Zach Herron
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based on a short prompt my bestie @blueeyesandstarlight gave me
(y/n) never had a good relationship with her parents.
They were always working, and since she was an only child, she quickly found that she had fallen into the typical trap of being in a house that wasn't a home, the life that no one wanted to live, a life without love.
Her best friend was her only escape.
Zach Herron was the kindest person (y/n) had ever met.
They grew up in Texas together, spending every second by each other's sides at school when everything was easy as young children and when she didn't know how much practically living without parents would hurt her in the future.
When the duo hit middle school, she left her naive mindset behind and realized how much her mom and dad weren't there for her. She couldn't remember the last time either of them told her they loved her.
Zach made it clear to her that his goal was to make her feel welcome in his life and home. So, the times that she was at his house become more frequent than those when she was at her own.
She didn't mean to develop feelings for him, but overtime, how could she not fall for the only source of love she'd ever had?
She realized it for the first time on a late night in autumn of their freshman year of high school.
It wasn't a special moment; it was actually a stupid one.
They had been sitting side by side in his backyard, playing a very pointless, but extremely fun game they had made up years before that involved telling each other secrets no one else knew.
He had, as a joke, told her he could do a cartwheel. She told him he had to prove it and being the stubborn guy he was, he stood up with hilarious confidence and flung himself onto the ground on his hands, only to twist in the air and land on his back. Hard.
Needless to say, the two of them couldn't breathe for the next twenty seconds.
By the time tears were pooled in her eyes from laughing so hard, Zach was able to breath again. He lay there in the grass, hacking out cough-like laughter that made the entire situation that much funnier.
It was in that moment, that tiny, entirely idiotic, seemingly unimportant moment, that (y/n) realized she cared for her best friend beyond the meaning of the title.
She tried to shove her feelings away, and for the rest of her freshman year, she convinced herself that she was succeeding in doing so.
What she didn't consciously realize was that she was just noticing him more than she ever had before, and with that, began to fall in love with every little thing he did.
Then, suddenly, the hardest thing she would ever have to endure arrived.
Zach left Texas to become apart of Why Don't We in L.A.
(y/n) pushed through most of her sophomore year and the entirety of her junior year without her best friend by her side.
As days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, she could tell they were drifting apart.
