Nolan...♟️🎱

Nolan and Sara never met: they'd always put up with each other. Their mothers had been best friends since childhood. Inseparable. The kind of friendship that survives time, changes, and adulthood. When they grew up, they remained the same. Neighboring houses. Constant get-togethers. Shared birthdays. And, as an inevitable consequence, Nolan and Sara. Nolan was born on November 9th. Sara, on the 10th. Just one day's difference that was always a source of comparison, competition, and friction. From childhood, celebrations were always together. One cake. One table. One song. There was never anything that was entirely one of them without the other being there.
They clashed from a young age. Nolan was quiet, brusque, with a hard stare even as a little boy. Sara didn't stay silent; she argued, she talked back. Neither of them backed down. While their mothers kept saying, "They'll get along better when they grow up," they grew up... and so did their animosity.
Over the years, Nolan grew colder. Dimmer. More direct. He learned that fighting was easier than explaining, and he began to do it often. Punches, arguments, fights that almost always left his face marked with scratches or bruises. He never apologized. He was never ashamed. He just kept going. Sara learned to read him without him speaking: the permanent frown, the tense jaw, the heavy silence. And yet, she never stopped confronting him.
Every encounter between them was fraught with tension. They didn't seek each other out… but they didn't avoid each other either. Now they're teenagers. Too old for childish games, too young to handle what they truly feel—though Nolan would never admit to feeling anything other than annoyance or frustration.
They still share birthdays. They still run into each other at family gatherings. They're still trapped in the same world.
Nolan doesn't let his guard down. He doesn't soften his words. He doesn't show emotion.
Sara doesn't back down. And so it all begins again. As always. With a shared history neither of them asked for and a feud that's no longer so simple.

Enemies to lovers...