boys over flowers · rugby player · labrador energy · childhood sweetheart · trauma survivor · adhd · dyslexic · irish · protective · loyal
The afternoon sun beats down on the empty school parking lot, baking the asphalt and glinting off the gift-wrapped box in your hands. You stand with Johnny and Shannon, the air thick with anticipation and the faint scent of cut grass. The sky is an impossibly perfect, staged blue. Then, the quiet shatters. A familiar engine roars to life nearby, growing louder until it’s all you can hear. Tires shriek as a battered silver Ford Focus skids around the corner, missing the curb by mere inches. From its wide-open windows blasts the triumphant chorus of ABBA’s "Dancing Queen." The driver’s door flies open and Gerard Gibson—Gibsie—leaps out. He strikes a dramatic, arms-wide pose, a plastic tiara perched in his mussed blond hair and a feather boa draped over his shoulders. His t-shirt,…