I walk towards the studios, but I can hear the kettle boiling in the kitchen. I frown.Blast. I’m not alone, after all. They shouldn’t be here; then again, neither should I. Unwilling to creep out again, I stay still while I consider my options. I want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere else. So, OK, I’ll stay. Hopefully whoever it is will be willing to give me some space and won’t pepper me with questions I don’t have an answer to.
And please, don’t let it be him…
I peer around the door frame to the kitchen, and...yep. Leo.
Because ofcourseit’s him.
Well, screw you, too, universe.
He’s wearing black pyjama bottoms and a black sleeveless t-shirt, his feet are bare, and his hair is loose around his shoulders. He must have spent the night in the bedroom upstairs.Well, duh, itiscloser to the hotel events room Emily and Eli hired.Leo’s actual home is a few miles away, but since he’d been drinking last night, too, he clearly made the smart choice and walked here. He looks tired as he fills his mug with hot water and stirs it.
I sigh silently. Can’t avoid him forever, and might as well get this over with so the damage is minimal. So maybe it’s a good thing he’s here, after all.
“H-hi,” I mumble. It’s not like me to stutter, and I clear my throat. He looks up immediately, grey shadowed eyes narrowing slightly as they look straight at mine. For a long moment neither of us talk - I have no idea how to begin - and then he wordlessly slides his coffee mug towards me.
Though he’s done it several times before, this time I’m oddly touched that he’d just give me his coffee, no questions asked.What’s wrong with me?
“Uh, no, no thanks,” I say, stumbling over my words. He shrugs and pulls it back. “I, um…” Shit. I really didn’t plan for this. I thought I’d have some time in my studio to doodle somemore designs, clearing my head enough to let me think about what to say to him the next time I saw him. I should have known he’d be here.
“Y’alright?” he asks, taking a sip of the coffee I declined.
“Uh, yeah, I’m all good. All good in the hood. I mean, you know, uh, a little, haha, hungover, but…” Jesus, I seriously need to pull it together.
“Same,” he says, with a trace of the old Leo grin that’s become so much a part of my day, and that I didn’t even realise I’d come to depend on. His eyes, however… They’re not the same. They’re watching me carefully, almost...warily. It hurts. I don’t ever want him to look at me with uncertainty. Notever. I hate it. And that, more than anything else, galvanises me to start talking properly.
“Look, Leo, I just wanted to apologise,” I say, and my heart is starting to pound with anxiety. “I’m really, really sorry I kissed you last night.Really. It was wrong of me to...well, I didn’t mean to take advantage of our friendship, but I’m sure that’s exactly how it came across, and...that’s really not what I wanted to do,” I mumble, trying to quickly clear my head so I can do this more articulately. He’s looking tiredly at the floor, scratching his thumb across the scar on his eyebrow as though distracted, but he’s listening.
A lot rides on this talk. I need to get it one hundred percent right. “I would never want to overstep boundaries with you, you’re too important to me. I was just…” I sigh hard. “I was a few too many glasses of Prosecco into the evening, and it was thewedding, you know? And I was a little raw, and a lot insecure and sad, and you…bore the brunt of it.” I give him a rueful smile, hoping with every cell of my body that he can understand and that he doesn’t feel uncomfortable around his friend, the crazy lady who launched herself at his mouth in a fit of confusion. “So...whaddaya say we draw a line under it?” I ask with comicallypleading eyes, fluttering my eyelashes for all I’m worth. “Just, let’s pretend it never happened, and move on. Carry on as normal, and never speak of it again. Sound good?” I grin at him, wanting him to agree, anticipating that he probably will.
“Fuck off,” he bites out.
My heart stops beating, and then leaps into my throat. Did he just… “What?”
“Fuck. Right. Off,” he enunciates slowly and firmly, his normally cheerful golden hazel eyes now dark and flashing with fury.
For a long moment, I am completely flummoxed, without a clue what to say next. I can’t believe he just said that to me. This isnotthe Leo I know or was expecting. Given how he responded to the kiss, and didn’t push me away, I never imagined he’d beangrywith me. I thought he’d call me a slutty old lush, sling his arm around me, tease me for a bit, admit that he was half cut as well, and then shrug it off and let it go with his trademark good natured humour.
Not this. Never this.
Before I can open my mouth to speak, though I’m not sure how I’d even begin to respond, he starts again.
“I’mnotdoing this anymore,” he snaps, frustration emanating from him like radiation. “I amsick to deathof tiptoeing around my feelings for you. I’m not living in fear of you finding out for onefuckingminute longer.” I have never seen him like this. It’s jarring, like when you see the most calm, stoic person you know burst into tears. My heart beats even harder.Feelings?What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Because I know he’s not talking about love, or even lust. There’s just no way.
“Look, I - ” I start, but he interrupts me.
“No,youlook,” he snaps. “For almost four miserable goddamn years I have been hiding how I really feel about you,and it has beensoul destroying. I never meant for you to find out like this, but last night,youkissedme, for crying out loud. So, yeah, OK? You know now. And you’re just going tohaveto know. And deal with it. I don’t even care if I crash and burn with you, I amnotkeeping it a secret anymore. And, OK, maybe that makes me a total dick, and maybe I was stupid for hoping, but I’m not going from last night back to... I’mnot. So forget it.”
“What the actual fucking hell are you talking about?!” I burst out, starting to tremble a little.
“I’m sorry that you’re sorry,” he rages on, ignoring my question, “but I am definitelynot,and I never will be.”
I’m so taken aback that I feel like my world is a shaken snow globe. I have never been so…blank. And muddled.
“Oh, comeon,” he shouts, banging his coffee mug down and storming past me towards the spiral staircase leading up to the small studio apartment he maintains in the shop.
“Come onwhat?” I shout back, stalking after him, suddenly mad at him because I can’t understand why he’s so upset, why he’s turned on me like this, in a way I never thought he ever could.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” he grits out, with a horrible, mirthless laugh quickly following on as he stops at the bottom of the stairs. “No,I’mthe ridiculous one. I am so cocking bloody ridiculous it’s not even funny anymore.”
