No Hard Feelings

two

a / n :

I'm deliriously happy from all the support this story has been getting. thank you so, so much! i'm glad you're already loving #DexLey, but i think it's only fair for me to give you this warning: 

shipping #DexLey comes with a lot of repercussions. proceed with caution.

also, happy april fools'!

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T W O

HADLEY WAS THE ONE who broke up with Dexter, two years ago one cold December morning, the two of them sitting on the swing set of a children's park in Dexter's neighborhood.

They've been going out for nearly three months then, but they've argued more times than either of them could count, and their fights had taken their toll on Hadley.

So they broke up.

It was the only time she let Dexter see her cry.

If he was any other person, he would have walked away right then and there, letting their connection fizzle out until the two of them were reduced to nothing but fleeting glances across the cafeteria and forced hellos in the bustling corridors between their classrooms.

But Dexter was Dexter, and instead of turning back and running the opposite direction to get himself as far away from her as possible, he stayed. He stayed until she was done crying. He stayed until the morning cold eased away to the afternoon glare of the sun. He stayed until it felt like it was okay for them to talk about the good times like two old friends meeting each other for the first time in years.

"We can still be friends," Dexter had said, giving her a reassuring smile. "Right?"

"That's ridiculous," she remembers telling him, because it was ridiculous, and she knew there was no way it was going to work.

But it did.

And maybe if he had just walked away then, Hadley would have been able to escape his universe, throwing herself out of it, burning the map that led to it just to make sure she wouldn't ever find herself retracing her steps back him.

But he stayed, long after that day had passed, until it was eventually overwritten by all these other new days, all these other new episodes in the Dexter and Hadley show. He stayed and staked out his territory in Hadley's heart, and she's never been able to kick him out of it ever since.

Hadley's tried. A lot of times. Eventually, she learned to give up and accept the fact Dexter wasn't ever going away. He made his way steadily into all these other aspects of her life, until even her parents came to readily accept him, her mom, especially.

Maria Theresa Montoya-Collins is a Filipina who used to have to make ends meet selling Filipino delicacies with her mother back in her hometown in the Philippines. She was twenty-three when a fellow candy-maker from America came to tour the Philippines and stumbled into her life.

Eventually they fell in love, got married and stayed in her home province for a couple years before migrating to America, where they had Taylor and Hadley and, of course, Sweet Tooth. Taylor always joked about the shop being their parents' favorite child, but even if that was true, Hadley wouldn't have blamed them.

She loved their shop, especially when she was a kid, but her love for it has nothing on Dexter's, which is why she isn't exactly surprised to know how excited he is to work there come Monday morning.