If I could’ve scripted my own love story with perfect lighting, the right playlist humming in the background, and cameras catching every glance this would’ve been it. The story of two people who started on opposite sides of a table, arguing over a project neither wanted to lose, and somehow found their way to each other through stubbornness, laughter, and time. It’s not a fairytale, not exactly more like a slow burn caught in golden-hour light, full of sharp words, late nights, and quiet moments that changed everything. If I had the setup to capture it all, this is how it would’ve played out, frame by frame.
The bar buzzed with Friday night chatter, but at the corner table, the noise faded beneath the sharp rhythm of Hailey and Alex’s two complete strangers arguing. In discussing visions on a project but comepletely at odds. Hailey’s voice rose, trying to keep control, to remind him she was the project leader. But Alex, with his laid back, knows he is smart, wouldn’t back down. “You’re missing the point,” he said, hand slicing the air, frustration cracking through his calm. And the worst part? He wasn’t wrong. Each word landed like a hurricane to her pride, and she could feel herself fading into darkness while he grew brighter in the dim light. “You don’t get to talk to me like that,” she snapped, but her tone trembled not from fear, but from the dizzying, infuriating realization that his confidence made her pulse quicken as much as it made her want to throw her drink at him.
The next night, the pounding bass of a house party spilled out into the cool night air, laughter echoing through the backyard. Alex hadn’t expected to see Hailey again so soon, but there she was sitting on one of the old wooden swings strung from a tree, taking a breather, looking more relaxed than he’d ever seen her. He hesitated before taking the swing beside her, the wood seat creaking as he sat down. For a while, they just swayed in the quiet, the glow of lights casting soft halos over their faces. When they finally spoke, this time, her voice wasn’t sharp, but it wasn’t exactly gentle either more like she was forcing patience through gritted teeth. They talked about the project, though Hailey’s words came clipped, still bristling with the edge of someone who hadn’t forgotten being made to look wrong. Alex, on the other hand, was trying maybe too hard to smooth things over, his tone light, but kept a straight face matching her energy. She rolled her eyes, pretending to watch the party lights in the distance, but her lips twitched despite herself. The tension between them had softened, yes, but not disappeared it lingered like the last note of a song that refused to fade, something stubborn and unsaid hanging in the cool night air. A barrier still lingers between them.
Later that week, the universe decided to trap them together again this time in the narrow hum of the campus library elevator. Finally seeing each other in full light, the air felt thick with everything they hadn’t said, the silence stretching until Alex finally exhaled, rubbing a hand over his face. “You know, you drive me insane,” he muttered, fully serious, eyes flicking to hers. “You never listen, even when you know I’m right.” Hailey took a beat, dropped her arms to the side and a slow smile breaking through her guarded expression. “Maybe I just like watching you get worked up,” she said lightly, and the spark in her eyes made his frustration falter into something warmer. The tension that had shadowed them for days seemed to melt right there between the floor numbers, replaced by a quiet, charged ease neither of them wanted to end when the doors finally slid open.
A year later, it was almost funny to think how much they’d hated each other at first. Now, Alex and Hailey were nearly inseparable the kind of friends who finished each other’s jokes and stole fries off each other’s plates without asking. Their friend group had grown tight over the semesters, gathering in dorm lounges or crowded apartments for late-night Mario Kart tournaments and cheap takeout. Between laughter, trash talk, and inside jokes, their old tension had been replaced by something steadier, a rhythm they both fell into easily. Still, every so often, when she caught him looking at her across the room with that same teasing half-smile, Hailey felt a flicker of that old spark the one that had started it all, and never fully burned out.
The barrier that was once between them is now behind them.
The only thing standing between them now was Hailey’s boyfriend a fact that hung quietly in the background, even when no one mentioned it. Alex tried to play it cool, laughing with her and the group like nothing had changed, but there were moments when she leaned a little to close or when her boyfriend texted and her smile softened that twisted something in his chest. He’d never say anything; he wasn’t even sure what there was to say. But he felt caught somewhere in the middle too close to her to pull away, too far to reach for what he wanted. So he stayed where he was, in that familiar gray space, pretending it was enough just to be her friend, even as every part of him knew it wasn’t.
It happened one late night at the same college bar where they’d first fought a full-circle kind of moment neither of them could have planned. The music was low, the crowd thinning, and when Hailey turned to him, there was a look in her eyes that stopped everything else around him. It wasn’t loud or dramatic just a small, certain glance, like she was giving him permission to finally stop pretending. Behind them, her ex was pushing through to try to order a drink but there was nolonger any space between them. In that instant, it was just her the soft tilt of her smile, the unspoken it’s okay now in the way she looked at him and he knew, without question, that he was all in for her all over again, maybe worse than before.
Years later, after everything they’d been through the fights, the laughter, the slow unfolding of love they stood side by side, dressed to the nines for some event that suddenly felt insignificant compared to the moment between them. Hailey adjusted her dress catching Alex in the corner of her eye watching her the way he once had in that old campus elevator like he couldn’t believe she was real. But this time, there was no tension, no walls between them. When she turned and smiled at him with her eyes she was full of love, the world seemed to sharpen, colors blooming like the first time he’d ever really seen her. His chest felt light, full because now, she wasn’t just the girl who challenged him, or the one who’d once been out of reach. She was his, and somehow, even after all the years, she still made his world feel brand new and full of light.
Levy It All To Me 