What Are We // Jake

They were the kind of couple everyone envied-the type you'd see in the school courtyard laughing over shared fries, fingers intertwined, love notes tucked into lockers. Jake and Y/N: the high school sweethearts who made it look easy. Effortless. Meant to be.

But love isn't always enough.

Not when the boy who once walked her home every day now stumbled into her apartment with the smell of alcohol on his breath, his laughter echoing with strangers she never invited. Not when the same walls that heard whispered confessions of love now bore silent witness to her loneliness. She stayed in her room, night after night, unsure whether to speak or scream-while Jake just... let her.

It broke her heart to leave. But staying was breaking her more.

So she did the unthinkable. She asked for a break.

And Jake too stunned, too stubborn, too hurt let her walk away.

Whispers surrounded them after that. That Jake's friend had always liked her. That maybe she'd moved on. That maybe he didn't deserve her in the first place. But none of them knew what it felt like for Jake to come home and not find her waiting, or for Y/N to sleep in silence without the sound of his heartbeat beside her. They didn't see the guilt. The grief. The aching question in both of their eyes: What are we now?

But healing takes time.

And time led them to therapy. To the sea breeze of Jeju. To nights under stars and apologies spoken without words. It brought them to a woman Y/N hadn't seen since she was two-her mother, with eyes like hers and stories that explained so much. And somewhere in between the healing and the heartbreak, Jake found her again. Not the girl she used to be-but the woman she had become.

In the end, their love didn't just survive.

It bloomed. Softer, stronger, and just as dizzyingly sweet as it had been at seventeen.

And as they stood hand-in-hand, husband and wife, still sneaking glances like the world melted when they looked at each other.

Some loves don't just last.
They grow.