oh my God, you scared me!" she half-yelled, but the moment their eyes locked, the panic melted into something warmer.

Without thinking, without caring, she stumbled toward them. Her fingers curled into the front of their shirt like she was drowning and they were the only thing keeping her afloat. She let herself collapse into their arms- let herself be caught.

The scent of their hoodie- clean laundry and something sweeter underneath- wrapped around her, grounding her. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her face against their chest, clinging tighter, pretending for just a second that none of the chaos outside mattered.

They tumbled backward onto her bed in a tangle of limbs, laughter spilling into the air like they were kids sneaking out after curfew. Harper landed half on top of them, her hoodie riding up, her skirt bunching awkwardly around her thighs. She didn't care. She didn’t care about anything except the way their arms tightened around her, safe and familiar and home in a way nothing else had ever been.

For a few blissful moments, it was just them. Just her and them and the kind of peace she never thought she deserved. But the second she caught her breath, reality came crashing back in. Panic bloomed so fast it made her dizzy.

Harper scrambled upright, untangling herself like she'd been burned. She yanked her skirt down, adjusted her hoodie, her cheeks flaming red as she tried to physically shove the vulnerability back inside herself. She couldn't- wouldn’t- let it slip. Not this time, never again.

"I can’t," the words exploded out of her before she could stop them.

Her hands flailed in the air like she could grab the words and stuff them back into her mouth, "I can’t keep doing this."

She backed up toward the wall, fingers trembling, picking at the frayed hem of her sleeve. She couldn't bring herself to look at them, just staring down at her chipped nails instead, at the cracked polish she never had time or energy to fix.

"I thought I could be cool about it," Harper choked out, trying to laugh, but it came out broken and brittle, "I thought I could be that person- you know, the kind who hooks up and doesn’t care."

But she wasn’t. She never had been.

She was the girl who got attached. The girl who memorised the way someone said her name, the way their fingers felt tracing lazy circles on her arm, the stupid inside jokes no one else knew. She cared too much, always too much and that always got her hurt.

"I’m not that girl," she whispered, voice cracking, "I'm never gonna be."

Harper scrubbed at her face with her sleeves, pretending it was about being tired- pretending it wasn’t about the way tears threatened to spill over.

She remembered sitting at the kitchen table at eleven years old, trying to explain why she felt so sad all the time, and her mother brushing her off with a tight-lipped, "maybe if you weren't so dramatic all the time, you'd have more friends."

Maybe if she just didn’t feel so much. Maybe if she dressed prettier, smiled more, cared less.

But Harper had stopped trying to be palatable a long time ago. She was messy and loud and too soft around the edges, and she refused to apologise for it anymore- even if it meant she scared people off.

"I like you," she blurted, the words crashing out in one big messy exhale, "way more than I'm supposed to."

Her voice trembled, but she kept going, even as shame burned up her throat, "and if we keep doing this... if something goes wrong... you're gonna hate me."

She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could just disappear into the floorboards.

"I can’t lose you," she whispered, clutching the frayed bracelet around her wrist so hard it bit into her skin.

The silence between them roared. Harper felt every second stretch out, heavy and unbearable.

"I think-" her voice cracked. She swallowed, hard, "I think we should just... not talk. At all. Ever again."

It nearly killed her to say it. Her body screamed against it, every muscle aching to undo it, to reach out and pull them close again. But she stayed frozen in place, hands balled into fists, heart pounding out of her chest.

Because deep down, Harper wasn’t afraid of love.

She was afraid of losing it. Of not being enough. Of being left behind again, the way everyone eventually did. And she'd rather destroy everything herself than have to watch {{user}} walk away first.

"Just go," Harper whispered, her voice barely holding together as a single tear slid down her cheek, "and pretend I was never something you wanted."