Purposefully Accidental

Chapter Three

"Hannah Taylors."

The sound of my name on his lips broke me out of the daze. I'm stunned in silence, wondering if I'm still hallucinating, but that voice just said my name out loud. It's real. He's here, right in front of me.

Seeing him should hurt. After all, we didn't part ways on the best of terms. He broke my heart. Absolutely, devastatingly, crushed my heart. Yet, for some reason, I feel none of the hurt right now.

Physically, he's almost unchanged from the last time I saw him. His dark hair is lightly tousled, a little longer than I remembered. His eyes are the same steel gray that I remember, only there are happy crinkles at the edges. His face is smoothed out of any form of frown. From how close I'm standing, I can see a shadow of stubble on his jaw that somehow makes it look sharper, more defined.

My breath stops. My ex-boyfriend is here.

With that realization coming in, a strange pressure pushes through my throat, and I'm choking in what felt like a hybrid of crying and laughing. "Oh my god." Oh my god. He's here, close enough that I can wrap my arms around him.

So that's exactly what I do next. Both of my arms reach up to his shoulders, wrapped around them. I feel his body instinctively bending a little so I can reach his neck. Our bodies still fit together. I'm hugging him like I haven't hugged him in a lifetime, I wonder if I'm constricting his breathing. Or maybe it's the other way around.

I can hear the soft breath he lets out from his lips, and it makes me shudder. I breathe into his smell, my face in his chest. It's wet, from the water I accidentally knocked over, but I don't care because I can feel his heart beating.

I pull away, afraid that he's getting creeped out by my hug. I blurt out the most honest thing I'm currently thinking, "I can't believe you're here. I've missed you." What a stupid thing to say, I want to run away and hide. I immediately add, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here with Clara," he says. He tells me that Clara, his little sister, is attending an open house thing at the campus. I didn't know that they knew that I was studying here, so that's what I confirm next.

Jonah says, "I didn't know that you were going here. I thought you were still with your sister..."

I can't help but laugh a little. I had these big dreams about following my sister to LA and becoming an actress. It didn't work out, so I chose to go through with my college applications after taking a gap year.

I tell Jonah, "My heart is just not there anymore, and I knew it wasn't right for me." I turn away so he won't see the reddening of my cheeks. I get so embarrassed whenever I think about the silly dreams that I had.

He is quiet, but I can feel his eyes on me. It doesn't help ease the colors on my cheeks. A strong wind brushes past and my hair flies everywhere. I try to straighten it out with my fingers. He's still quiet.

I add, "Things changed, you know?"

"Like your hair," Jonah says, nodding, and my eyes snap to him. "It's very short now."

"Oh! Yeah." Consciously, I touch the tips of my hair below my ears. "I wanted to try something new. It grew out but I realized I liked it short way better." It was the last weekend before I started college, and I was in the middle of a mild breakdown when I run to the nearest hair salon and chopped my hair. I returned home and I was horrified, but it grew on me that I always get it trimmed whenever it gets a little too long.

"Well, it does look good." There's something like wonder in Jonah's eyes, and I like that. "I like it like that." My heart flutters. He can't take his eyes off of me and I can't take mine off of him. "I mean, um—"