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When Connie first meets Sasha, she's the new girl in their Junior class at the beginning of April, and he offers to buy her an ice cream after her first day. There's a small stand on the corner of 3rd and Main Street, and she picks out a Spiderman one, with gumballs as his eyes. Connie is a few pennies short when he goes to pay, and she hands him a nickel out of her pocket to make up the difference. That afternoon, after Spiderman has melted down Sasha's hands and Connie's lemon ice pop is thrown into a trash can half-eaten, she volunteers to do it again sometime.
"Get ice creams y'know." She tells him with a crooked smile. He notices that one of her teeth is chipped.
"Okay, yeah. I'll bring more change next time."
She laughs at him, and he walks her down her street and they talk about their favorite bands until they reach her house. He's not allowed to come in, but he barely knows the girl anyway and knowing that she'll have someone to talk to on her second day of school is enough to keep Connie smiling all night long.
~
When the end of April rolls around, everyone starts talking about prom and Sasha has plenty enough friends to go with whoever she likes.
She asks Connie to go with her anyway.
They're sitting in his front room, watching The Green Hornet and laughing at the stupid parts when she tells him flat out,
"Go to prom with me, okay?" It's not really a question.
He stutters for a second to find words, because honestly, Sasha is probably the prettiest girl he knows, and he has a feeling that she's already been asked out before.
"Aren't you going with someone else?"
"Nah. I'm going with you. Besides you're the only person I know who'll allow me to go in my pajamas, so we're perfect, right?"
He nods nonchalantly, and hums out a yeah, but somewhere deep down inside him, he feels like screaming. In a good way, of course.
~
Sasha arrives at his door on prom night dressed like a queen. She tells him that her father helped her with her hair, and underneath her dress she shows off her ratty pair of Chuck Taylor's. He laughs at her because their shoes match and his mother takes photos of them standing next to each other, because Sasha is two inches taller than Connie and they can't take traditional ones without Sasha making fun of him.
They dance all night and after everyone goes to Jean's house to drink crappy beer Connie takes her out for a movie instead and brings her home just before the sun rises and on the walk back to his house he thinks this is the best day of my life.
~
Jean hosts a party the night of graduation, and everyone goes, Sasha and Connie included. Connie tries to convince her out of it, but she tells him it's her first party ever and it's Ymir's last high school party and she has to see her before she leaves for L.A.
Midway through Jean is drunk off of two shots and a beer (what a lightweight god, Sasha pokes fun at him) and suggests a good ol' game of Spin the Bottle.
"What are we, twelve?" Someone asks and his only reply is a Hell yes and a cocky smile.
Jean is hyped as all hell as they take turns spinning an old wine bottle and kissing each other, until Sasha has to take hers. She almost refuses out of humiliation, but there are a few hollers from Jean, and Ymir tells her loud enough for everyone to hear,
"You're still the new girl, you have to do it. It's common law, Sash."
And Sasha has never been one to back down at a challenge, and this is her first actual normal high school experience ever, so she sets a hand on the glass and spins it to-
Connie.
Of all the people to have to kiss in this room, it had to be her best friend. Her face burns almost as much as his and Connie can feel his heart beating faster and faster as Sasha leans over to press a kiss onto his lips. She tastes like strawberries, and sherbert ice cream.
Then a couple girls giggle and Jean gives her a high-five and she sits back down, and maybe Sasha will never think of it again, but Connie knows now that he's only known her for two months but he is so in love with Sasha Braus.
~
It’s two weeks into June when Sasha finally invites him over to her house. They've always spent time at his, and he thinks that this is going to be a big step, like going out or something. She lives at the end of 3rd Street, near the ice cream stand, but Sasha doesn't mention it. Connie silently hopes that she would've, and that they'd go get ice pops again and hang out, but Sasha just holds his hand instead, and swings their arms a little.
And then she speaks.
"Listen, you shouldn't get attached to me, okay. My dad he's-" She breaks off for a second. "He's sick, and that makes us move a lot I guess. The doctors are always telling us that there are better treatments in other cities, so we move there and get him fixed up a bit. I've never stayed somewhere for more than a year."
Connie fears for himself a little bit. A lot, actually. Connie loves Sasha so much in all of her short three month whirlwind and chipped teeth and beat up sneakers, and now she's telling him that she'll leave him eventually. Connie doesn't know if he can take it. He feels like letting go of her and running back down the street and ignoring the ice cream stand for the rest of his life. But he just smiles instead and squeezes her hand a little bit.
"Okay. Just promise to come back to me if you leave, yeah?"
Sasha gives him a soft smile but doesn't answer.
They eat dinner at her house, and he meets her dad who's nice and even cracks a few jokes, but he's not good at hiding his coughs or how thin he is. A tiny part of him wants to hate her father for getting sick in the first place, however long ago that was, but he knows he can't.
That evening she walks with him when he goes home, and he buys her a sno-cone from the ice cream stand and she kisses him like the first time at Jean's party.
"Thanks for coming." She tells him underneath a lamppost in front of his house, and Connie swears he's floating.
~
The fourth of July comes and goes, but Sasha doesn't celebrate. Connie asks her out, on a real proper date the day before, but she tells him no.
"I want to go, I promise. But my dad-"
"It's okay." Connie is just happy that he got the courage to ask her.
"He's getting sick again. I don't know how that's going to work out."
“It’ll be fine. If you leave…” He pauses to rethink. “Well, it’s not like I’m going to forget you. Do you wanna just grab an ice cream and light smoke bombs in the front yard?”
“That sounds great.” She laughs and leads the way to the ice cream stand, holding his hand the whole way there.
Sasha sits on the front porch, her arms wrapped around her knees while she watches Connie write their names on the sidewalk with a lit sparkler. The marks will fade in a few days, so she takes a picture of him, stuck in the moment, so she never forgets. She never forgets the way the crooked heart looks burned into the concrete or how perfect their initials fit inside it.
~
Connie wakes up on a sunny August morning to the sound of Jean calling him.
“Hey man, I know it’s early but you should come over, there’s something here for you.” Jean tells him quickly and hangs up as some as Connie tells him okay.
The walk to Jeans house cuts past Sasha’s street and he stops for a second, wondering if he should grab her and they can see what’s there together, but decides against it. It’s still early, and he knows she’s probably sleeping in until noon.
He texts Jean when he’s at the gate, so he won’t have to knock and begins to walk up the sidewalk to Jean’s porch. Through the screen door Connie can see that he’s already there waiting for him, a grim look on his face. Jean swings the door open and tells him,
“It’s on the counter. Try to be quiet, Eren stayed over last night and hasn’t slept in a few days.”
Connie nods once, bee-lining for the kitchen counter. When he leans forward to hover over it, his heart stops. Laying on the edge is the picture Sasha took of him during the Fourth. He picks it up carefully, flipping it over. On the back, Sasha left him a note in her loopy handwriting: I never paid you back for that first ice cream.
“Where did you get this?” He asks Jean.
“I don’t know man, she came by last night. Left me this stuff, tells me to give it to you.”
Connie stares at it until his eyes burn and his heard hurts.
“Do you think she…?” She left he tries to say, but the words won’t come out. His heart shatters, like a mosaic falling apart.
Jean studies him for a moment and then whispers, “Yeah.”
Connie closes his eyes and tries to imagine her face the day they met, her hair thrown up in a ponytail, her chipped tooth showing every time she smiled, but all he can think about is the way she looked the first time he went to her house; the way she wouldn’t tell him if she’d ever come back for him.
He turns back to the counter to collect the rest of what she left him, but all that sits there is a handful of change. He counts it carefully, adding it up to two dollars and fifty cents, the exact price of a Spiderman ice cream with little gumballs for his eyes from the stand down the street from Sasha’s house.