Chapter 53 Breakfast
POV: Carly
She had never walked into the dining hall with a vampire before.
She had walked past vampires in the dining hall. She had made pointed eye contact with them from across the room and then looked away. She had sat at her table with her coven and her boyfriend and pretended the other side of the room did not exist in any meaningful way.
She had never walked in beside one.
Katy pushed through the dining hall doors like she owned them and Carly followed and felt approximately every pair of eyes in the room make the adjustment simultaneously. The specific quality of attention that a room gave something it did not expect. Heads turning. Conversations dropping a register. The particular silence that was louder than noise.
She kept her chin up.
Katy did not even notice or if she did she considered it beneath her acknowledgment.
"They have croissants." Katy said, already moving toward the food line. "I saw them yesterday and have been thinking about them since."
"You've been thinking about croissants since yesterday." Carly said.
"I contain multitudes." Katy said.
Carly picked up a tray and followed her through the line and was acutely aware of the eyes tracking their movement and told herself it did not matter and it did not matter and it absolutely mattered but she was doing it anyway.
They found a table near the window. Not in the center of the room. Not hidden in the corner. Somewhere in the middle that was neither a declaration nor a retreat and Carly decided she was fine with that.
She sat down.
Katy sat across from her and immediately bit into her croissant with the expression of someone experiencing something transcendent.
"Okay." She said with her mouth still partially full. "That is extraordinary."
Carly picked up her coffee. "You literally drink blood."
"And I contain multitudes." Katy said again. "As established."
Carly almost laughed.
She looked around the room. Her coven table was across the dining hall. Whitney was there. She caught Whitney's eye briefly and Whitney's expression did a complicated series of things in about one second that Carly did not have the energy to fully decode right now.
She looked back at her coffee.
"Stop looking over there." Katy said without looking up from her croissant. "It makes you look like you're waiting to be caught."
"I kind of am." Carly said.
"Stop that too." Katy said. "You sat down for breakfast. You're allowed to sit down for breakfast."
"With a vampire." Carly said.
"With a person." Katy said. "Who happens to be a vampire. Semantics."
Carly picked at her toast.
"So." Katy said, setting her croissant down and folding her hands on the table with the expression of someone settling in for something. "Tommy."
Carly sighed. "Today."
"How." Katy said.
"I don't know yet." Carly admitted.
"Do you know what you're going to say."
"Not exactly." Carly said. "Something honest. Something that doesn't make me sound like the worst person alive even though I am currently the worst person alive."
"You're not the worst person alive." Katy said.
Carly looked at her.
"You're maybe in the top forty percent." Katy said. "Which isn't great but it's not the worst."
"That's somehow both comforting and deeply concerning." Carly said.
Katy shrugged. "I'm new to the supportive friend thing. Give me some grace."
Carly stared at her. "Did you just call yourself my friend."
Katy picked her croissant back up. "I said I was new to it. Don't make it a thing."
Carly pressed her lips together to keep the smile from getting away from her.
She looked at the table. At her coffee and her half-eaten toast and the morning light coming through the dining hall windows and the fog of Black River Falls just visible through the glass, thick and grey and sitting against the campus fence the way it always did.
"I'm scared." She said quietly.
Katy looked at her.
"Not of him." Carly said. "Of all of it. My coven finding out. My mother." She paused. "The school. What it means for both of us if people know."
"They're going to find out eventually." Katy said. Simply. Not unkindly. "You know that."
"I know." Carly said.
"And when they do it's going to be a whole thing." Katy said. "There is no version of this that isn't a whole thing."
"I know that too." Carly said.
Katy looked at her steadily. "But you're doing it anyway."
Carly looked up.
"Yeah." She said. "I am."
Katy nodded once. "Then stop being scared of the thing you already decided to do. It's a waste of energy."
Carly stared at her.
"What." Katy said.
"That was actually good advice." Carly said.
"I told you I contain multitudes." Katy said.
Carly laughed properly this time. Not the polished version she produced for rooms she was performing in. The real one that surprised her on the way out and made her press her hand over her mouth.
Katy looked satisfied.
"Okay." Carly said when she had recovered. "Your turn."
Katy raised an eyebrow. "My turn for what."
"You know everything about me at this point." Carly said. "Reciprocate."
Katy's expression shifted slightly. Not closed off exactly. Just more careful than it had been a moment ago.
"Not how this works." She said.
"Why not." Carly said.
"Because I just watched you word vomit your entire emotional situation onto the floor of our room and I would never do that." Katy said pleasantly.
"So you're selective about oversharing." Carly said.
"I'm selective about everything." Katy said. "It's called having standards."
"It's called deflecting." Carly said.
Katy pointed at her with the remaining piece of croissant. "You have been spending too much time with a vampire. You're picking up our habits."
"Maybe." Carly said. "Why did you transfer here mid year."
Katy looked at her for a moment.
"None of your business." She said.
"Fair." Carly said.
"Yet." Katy added after a second.
Carly looked at her.
Katy was looking at the window with her jaw slightly set and her eyes doing something complicated that she was clearly not planning to share.
"Yet." Carly repeated.
"Don't push it." Katy said.
Carly picked up her coffee and let it go and they sat in the relative quiet of the morning dining hall with the eyes of half the school on them and neither of them mentioned it again and it was somehow one of the more comfortable silences Carly had sat in recently.
Her phone buzzed on the table.
She turned it over.
Tommy.
Tommy: Can we talk today.
She stared at the screen.
Katy was watching her face.
"Today." Carly said quietly.
Katy nodded.
Carly put the phone face down and picked up her coffee and took a long sip and looked at the window and the fog outside and told herself she was ready for this.
She was going to have to be ready for this.
Author's Note:
Tommy texted. He wants to talk. He knows something is wrong and she knows she has to say it and I am genuinely not ready for this conversation but it is coming.