ROSALINE
If my emotions were the ocean, then I was the little girl drowning inside of it, helpless to the core. Feeling insulted was an understatement, and most of the pain that I felt didn't fully stem from whatever Gerald's mother had said. It hurt more because she'd just voiced out all I'd been thinking to myself.
"Rosaline, listen to me!" Gerald's voice called from behind me again, but I was too flustered to stop, though I was aware that I had no means of getting home without him.
It just hurt too much to see his face after I'd messed things up and somehow proved that their opinion of me was just right. They were correct to think so lowly of me. Who was I kidding?
"Rosaline! It's going to rain. Where are you going?"
I turned a deaf ear to his calls and stormed towards his car. I pulled the knob, but Gerald was fast enough to reach me, causing me to ungrip the door, and it slammed shut, sending a shiver racing down my spine.
It was still bright in the day, and the sun had already begun to hide, as though it was mocking me, concealing itself away from sharing my shame any longer.
It shone down on us with caution, a warning perhaps that the dam was about to break. Yet, its colorful rays reflected in my eyes when I found Gerald's figure hovering over me. His lips were tightly pursed, twitching by the edges, and the blue in his beautiful eyes had adopted a dark path, threatening to swallow me if I stared into them any further.
"What?" I mouthed breathlessly, tasting the large, bitter lump that my throat suddenly accommodated. My fingers grazed my hair, and I released a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. "You can go on with lunch, Gerald. I'd be at home, you know, waiting and not ruining anything more."
"Is that what you think this is about?" He quizzed, the distance between us suddenly thinning, and I could not move away any further as my back was already slammed against his car. "That you ruined everything? Is that what this is about?"
"What should it be about then? What do you want me to do?" I complained, still stuck between him and the car. "I'm doing everything in my power to make this work out. To, for once, not to be compared and be seen for who I actually am? Pardon me if I cannot thrive in an environment where people only see me as a fragment of somebody else!"
"All of this is happening because you already see it as a competition, Rosaline. For once, just listen to me, okay? Listen. I'm sick of frequent and useless arguments like this. You tripped over a couple of dishes, so what? You should stay there and see it through!" Gerald expressed angrily.
I almost couldn't tell what he was mad at. He continued, panting with the break of every syllable. "If you don't do something right, you automatically judge yourself for it and get mad when others do it externally. Does it make you any better than they are?"
A guttural scoff eased out of my mouth, and I cocked my head, pushing him away with all the strength that I could muster. "What did you just say to me? What... does that even mean? What? I'm judging myself?"
"Aren't you? That's all I see you doing. That's all you've done today. Trying to fit into a pedestal that's not yours, it won't help you become any more of yourself-"
"SHUT UP!" The first tear broke free, tracing a path down my cheek, and my voice, once defiant, now quivered with vulnerability as the dam within me cracked open. Each word felt like lifting a heavy stone. "Shut the hell up, Gerald!"
"You want the truth, yet want me to lie?"
The echoes of our argument lingered in the air, a bitter taste on our lips. His words cut through my facade, accusing me of pretense, and frustration surged within me.
In a moment of fiery rebellion, my hands found his chest, and I pushed him. "What do you know?" I hit him again. "Tell me, what do you even know about me!? Who are you to judge me?!"
Each soft blow I landed was an attempt to speak the pain that words couldn't convey. I seethed, voice strained with anger, "You don't understand, Gerald! You don't know the weight of this sadness, the ache in my chest that never seems to fade. You don't know what it feels like to be buried in the background all the years of your life!"
But as my defenses crumbled, my facade shattered, and vulnerability washed over me. My name echoed in the air. I could hear him calling, but somehow, I slid to the floor, feeling my bare legs become one with the wickedly cold tiles.
I trembled as my stifled sobs wracked my body. I'd done everything not to become a mess like this, but it seemed as though that was all I ever could be.
My heart thumped violently against my ribcage as the weight of our pressure pressed down on me. The stinging truth in his words and the frustration hitting the parts that hurt the most. My legs became flail and weak, struggling to support the emotional burden.
I sucked my teeth, "Go to hell, Gerald. All of you! I'd find my way home, so please, leave me alone. I need some alone time!"
I bumped into him as I brushed past him, pretending not to notice that the once shiny sun had been overtaken by the thick dark cloud, and rain had begun to drizzle. I didn't expect him to try and stop me. We were nothing to each other anyway. The gate was my sole aim; despite all the steps I took towards it, I didn't seem to be getting any closer.
The weather would break loose soon, and I needed to find a cab. My entire body was stiff with pain, until I was taken by surprise and pulled into his arms. His hold around my hand had a gentle force, and I slammed my head against his toned chest. "What are you doing?"
Those were the last words to push out of my mouth before Gerald's other hand held my nape. "You're way too stubborn," He said it like he was too pleased to let me know, and then his lips urgently crashed into mine.
I swear my heart stopped for what seemed to be more than a minute, or maybe I was hallucinating. Perhaps the kiss was a hallucination, too. Finding that it wasn't through the slight brush of his mouth against mine snapped me to reality.
Gerald was kissing me. He had laid his lips to mine. I spasmed against him, welcoming strange yet immensely fiery currents down my legs and my arms, and my entire body danced to the rhythm of his. And I tried to fight it, to shove him off of me, but this kiss. His ever so respectful lips and thumping hearts between us both. It sent me into a rainy heaven.
His hand rested on my hip while the other raked up and through my hair, stroking and twisting just as his lips did on mine. The breath that I needed was drawn from his mouth, and my eyes reflexively shut, showing me several versions of a paradise that I never would have known existed.
Why on a man's lips? Why did it burn me so? Why couldn't I stop him? Why was I kissing him back angrily? All these questions at the tip of my tongue, but they wouldn't manifest into words. My tongue was battling with his, anyway.
I panted. I pulled closer. I shoved. I fought. I conquered, all on his lips. I ran my tongue over his lower lips, and the grunty response I got urged me to do more, like straddling him every time on Saturday mornings and ask him what he wanted for breakfast.
My hands found their way up his neck, and I inclined him closer, my lower abdomen heavily pressured with every tinge of sensuality that I'd managed to stuff down all the years of my life. My lips parted with a gasp for air, but Gerald, owned by pure want, met mine again, and the distance between us faded once more.
I liked it. I liked it way too much than I should. The rain blessed the moment, or cursed it. It'd matter only if I cared about anything else. Though wet and cold, our bodies defied the temperature. The odd in all normals we were. And it felt too good to be true.
Too good to be right.
Too good to be wanted. Oh, no! I pulled back sharply to meet the eyes of a man who looked ready to devour. "We... should go..." I forced out, squeezing the edge of my dress and my wet hair. "That was-"
"Yeah..." He breathed, his lower lips still sucked in as he eyed me. "We should."
"Go," I completed, still heavily flustered. "We should go."
"Yeah. Yeah, I mean. That's what... I meant. Go home, together."
Together?
*
The ride back home was silent, and neither of us could look at the other without images of the sudden intimacy reappearing in our heads. It was disastrous at the moment, and I took pride in looking out the window, at fleeting trees and the pitter-patter sound of the rain against the windows.
My heart still raced without mercy, and it was impossible for me to get the feel of Gerald's lips out of my head. It haunted me, and the worst part was, I'd do it again if I had the chance. We finally got back to the house, and he pulled out an umbrella, guiding me onto the terrace, though without words.
And it got me thinking, was he terminally ill? What was the sudden change in demeanor about? I'd gotten used to his charred and burnt attitude that the warmth was so strange to me. We arrived inside the house, and I kicked my shoes off, wanting to run into my room in order to carefully piece together everything that had happened today.
I was on my way when his voice stopped me. "Rosaline, about today..."
"I know it was a mistake," I immediately interrupted, scared to the point of shivering. I blamed it on the cold. "You don't have to explain anything to me, okay? We both can move on from this as adults, and you know, it'd be best for every one of us. Sorry, I meant us. Just two of us, you know. My bad."
My mouth wouldn't stop moving. Get it together, Rosaline! This was the best kiss of my life, and I'd just called it a mistake. Really, did that help?
"Oh..." Gerald nodded slowly. "I completely understand. It was a mistake in the spur of the moment, and we can simply move on from it."
He agreed? My heart sunk in disappointment. I'd hoped for him to say something different. "Yes, definitely," I conceded bitterly as I glared at him. "Let's move on from it. I'd be in my room. Please, don't call me if you need me."
"What?"
"Yeah, you heard right." I stormed into my room and flung my wet purse by a corner, then proceeded to unzip my dress. I scoffed. "Really? A mistake? Is that what we call kissing people now? Is he that shallow?"
Honestly, I didn't get why it stung this bad. I should not be affected by things like this. I heard my phone vibrate from inside my purse, and I picked it up, scanning who the caller was.
It was my mother. The last person I wanted to talk to, I flung it back to the bed with a dejected sigh, only for it to ring again. She wouldn't back off, would she? I would call her tomorrow, anything but tonight. I picked it up, and it was a different number. "Let's see." I picked up, trapping the phone between my ear and shoulder.
"Hello?"
"You're not an easy woman to get hold of, Miss Slytherin."
Harry?