Chapter 42 Back to Tommy
POV: Carly
She fixed her face in the bathroom mirror before going back.
Two minutes of cold water on her wrists and eyes and she looked close enough to normal that nobody would know she had been standing outside a classroom door holding herself together with both hands. She straightened her dress. Pushed her hair back. Practiced the expression in the mirror until it stopped looking practiced.
Then she walked back to the lounge.
Tommy was still there.
Alone now, the rest of their group scattered, sitting on the couch with his phone in his hand and his eyes on the door. He looked up the moment she walked in and the relief on his face made the guilt hit fresh all over again.
She made herself smile.
"You didn't have to wait." She said.
"Of course I did." He stood up and crossed to her and his hands found her waist and pulled her in and she let him because this was where she was supposed to be and she needed to remember that.
His eyes moved over her face. "You okay? You were gone a while."
"Just needed some air." She said. "I'm fine."
He looked at her for a moment longer than felt comfortable.
She reached up and kissed him.
Not because she wanted to. Because she needed to prove something to herself and this felt like the fastest way to do it. She kissed him and he responded immediately, his arms tightening around her, and she pressed herself into it and told herself this was right, this was enough, this was what she wanted.
His hands pulled her closer.
She kissed him harder.
He made a small surprised sound against her mouth and then he was kissing her back with everything he had and she felt none of it. Nothing. Just the specific awful warmth of someone who loved her and the specific awful knowledge that she was using it.
He pulled back breathless with that bright confused smile. "I don't know what got into you but I'm not complaining."
She just nodded.
He grabbed her hand and started trying doorknobs in the corridor and she followed him because stopping required an explanation she did not have and then they were in another empty classroom and the door was behind her back and his mouth was on hers again.
She kissed him back.
She tried.
She really tried.
She closed her eyes and focused and tried to be here, just here, just this, and instead saw blue eyes and dark blonde curls and a sketchbook open in a cold empty classroom and she yanked herself away from that image and kissed Tommy harder.
"I've missed this." He said against her lips. "You have no idea how much."
She moaned so she wouldn't have to say anything back.
His hands moved to the hem of her shirt and she felt the wrongness of it climb up her throat like something physical and his fingers found the button of her jeans and she grabbed his hand and stopped it.
He looked at her.
She looked at the wall.
"What's wrong." He said softly.
"Nothing." She said automatically.
He stepped closer. Touched her face. Tried to find her eyes. She dodged the kiss he aimed at her lips.
She felt it all at once. The classroom. The door. The corridor. All the wrong classrooms she had been pressed against today by two completely different people and how different those two moments had felt and how much she hated herself for knowing that.
"Everybody just needs to stop kissing me." She said.
She heard how it sounded the moment it was out.
She grabbed her bag and walked out.
The door closed behind her.
She stood in the corridor and kept walking and did not look back.
POV: Tommy
He stood in the middle of the empty classroom and stared at the closed door.
Everybody just needs to stop kissing me.
He turned that over slowly.
Everybody.
He stood there for a long time. Long enough that the hallway outside went quiet. Long enough that the light through the classroom window shifted slightly with the late afternoon moving.
Everybody.
Not nobody. Not you specifically. Not I need space or I'm stressed or any of the things she had been saying for weeks that he had accepted because accepting them was easier than asking the question underneath them.
Everybody.
He sat down on the edge of the nearest desk.
He thought about the east lawn.
He thought about the lounge. The way she had stood up so fast when Niko walked out. The way she had said I'll be right back before he even had a chance to ask where she was going.
He thought about the study room. His father sitting across from her with that calm certain expression, saying things that sounded polite and weren't.
He thought about six months of being with a girl he was genuinely crazy about and the specific feeling that had been growing quietly in the back of his chest for weeks that he had been very deliberately not looking at directly.
He looked at it now.
He sat in the empty classroom alone and looked at it and let himself actually see it for the first time.
He did not move for a very long time.
Then he stood up and picked up his bag and walked out and went back to his room and sat on his bed and stared at his phone and thought about calling her.
He put the phone face down on the nightstand.
He needed to think first.
He needed to think very carefully before he said anything at all.
Author's Note:
Everybody just needs to stop kissing me. She said it and she cannot unsay it and Tommy is sitting in that classroom doing math that only leads to one answer and I genuinely need everyone to breathe with me. Drop a like and tell me in the comments, is this the beginning of the end for Tommy and Carly?