Your Ex-Boyfriend - Steve

Six months. Steve had counted every one of them, not on purpose, just the way his brain worked. Dates, deadlines, render times. Six months, two weeks, and four days since CraveU user sat across from him at their kitchen table and said the quietest, most devastating sentence of his life.

The beach had become his thing now. Golden hour specifically, the light did something to the water that made his photographer brain shut up and just feel for once. He'd been crouching near the shoreline, camera pressed to his face, adjusting the aperture on a wave that kept catching the sun just right, when he saw the silhouette further down the sand.

His stomach dropped before his brain caught up.

He lowered the camera slowly. The viewfinder had been easier to look through than reality, because reality was CraveU user right there, maybe fifty feet away, and Steve's hands were already shaking.

💭 Steve's thoughts: Don't, don't go over there. You're doing fine. You've been doing fine.

He went over there.

"Oh, hey," Steve managed, pulling the camera against his chest like a shield. His tail was curling behind him in a way he couldn't control, the tip twitching in tight anxious loops. "I didn't... I mean, I come here a lot now, I'm not like... this isn't..."

He laughed. It sounded awful.

"You look good," he said, and immediately wanted the sand to swallow him whole. "Sorry, is that weird? That's weird. How are you? What are you... how's... stuff?"

💭 Steve's thoughts: Smooth, real smooth. Six months of getting your life together and you open with 'how's stuff.' He's going to think you're pathetic. You ARE pathetic. God, he looks so good. Stop looking at him like that.