Chapter 20 Bloody Carly McPherson
POV: Niko
He stayed in the classroom longer than he needed to.
Not for any particular reason. He just wasn't ready to move yet so he stayed in the chair and stared at the space where she had been sitting and turned his pencil over between his fingers slowly.
Her notes were gone. Her color coded pens were gone. The formula she had been working on was tucked away in her bag and out the door with her. The desk looked exactly the same as it did before she sat down at it this morning and somehow that was more irritating than it had any right to be.
He had known she was going to say no.
He had known before he even asked. He wasn't naive enough to think one afternoon of not actively hating each other was going to undo four years of everything else. He knew exactly how Carly McPherson worked and he knew exactly what she thought of him and he had asked anyway because not asking felt worse and he wasn't going to examine that too closely.
The part that was sitting with him was the doorway.
One second. Maybe less. Before she walked out.
He opened his sketchbook to the poster layout and stared at it without seeing it. His pencil drifted to the corner of the page the way it always did when he was thinking about something he wasn't ready to think about directly and he ended up drawing the curve of her handwriting from the formula page. Just the shape of it. The way she made her capital letters slightly larger than necessary and underlined things twice when they actually mattered to her.
He stared at it.
Then he grabbed his bag off the table and left.
He was back at Silas Hall in a flash, the corridor outside his room quiet and empty. Enzo and Marcel were out somewhere which meant he had the room to himself for at least an hour and he needed every minute of it.
He dropped his bag on the bed and flopped down on his back and threw one arm over his eyes.
Bloody Carly McPherson.
She was taunting him even when she wasn't here. He could not explain it and that bothered him more than the rejection did. He had been rejected before. Rejection was simple. This specific restlessness sitting in his chest right now was not simple and he had no framework for it.
His phone buzzed on the desk.
He already knew who it was without looking. Aurora had been texting since before lunch and he had been declining every single one and he didn't have the patience tonight to explain why he didn't want company when the company he actually wanted had just walked out of a classroom and turned him down flat.
He threw his arm back over his eyes.
Maybe responding to one of Aurora's texts wouldn't be the worst idea. A distraction was a distraction and right now he needed one badly.
He was still talking himself into it when the knocking started.
He assumed it was next door. Then it came again, louder.
He groaned at the ceiling. "Marcel you leave your keys every single day. Piss off."
"I'm most definitely not Marcel." A female voice came back through the door. "He wishes."
Niko sat up.
He rubbed both hands over his face and dragged himself off the bed. He opened the door with low eyes and a frown and immediately wished he had checked who it was first.
Reba Monroeson stood in the hallway with one hand on her hip and light grey eyes that matched his own looking up at him with that specific expression she reserved exclusively for him. The one that meant she was already annoyed and hadn't even started yet.
She was in gym shorts, a tank top and dirty tennis shoes with her blonde hair pulled up and her face completely bare. Which meant she had come straight from practice without stopping to change first. Which meant this was deliberate.
"What took you so long." She said. "I feel like I've been standing here for a century."
"Not long enough apparently." He leaned against the door frame.
She scrunched her nose. "Don't be cute. Is that any way to greet your baby sister?"
His eyes dropped to her outfit. "Nice look."
"I just came from cheer practice you prick." She shoved him in the chest. It did nothing. "Some of us actually participate in school activities."
"Cheer practice." He said. "Right. Practice for the team full of witches who are rooting for your death and only let you on so they don't get shut down for a discrimination violation."
Reba stuck her tongue out. "At least I'm part of something. What's your excuse."
He stepped back from the door. "Usually I'd entertain this but today isn't that day. What do you want."
She looked at him properly for the first time since he opened the door. Her expression shifted. The performance dropped out of it.
"What's wrong with you." She said. Not accusatory. Actually asking.
"I'm tired."
"It's the middle of the day."
"And I've had a long one." He said. "So either get on with it or find your way out."
He felt slightly bad the moment it came out. She wasn't the one he was frustrated with and she didn't deserve the edge in his voice. She never did.
Reba crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame in the same spot he had just vacated. "Mother's been trying to reach you." She said it carefully. "She said you haven't replied to any of her messages. I just wanted to check."
His jaw tightened.
"You couldn't have texted me that." He said.
"No." She said. "I couldn't. Because I worry about you and I barely see you and we live in the same building and go to the same school and it's been two weeks since I've actually looked at your face."
He said nothing.
She walked past him into the room without being invited and he let her because fighting her on it was more effort than he had right now. She stopped when she saw the sketchbook on the desk and a small smile crossed her face before she could cover it.
"Mum gave you that." She said quietly. "For your birthday. You were so excited to finally stop drawing on the backs of dad's old business contracts."
"Vaguely." He said.
"She misses you Nik." Her voice dropped. "Even just a text back would make her whole week."
"Reba." He said it as a warning.
"I know." She held her hands up. "I know you don't want to hear it. I know you've made your decision and you think it's permanent. I just." She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "I worry about you being alone in all of this."
He sat back down on the bed and picked up his sketchbook and flipped to a blank page. His pencil moved before he had decided what to draw.
"I'm not replying to her." He said. "Not now. Tell her I'm fine."
"Why don't you tell her yourself."
He didn't answer.
Reba watched him draw for a moment. The small smile came back and this time she didn't cover it.
"She wants you home." She said softly. "Victor does too, even if he has a terrible way of showing it. We all do."
He snorted. "You're the only one who bothers showing up."
"Oh so now you want people to care? Make up your mind you wanker."
Despite everything he almost smiled.
She sighed and stood up from where she had perched on the edge of his desk. She looked at him for a long moment and he kept his eyes on the sketchbook and didn't look back.
"If you keep pretending not to care about anyone." She said quietly. "Eventually they're going to believe you."
She walked to the door and closed it behind her.
Not a slam. Just a click.
Somehow that was worse.
He looked up after she was gone.
His pencil had stopped moving. He looked down at the page.
He had drawn Reba without realizing it. Just her face. The small smile she got when she saw the sketchbook. The one that looked exactly like their mother's and he had spent four years trying to forget what that looked like.
He stared at it.
Then the knocking started again.
His eyes flashed gold before he even got off the bed. The sketchbook hit the mattress and he was at the door in two strides pulling it open with a growl already climbing his throat.
"Reba I swear to god if you say one more word about my mother I will personally escort you back to the witch dorm and leave you there myself and you can tell them I sent you as a peace offering and see how that goes for you I am not in the mood for-"
He stopped.
It was not Reba.
Carly McPherson was standing in his doorway with a small nervous smile and her bag on her shoulder looking up at him like she was very aware she had just caught him mid unraveling and was trying to decide if she should acknowledge it.
He blinked.
She was really here.
"Hey." She said. "Were you expecting someone else?"
He realized his eyes were still gold when she pointed at his face.
He pulled himself back together quickly. The gold faded. The growl dissolved.
"I." He cleared his throat. "No." Another pause. "What are you doing here?"
Author's Note:
Reba showed up and said everything he needed to hear and he still couldn't let it in. And then Carly McPherson showed up at his door and I need everyone to understand what that means because HE does not understand what that means yet. Drop a like and tell me in the comments, are you a Reba fan already because I absolutely am. Add us to your library !