The Upside of Falling Back To You

chapter forty four | we broke up under a streetlight in the rain

eight years ago; june 2022; grade 12
prom night

I DIDN'T THINK it was possible at this point, but Ronan and I managed to stay the entire year together. No fights, no pauses, no moments where I felt like I was wasting my time. Our time together was pretty much nothing short of perfect, and it felt incredible.

Prom was just as nice. He picked me up, looking handsome in his suit. He got me a baby blue corsage with matched my dress. Mom, Dad and Adelaide took pictures of us in front of the house while Vi kept commenting how pretty I looked in the dress.

We had the time of our lives at the dance. Singing and dancing and laughing until we couldn't breathe. The food was incredible, the music loud and the DJ's choice wasn't terrible. In a few days would be grad, so yeah, there was a bit of a bittersweet tone to the night.

It was pretty obvious that Ronan would win prom king, and somehow I managed to get prom queen. We danced surrounded by our graduation class, he held me close in his arms, and everything seemed to feel right.

In the car when we're driving home from the venue, I kept looking at the photos we took throughout the night. My camera roll was filled with selfies and pictures of us having fun. But something felt off the drive home.

For one, it was awfully quiet. Ronan wasn't talking to me.

And it's then that I realised that he was just slightly off the entire night. Not that we didn't dance or have fun, but it kind of felt like there was a screen between us, as if he just barely was able to look me in the eye. I could see in the the photo - the hesitation whenever he touched me, as if he was scared to get close.

So I try to break the ice: "Wouldn't it be so cool, like, twenty or thirty years from now we're gonna show our kids these pictures. They'll be like "Wow, Dad looked so hot. I wonder what happened to him.""

I laughed, a little snort coming from my mouth, but... I couldn't get that much of a reaction from Ronan. He had this sad little smile on his face.

"Come on." I leaned against the arm rest in the middle. "Tonight was our last dance of secondary school, and you're just going to stay silent on our drive home. Don't you wanna say anything? Do you wanna talk about how stupid the plastic crown was, or how Seb almost fell into the chocolate fountain or-"

"Since when did you plan our future out?" Ronan asks instead, noting my comment on the pictures. "You aren't even eighteen yet, Aster, since when did you want kids?"

I tilted my head, giving him a confused look. "I was just saying, you know, hypothetically. And I mean, I wouldn't mind having kids eventually, not like straight after high school but one day."

The words taste sour in my mouth.

"Yeah..." His voice trailed off. "And you really think we're going to last that long?"

Those words hit me unexpectedly, and hard. "What do you mean?" What the fuck do you mean, Ronan?

"I mean, we're going to go to university soon and-"

"Stop the car," I tell him before he can say another thing. He's still driving. "I said stop the car-"

"God, Asteria, I can't stop in the middle of the fucking road." He pulls into our neighbourhood, and stops in front of the park. "What do you want?"

"Okay, yeah we're going to university," I start. When I look to him, he isn't looking at me. "Yeah, you're going to be on the other side of the country, but what does that have to do with us being together?"