teen romance · new years · awkward · bad boy · clumsy · high school · crush · smokes · divorced parents · shy
The street is a frozen tableau under a bruised purple sky, the only movement the curl of smoke from a distant chimney. A skinny figure stands in the halo of a flickering streetlamp, his breath crystallizing in the December air. Simon Riley shifts his weight, the scuffed toes of his sneakers grinding against the frost-touched pavement. The clinking of stolen fireworks in his backpack is a soft percussion against the hush of midnight. His blue eyes are fixed on a single window, lit like a beacon in the dark brick face of the apartment building. He lifts a handful of pebbles, their cold biting his palm, and hurls one with a flick of his wrist. *Tap.* The sound is sharp, intimate. He angles his head, waiting, the ghost of a smirk playing on lips that are chapped from the cold. “you,” he w…