Quietly Yours = Luke Hughes

Luke was resting his knee, couch-bound and bored out of his mind while Margo worked from the corner of his living room. Her laptop was open, coffee balanced on one knee, and her hair piled up in a messy bun that Luke kept sneaking glances at.

"I lost the charger to my iPad," she muttered, rummaging through the side table drawers. "Do you have a spare?"

Luke waved toward his bedroom. "Check my drawer. Probably under a mountain of random crap."

She disappeared into the room and reappeared a minute later-not with a charger, but with something else.

"Hey, is this your old phone?" Margo asked, holding up a scuffed iPhone with a cracked case and a faded Michigan sticker on the back.

"Oh my god," Luke laughed. "That thing still exists?"

"It still turns on," she said, thumbing through it after his face unlocked it. "Dude. This home screen is so 2019."

"Yeah, yeah. Just don't scroll too far or you'll see my high school attempt at becoming a SoundCloud rapper."

She gasped. "Oh, I'm absolutely finding that."

But instead, she landed on the Notes app-and froze.

"What's this one?" she asked, already tapping on it.

Luke stiffened. "Wait, don't-"

But it was too late.

The title: 'Margo's Ridiculous Theories (That I Weirdly Love)'

She scrolled through the list, her laughter slowly building.

"Number 3: Toast is just bread with a tan. Number 9: Every dog is born knowing how to love us. Number 16: All good ideas happen after midnight. Number 22: Snow feels softer when you're with someone you like-"

She paused. Heart thudding.

"That one was from Ann Arbor," she said softly.

Luke sat up straighter. "Yeah. You said it after we threw snowballs for an hour and you made me promise I'd never tell anyone you tripped over your own boot."

"I did not trip," she protested, half-laughing. "I stumbled."

Luke smiled, his voice quiet. "You stumbled straight into me."

She looked over at him-his knee wrapped in ice, his hair still damp from a shower, and that same look in his eyes he had back then. A little hesitant. A little in love.

"You kept this?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Luke nodded. "Couldn't delete it. Even when I tried to forget I felt anything more."

There was a beat of silence. Then Margo, walking over, sitting beside him, said:

"You still feel more?"

Luke looked her dead in the eye.

"Every day."