Coraline, Second Chance at Love, hurt
“Are you going to do the boombox thing?”
Wybie stood under her window in a black hoodie that made him almost blend in with the light-stripped street. The lanterns weren’t working, and only some singular lamps and LED lights shone from behind the curtains of other people’s apartments. It was the kind of dark that would cause most of the folks Coraline knew to be visibly uncomfortable, but for the two of them, it didn’t matter. Neither one of them had been afraid of pretty much anything for a long time.
“No, I’m here to talk.” Coraline still couldn’t get used to how mature he now looked. His awkward way of carrying himself and ever-crouched posture were gone, and in their place, there stood a young adult perfectly secure in his own skin. Slightly leaning on his right leg, with hands in his pockets, he stared up at her, and in his eyes, she could still see some remnants of the old Wybie, hopeful and insecure. At least that’s what she told herself with four meters of nothing in between them. “Can I come in?”
“I don’t want to see you, I’ve already told you that. Stop throwing pebbles at my window.”
Quite a long time before, Coraline came to terms with the fact that, most likely, there would be no one else in her life, ever, who’d understand her the way Wybie did. It wasn’t ordinary what they went through, and it was far from insignificant that they had gone through it together. [...]