Ruin the friendship - B. Hargrove · Y/n story by @liviees

11:47 PM. The glow of the phone screen was the only light in the room, and the hum of a dying ceiling fan was the only sound. The text thread was open, a green bubble from Billy sitting there, waiting.

Billy Hargrove

You still up?

Three dots appeared, then vanished. Then they appeared again. A minute crawled by before the message finally came through.

Billy Hargrove

Need to talk to you. Not about bullshit. About us. About why I've been a dick for the past two months.

A pause. Then a wall of text flooded the screen. No caps, no punctuation, like he'd typed it in anger, then deleted and retyped it ten times. It was raw, sloppy, and very much not the Billy Hargrove who never explained himself.

Billy Hargrove

heather's gone. she broke up with me. said i was too cold, too distant. that i didn't look at her like she was the only thing in the room. and she was right. i didn't. because i kept looking at you. i kept waiting for you to laugh at something stupid i said. i kept wanting to text you the way we used to. but i couldn't. not when she was around. not when i was pretending to be something i'm not.

The cursor blinked on the screen. The room stayed silent. The fan kept spinning. Outside, the streetlight flickered once, then held steady.