So we return again (Felipe) on Crotalus Commons

Jessica Hayles

August 18, 2020 6:05 PM

So we return again (Felipe) by Jessica Hayles

Jessica didn’t know what was going to happen in the situation with Felipe, and she wasn’t even entirely sure what she wanted to see happen in that situation. She oscillated back and forth and sideways on the issue. Sometimes, she would think of how nice it would be if they could somehow fix things, on days when she thought back to how nice things had been before things had broken, but thinking of how it had been always, invariably, brought her mind back to all the awful feelings they had both experienced for the past year and a half. There was only one way to be absolutely sure that the past year and a half would never happen again, and that was to stick to her resolution to never let anyone get close enough to her again to hurt her the way Felipe had…which then, invariably, brought to mind all the thoughts, as opposed to feelings, she had had for the past year and a half about him specifically. She had thought they had something special between them, an understanding, and he had proven over and over and over again that she had been the only one to think so. The insults, the refusal to even consider the position she’d been in, the somehow even worse eventual cold-blooded rejection, and finally, worst of all, the decision to betray her to Zara, of all people….

When she thought of all that at a distance, she wasn’t even sure why she had agreed to talk to him again…but then she’d remember again, how nice things had been before they’d all fallen apart. What it had been like, feeling like she was on an equal footing with someone. And so the whole cycle would begin again.

Jessica did not, therefore, know what was going to happen when the truce they had established ended, as it inevitably had to do sooner or later. In the meantime, though, it did have some advantages. One of these was the ability to use the common room when and as she pleased again, or at least to come closer to that. For the past year and a half, she had spent as much as time as possible outside of Crotalus entirely and spent most of the rest of her time shut up in her room, only occasionally venturing out into the common area as a gesture of defiance. Now…well, she was up to one person in Crotalus who was some degree of friend and one person in Crotalus who she had reason to believe would at least tolerate her presence agreeably enough. This was a massive improvement over regarding the place as A Large Group of Enemies And Also Sadie.

She liked her room very well, of course, especially since she had redecorated it, but sometimes it got claustrophobic, staring at the walls, feeling hemmed in until curfew ended and she could escape the House again. The fact she had never slept well did not make this easier, which was one thing she had missed about the common room. In good times, she and Felipe had sometimes hung out after hours (with roommates like his, his room couldn’t be a much nicer place on a good night than hers was on a bad night), which was why she had avoided going downstairs after it emptied out even more for the past year and a half than she had avoided going downstairs in general. Now, though, for as long as the truce held, she could roam Crotalus at night again even though she didn’t know if Felipe was back from the hospital wing yet, and so she did. It all went really well, until she saw another human shape in the common room and recognized who it belonged to.

Her hand rose automatically to her heart in something which wasn’t alarm, but was close to it, and she started to take a step back before she remembered that the situation had changed. Embarrassed, she put her hand back down to her side.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize anyone else was down here. Or know you’d got back.” She shifted the book and notebook in her other hand in the hopes of underlining the idea that she hadn’t been looking for him or anything, but her eyes were watching him closely, looking for any hint about whether she was welcome to sit or if she should go away. “Are you feeling better?”

16 Jessica Hayles So we return again (Felipe) 1442 1 5

Felipe De Matteo

August 19, 2020 7:03 PM

It does feel like that. by Felipe De Matteo

It felt weird to be in the Crotalus Common Room. It felt like he'd been gone a long time, right up until it was actually time to return, at which point he was sure it hadn't been long enough. One couldn't really get too much time away from rooming with Jeremy Mordue. Felipe had sat in the Common Room so many nights before, in so many different lifetimes, and it only felt right that this be where this one began. He wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that it was beginning still. He knew for sure that he should not try to off himself again but that didn't really mean he didn't want to. He had basically resigned himself to being exhausted and moving through life as softly as he could. Someday, maybe he would have little De Matteos - or whatevers - and he could play with them and spend all his time that way and not have to think about anything else except them and their mother. That was the extent of the daydreaming he would allow himself on that front, as he was still not entirely sure that Zara wouldn't decide to leave him at some point soon. After all, he'd tried to leave himself.

He started - which was nice, because it was much more pleasant to think of outside things than inside things - when someone approached, and dread settled into his stomach when he saw who it was. They were supposed to be having a conversation soon. Oh gosh. Did she know? She didn't seem like she knew. Her question emphasized that, he suspected. While it could have been a polite way to ask about his actual situation, Jessica was famous for her discretion, not her subtly; she would not have asked at all before she would have tried to ask without really asking.

"So-so better," he told her in Spanish, finding it was his preferred language most of the time these days. "I can go if you wanted the space to yourself. Or I can stay." He resisted the urge to just up and leave. He was pretty sure that survival meant not running away from his problems all the time, even if his problems were pretty redheads who'd once been something really special to him.

22 Felipe De Matteo It does feel like that. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

August 20, 2020 5:28 PM

Same place and time as where we began. by Jessica Hayles

She wasn't exactly being invited to stay, but nor was she being either banished or run from. Progress, she guessed.

"I just got tired of looking at the walls in my room," she said, responding in Spanish because she had been spoken to in that language. It was easy to default to the other person's language anyway, and she thought Felipe might not feel quite up to Englishing anyway. "And if one of us was going to leave, it should be me - you were here first, and I wouldn't wish Jeremy on someone even if they were feeling great. I'm glad you're feeling a little better, anyway."

Cautiously, she picked a seat - not far away, but not too close if he didn't want to talk to her. "It was sweet, you thinking of Em, in your note," she added. "I did tell her about - you know - over Christmas. She didn't really say anything, you know, she doesn't tell me what she's thinking very much...." She shrugged and curled her feet up under her thick housecoat. "But we had a pretty good holiday. How was yours? I bet your place is beautiful at Christmas," she added, though she was unsure that she should allude to the fact they had once been close enough that they had visited each other's homes, and had joked about going on joint trips each summer...Italy, she thought, hadn't that been what they'd said?

She didn't curl in further on herself as the pang of remorse hit, but she wanted to do so. Things had been good - she had even more or less started to accept that she was stuck here, and to think it might not be the end of the world - but then she had ruined it all. It was, at the end of the day, her fault that everything had gone wrong. His reactions had been excessive, but there wouldn't have been anything to react to if she had just...

Her mind wandered back to their first year, when they'd had their first proper conversation here, late at night right after they'd come back from the winter holidays. She had mentioned Mara, she remembered, and had been in such a strange mood that she had considered just referring to Mara as her sister then, instead of as her nanny's daughter. What would have happened, she wondered, if she had just given into a whim for once instead of trying to stay in control all the time? Given how absolutely revolting he seemed to find her family, the fact that her father was functionally if not legally a bigamist, it was possible that giving into that whim would have just meant they would have never developed anything to later break, rather than building up something which had looked pretty solid but had turned out impossibly fragile. In fact, she thought it was more likely that it would have worked out that way - because why would he have been more willing to accept a family unlike his own with a virtual stranger than with a friend?

It was stupid to wonder, smart to assume that all she could have saved herself from was allowing the rejection to hurt instead of just being...a thing. Somehow, though, she was sure she was going to wonder for quite a long time

16 Jessica Hayles Same place and time as where we began. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

August 20, 2020 6:33 PM

But it wasn't really us who were here before. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe smiled a little at Jessica's comment on Jeremy. "You're not wrong," he said, grimacing a little as he thought more about it. Shaking his head to clear that thought, he nodded. "Thank you."

He wanted to tell her that it wasn't sweet of him to think of 'Em', because that's what he'd spent a lot of time doing while in the Hospital Wing. What else was he to think about? He'd gone over every word he could remember, carving it into the inside of his skull like it was the walls of his cell. In a lot of ways, it was. He wondered if he should count himself as special that Mara did seem to tell him what she was thinking, or whether he should be even more hard on himself if that was her not giving in to that urge and she was thinking a lot more. "It was beautiful," he agreed softly. "Sort of the same as usual. Except . . . also not really."

That was the weird thing about these sorts of events. They made everything that happened before and after seem like two different lifetimes. He understood now why people often used B.C. and A.D. to mark time passing; death could be world-altering, even when the person didn't die. He pounded on the inside of his own head even as the thought formed, reminding himself again of the fact that he was pretentious; how many people compared themselves to the literal Lord and Savior? That's not what he'd meant, but it had still come to mind. He shook his head again, knocking his own thoughts loose and bouncing so he could concentrate until they took root again.

He wondered if there had ever been a time he would have told Jessica what happened. It was hard to say, especially since he would have preferred not to tell Zara, even now. If she hadn't had to have found out - if it had happened over the break - he wouldn't have told her, he didn't think. He couldn't get the words out of his mouth and the contents of his stomach threatened to come out instead when he tried. But Jessica wasn't Zara. Jessica was a little bit broken too. Maybe he could tell her.

Or maybe the idea would be enough to push her over her own cliff, whatever that looked like. He couldn't be the cause of that. He couldn't. He wouldn't. Ideally, he would die with his thoughts left rotating in his head and his mouth would never taste like too much truth. That would be best.

"How's Robert?" he asked, clutching at the first thought that didn't hurt when he considered Jessica's life.

22 Felipe De Matteo But it wasn't really us who were here before. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

August 20, 2020 7:00 PM

But we're both here now. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica knew that her face was almost surely reflecting her confusion after Felipe asked her a question, but she thought she was within her rights. If it had been a more complex question, she might have worried that she had misunderstood somehow, even though she had learned to speak Spanish along with English from babyhood.

"Robert? He's great," she said. "He'll be thrilled you remember him, since you only met - a little. But he's great. Traffic is horrible in the city over the holidays, so we got to talk a lot. He's started making pepper jelly as a hobby, so if you ever want any pepper jelly, let me know, we have loads," she said, wondering if Felipe was familiar with pepper jelly - made of bell peppers, mostly, but still kind of spicy to Jessica's mind - and what he would think of it if he was not.

"I'm not sure if I'm glad that he didn't drop giving me advice all the time when he started making the jelly," she added. "I used to tell him he was supposed to be my driver, not my therapist, but I'd probably hate it if he didn't act like that. It helps to get it out of my head sometimes" She wrapped her hands around one knee before she continued, pressing her fingers hard into the joint to steady herself up a little. "I didn't tell him about this, but something he said did make me think of something I need to apologize to you for," she continued. "What I - wrote, I guess - last year, after Leonor came to me for help being an heiress...I shouldn't have said most of those things. I was worried about her - and worried about you, too, and I didn't want to be - and..." She shrugged again. "And none of that matters really. Whatever else was going on, I was really unkind, and I'm sorry for that," she said.

That was something Robert advocated for - just saying what she had done and apologizing for it. He said that all the secret-keeping and maintaining a strong front just made her nervous and that she would feel better if she dealt with her problems more directly sometimes. Jessica was privately skeptical, but, well, she'd tried everything else to no avail, so here she was.

"Which is - I get it if you don't want to get into stuff when you just got out of the hospital wing," she acknowledged. "But I thought of it because we were talking about Robert. He says I should just do stuff like apologies the first chance I get, so. Here we are." Her fingers twiddled the edge of a ruffle covering the snaps on her housecoat. "Trying that."

16 Jessica Hayles But we're both here now. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

August 20, 2020 7:18 PM

I'm not really all here. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe nodded, not wanting to give credence to the fact that he was crazy for remembering Robert best. If he just kept his mouth shut . . . "Pepper jelly?" he asked in English, wondering if he was understanding her right, or if she was translating it right. "I haven't heard of that."

Then things got serious again and Felipe berated himself while Jessica talked and the thought I shouldn't have mentioned Robert either floated through his mind. It was almost hard to hear Jessica over the screaming between his ears but he forced himself to do so and was surprised to hear an apology. "You were right, though," he said in a low, gruff voice, looking down at his hands. He took a breath and closed his eyes altogether, running a hand through his hair and leaning his head back on the back of the chair. "You were right and I was wrong and she's not ready. She . . . visited me in the Hospital Wing. She said she was disappointed in me and that I'm stupid and that I'm a bad big brother just because I tried to ki-- because I wasn't feeling good."

His chest fluttered anxiously as he realized what he'd said and he looked up with round eyes to see if Jessica had caught it. Perhaps she hadn't been able to catch the word he'd almost said in Spanish. Perhaps she just wasn't listening. Perhaps she had understood exactly and was about to run away from him. There were no good alternatives.

22 Felipe De Matteo I'm not really all here. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

August 21, 2020 5:46 PM

I probably don't deserve the whole thing anyway, so that's okay. by Jessica Hayles

“Pepper jelly,” confirmed Jessica in English. “It’s…bell peppers, made into a jelly. I hadn’t heard of it before either, but he got the recipe from his mom, so,” she raised one shoulder. “I guess we all have to pass the time somehow,” she concluded, reverting to Spanish.

For a moment, talking about her driver making jelly, things almost felt normal, somehow – and then she broke them all over again.

There were a million things to say, really. One was to point out that Leonor’s unreadiness was no excuse for the rather harsh terms Jessica had used in her note to him. Another was to point out that Leonor was behaving like a spoiled, sulking child if she had bothered someone while they were sick over that – something she could have brought up any time when he was in good health. Even that it was just completely out of order to say he was stupid – disappointment was subjective, how much it mattered if someone considered you disappointing depended on a lot of factors, but Felipe was hardly stupid by any stretch of the imagination….

None of those things could be said, though, or at least not said yet, because of what hadn’t been said – not completely, anyway. For a moment, in fact, Jessica wasn’t entirely sure she was capable of speaking at all, not around the knot in her throat.

“Because you tried what?” she asked finally, forcing the words out in a whisper, her eyes wide and dark in her pale face.

16 Jessica Hayles I probably don't deserve the whole thing anyway, so that's okay. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

August 22, 2020 10:52 AM

You do. You did. by Felipe De Matteo

Way to go, Felipe. Way to friggin' go. You couldn't keep your mouth shut for one full day post-release? You had to go and say stupid things to smart people? Now what? Jessica was going to blame herself. Jessica was going to hate him. Jessica was going to think he was sick or disgusting. Or Jessica was going to break.

Felipe was not under any impression that Jessica cared about him as much as Zara seemed to, but he suspected that Zara crying was not a good sign. It meant something. She meant something to him and she was hurt because he'd screwed up. Maybe Jessica didn't care and it would be fine. Or maybe she did and it would be worse, because Jessica could panic. What was he supposed to do now?

"Leonor was upset because I let myself get sick enough to be in the Hospital Wing," he said in quiet, stiff English. It was really hard to lie. It was not a thing he was particularly practiced at, which was why mostly-the-truth was easier for him. And what he said was mostly the truth, even if it stuck in his throat like bile and made his chest feel hollow again.

He had hoped, after talking with Dr. Greene, that everything would be easy now. He knew it wouldn't because she'd not made any such promises, but he had hoped that maybe he would have come about and realised he'd been wrong and he secretly had some profound desire to live. As it turned out, he did not. Instead, he had a profound desire not to deal with all this again, which means he either needed to not attempt it or he needed to do a better job next time. He would be happy to admit that the latter seemed more frightening at the moment, and he hated to imagine that Zara and others might be left behind and he might have been wrong. There was a small sliver of him that couldn't help hoping he was wrong and that she did about him as much as she said she did. He hoped Leonor cared more than she said.

There was, of course, the option to tell the truth. What good would that do? He couldn't see any reason except perhaps to preserve their relationship if Jessica saw through him. But they didn't really have a relationship anyway at this point and, as he'd told Zara, there didn't seem to be anywhere to go except towards closure at this point. There was also the possibility, however, that news would get around at some point anyway and Jessica would find out from somebody else. That would be worse than just telling her, right?

He wanted very much to curl up into a ball until he was so tucked in and dense that he made his own black hole and could get sucked up and away. He wanted it to be easy, like snapping his fingers. Falling, he had discovered, was not easy. It was terrible and terrifying and the distinct thought of I'm going to die in the back of his head had felt like a weight, pushing him into the ground. Right up until it suddenly hadn't. That had hurt and it had been easier to just close his eyes and let himself go to sleep as the adrenaline ached in his pounding heart and fear and loathing mingled in a cocktail that felt a little less potent when he was dreaming.

Instead, he sighed, blinked to clear his vision, and continued in a very very small voice. "I tried to kill myself."

22 Felipe De Matteo You do. You did. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

August 22, 2020 3:45 PM

But it's up to you how much to offer. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica had known, of course, what was coming. There were some sentences which only had so many conclusions, and in context – based on what he’d been saying before he had interrupted himself – his had been one of those sentences. It was almost a cliché, for a relative to have that reaction after someone took a specific action; it was the only illness that really would – however wrongly; it was bizarre how so many people seemed to think you could control what happened in your head, when that really wasn’t how it was at all – provoke such a reaction. There were very few other things he could have said, and so she knew, more or less, what the answer to her question was before he ever said it.

Knowing, however, turned out to be a pale shadow of the horror of actually hearing it. Jessica froze completely in place, feeling as though the only moving parts of her were the tear ducts forcing salt water to spring into her eyes. Her mind was completely blank, stunned into silence by the sheer awfulness of it all.

“Oh no,” she managed finally, not even sure what she meant by it. It wasn’t really a negation, after all – it was too horrible for someone to lie about, or at least, was too horrible for anyone better than the scum of the earth to lie about. “Oh, Felipe. I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t know why she said that, either, but what else was there to say? Question span through her mind, but were rejected as useless. Why - but why would she ask him why he’d done that when the answer was perfectly obvious? The only possible reason why was that he was sick, that he had tornadoes and thunderstorms in his head, too, now, and they had just gotten to be…too much. Jessica didn’t often think of doing anything like that to herself – her mind was more apt to want to lash out at someone else, to urge her to unleash the full fury of the storms battering her skull and chest and wrists in a way that would cave in the head of someone whose removal would improve her situation – but she could imagine it all too well. She had never lost control – yet – but the mixture of fear that she would and frustration that she couldn’t had driven her to tears more than once in the past year and a half. It was too easy to imagine the whirlwind changing direction one day, telling her to spatter her own brains all over the wall instead of Zara’s or Jeremy’s or Professor Skies’. To just escape. And as for the other question, how - what did that matter? It was none of her business, and anyway, it hadn’t worked, thank God….

“Leonor isn’t ready to do your father’s job,” she said, her voice trembling a little. “And neither are you. And I wouldn’t be to do Daddy’s, either. We’re not supposed to be yet – we’re just kids. And none of that made it okay for her to say that to you – what the hell was she….” She trailed off, stricken with conscience, and swallowed hard. “And I wasn’t right either. I knew something had to be wrong as soon as I heard – what you did. Last year. I knew how much your people mean to you, how important it was to you – I might be one of the only people here who can understand that. I should – I should have tried to figure out what was going on, instead of just being so stubborn about staying so pissed that you’d thrown me away….” None of which could change the past, either of last year or of the past week. Maybe it would make him feel a little better to hear it, somehow, but…. “I don’t know. I’m just so sorry you got that sick, and all alone, that you thought….” She swallowed again as the knot in her throat got very hard, and she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Do you want to talk – about – that – or anything else?” she asked tentatively. A flash of memory rose up again, of a conversation just outside Gunther’s portrait in their second year. “Do you want a hug?” she offered meekly.

16 Jessica Hayles But it's up to you how much to offer. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

August 22, 2020 6:09 PM

There isn't much left of me to offer, I don't think. by Felipe De Matteo

At first, Jessica made it much much worse. He wasn't sure whether it was the look on her face that twisted the knife in his guts, or the tone of her voice. The problem with her tone was that it was only horrible for a moment: the moment that she tried to believe, maybe to convince herself, that she'd misheard him and that everything was different. Then she started saying everything he already knew. That he wasn't ready for this job either. That he was just a kid. That his people were important to him and he'd stepped down and shut everyone out. That he had been so awful to his friend that he'd seemed unreachable to her, even when he clearly needed help, because her anger was greater than her compassion had been. Because of him. He already knew all those things. He was tempted to continue her list for her when she asked whether he wanted to talk, but it wouldn't help. What good would it do to add to a list she already had in her head?

His own head was spinning and he was trying very hard not to think of himself standing at the edge of a cliff, but to run away from it. Or perhaps that wasn't right. Perhaps that was his responsibility now; to stand at the edge of the cliff, looking down, and never find out what it was like to fly, and never turn around to see what else there was. That was his penance.

It easy not to take that way though, not when crying and hiding were options. He was a coward, first and foremostly after all, and what did cowards do better than leave their charges unhandled? His charge had been Los Jardines de Plata and the people of Ciudad de Matteo, but he couldn't handle that now. It wasn't his charge now. Nothing was, really. He had no responsibility at all, except perhaps to Zara and he'd let her down too. He was good at that.

"Do you want a hug?"

He'd hugged his mother over winter break. They'd danced together and pretended for just a moment that he was a little boy again. Only a moment, because he couldn't pretend that for long anymore; he'd grown up, except that he'd never really grown up.

Without meaning to, he found himself nodding, his face twisted with grief as his tears finally all came out. He did his best to be quiet as he gasped in air through his sobs and the difficulty of that only grew as he berated himself for crying over his own problems. What was wrong with him? Why was all of this happening? Oh right. Because of him. Because he wasn't good enough.

His hands were on the side of his head, as if maybe he could just crush all the thoughts away, but he stood up all the same. Jessica did too, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, stooping a little so he could, and tried to keep quiet as he cried on his old friend. His friend who wasn't supposed to be his friend anymore. He held on tightly, knowing that at some point, they would let go of each other. Then, even if only for a little while, no one would be holding on to him, and then what? He'd be holding on by himself again, desperately clinging to anything so he could see the next sunrise, or else begging and pleading for the sky to just stop and the world to end for him. "It's so loud inside," he groaned, every syllable pounding out through his chest. "I can't make it be quiet inside. I just wanted it to be quiet."

22 Felipe De Matteo There isn't much left of me to offer, I don't think. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

August 22, 2020 7:42 PM

Then here - borrow some of me, until you can build back up a little more you. by Jessica Hayles

Considering that she had just admitted to being a horrible person last year, Jessica was not initially sure that she had done a smart thing, trying to offer help now, after so much damage had been done. She knew that she meant it, but could see how he might end up thinking that she was just mugging, putting on a good, socially appropriate front because something bad had happened….

If she got rejected again – not so much in the sense of whether he wanted to talk or have a hug or not, but in the way where she was accused of all sorts of things she’d never said or thought again – she was pretty sure she would start crying in earnest. Which she was pretty sure was the worst thing she could possibly do, for either of them. He had already crossed that line between the bad thoughts and acting on them – it would be all too easy for the least thing to send them both spiraling out of control: him back to wherever he’d been, and her to wherever she’d go, dealing with the fact that it only mattered so much, the knowledge that he wouldn’t, thanks to that manipulative snake hissing in his ear, have listened if she had tried to get through to him and figure out what was going on last year – that she still should have tried, no matter how sure she’d seemed to fail. She didn’t want him to go back to his place, and she didn’t want to find out where hers was. They couldn’t go to those places – they were trains going nowhere, into pits of dust and ash and fire, apocalypses that didn’t have to happen –

She almost gasped with relief when that didn’t happen. So soon after midterm, after a brief respite from the loneliness of this place, Jessica was still accustomed to having people close to her physically and emotionally, and so didn’t shrink from being hugged as well as hugging; half-instinctively, she reached up to stroke his hair, the way she might still get away with doing with Lola when her youngest sister was sleepy or feeling unwell. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay – it’s okay – “

The bottom of her stomach seemed to vanish when she understood what he was saying. “I know,” she said, her eyes stinging all over again. “Believe me – I know what that’s like. You’re not alone with it.” Because wasn’t that one of the worst parts? All her life, the biggest thing had been to never let her parents or teachers see her cry, because it had made her feel like a freak, like a defective lab sample, cut off from other people – but she’d had the staff. She had been ashamed of herself for even losing control around them, but she’d had someone who she could go to pieces with. Even that, though, was lonely in its way, because they didn’t really understand, didn’t really go through it themselves – “I understand.”

She also knew that when she cried like this, she usually ended up having her knees go out from under her eventually. Hers were steady enough for now, but she wasn’t sure how well she could hold them both up if his went. Jessica continued rubbing his back, humming the same song about little chickens he’d tried to soothe her with before Christmas, until her knees began to ache a little, then reluctantly said, “come on – let’s sit down - ” and gently led him to a two-person sofa by the hand.

Her face was shiny too by now, but she didn’t bother trying to hide it. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you before,” she said, facing him at an angle that allowed their knees to touch. “That’s on me. But I will be now. Promise.” She lifted her hand for a moment with her smallest finger extended, as if to make a pact on the playground in her old school, and then noticed she had done this. “Pinky-promise, even,” she added in English, with a somewhat watery smile. “Sometimes it’s like cyclones are in my head, too – but it can get better, some.” She bit her lip, considering, and then added, “When I first came to school here, it was very bad, but it was better after we were friends, before we had that stupid fight. You helped me. I want to help you too, if I can – however I can. This place is so much better with you in it.”

16 Jessica Hayles Then here - borrow some of me, until you can build back up a little more you. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

August 22, 2020 11:02 PM

That doesn't seem fair to you. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe stiffened when Jessica touched his hair. That was something only his mother and Zara ever did. Still, that and her voice were soothing, so he relaxed some and let himself just have a moment to be miserable. She said she knew what it was like and it was the first time Felipe felt like he could believe someone about this whole thing in a long time. Dr. Greene assured him he wasn't crazy or the only one, and he was aware of that in theory, but he found that he actually really believed Jessica. He also realized he'd been wrong in what he'd told Zara; he wanted to talk and fix things because giving up on Jessica was liking giving up on himself. They were too similar to go on not forgiving each other, and while Zara made Felipe a better person, Jessica understood exactly how terrible he was and didn't hate him for it. Well, she did actually hate him for it, but maybe she didn't have to. If he hated Jessica for her misdeeds, what hope did he have for ever learning not to hate himself?

"I don't want you to understand," he cried, holding on just a little tighter and wishing he could make nobody feel this way. Fixing wasn't his strength, though.

He let Jessica lead him back to a sitting position and was glad that she didn't go too far away. He felt like a piece of parchment in a storm, being held down by a rock. A pebble might have blown away with him and a boulder might have just ripped him in two, but a rock could cope. It could get through this storm.

"Please don't apologise," he said quietly. His face was a mess of tears and snot, but he didn't bother trying to clear it because it would all come back. Instead, he only sniffed, and looked up at her with dark, gloomy eyes. "I can't . . . I can't deal with thinking that you . . . that I make you feel like . . . please don't blame yourself." His hands threatened to come up to his head again and he accepted the pinkie promise, lingering with his hand safely entwined with someone else's, before he balled his hands into fists, pressing them together in his lap. He blinked, distracted when she said that this place was better with him in it. She didn't have to say that. Why would she say that?

The Common Room was quiet, except for the sound of their shared breathing and the crackling of a low fire that reflected oranges and reds off Jessica's already red hair. It made her eyes shiny and her expression shadowy and Felipe wondered what it did to him. He also wondered at a number of very stupid thoughts that came to mind. Why would those thoughts be coming to mind? That was ridiculous. Down that path was a lot of bad decisions and heartache.

He knew he was staring, so he forced himself to blink again and look down, running a hand through his hair and down his face. Just push the thoughts away. "Thanks, Jess," he said in a low voice.

I don't want the friendship I thought we had before, he had told Zara. And he'd really meant it. What were his reasons? Because the friendship he'd thought he'd had with Jessica wasn't really there anyway. That was right. It was all a sham, built upon each of their fragile facades. That was so easy to believe when he was with Zara, and so hard to remember when he was with Jessica. What if it could be true though? He definitely didn't want a friendship built on facades, strength-tested by the weight of legacies on either end. He wanted a true, honest friendship, where he knew they could be there for each other. Was that even a thing you could have with someone you weren't dating? His stomach rolled over again at that thought and at the thought of further bad decisions.

"I don't ever want you to feel badly," he asked, focusing on the moment. His tone was earnest and his eyes were almost pleading. He just wanted everyone to be okay. "That pinkie promise goes both ways, alright?"

22 Felipe De Matteo That doesn't seem fair to you. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

August 26, 2020 3:08 PM

It's okay. People say I'm a little Much sometimes anyway. by Jessica Hayles

“I know,” said Jessica when Felipe said he didn’t want her to understand the situation. “I know. But I do.”

It was hard to admit. She had been trained from birth to be someone who would wield power someday, and who would therefore always be just a little separate from almost everyone else. It was different with her sisters, and she thought that Daddy and Grandpa were at least somewhat more open with their wives than with people in general, but that was all. And yet, at the same time, one had to seem so deliberately human…maybe it was different for her father, writing those little ‘personal notes’ sections in each season’s catalogues to make people think the Hayleses were just a family like any other, but Jessica found it exhausting, walking that highwire, both out of fear of what would happen if she fell and just not wanting to be a burden on others, or for the people she cared about to really know how it felt, because it was awful, and of course she didn’t want them to know how it was –

She didn’t know if Felipe still felt that last part of it about her specifically, but she was willing to bet that he did understand the general ideas – all of them. And it seemed that he might now understand something of where she had been in those first two years, too – realizing that all her life, she’d been a ‘what’, not a ‘who,’ and that when her role had been yanked away, she hadn’t been able to figure out what to do next, where to go or who to be. Technically, he might have given up his role instead of having it torn out of his hands, but if he was sick enough to try to kill himself, she thought it was a distinction without a difference. The alligators in your head could take things as much as the quirk of genetics which produced magic, after all.

In that moment, she really, completely forgave him for what had happened. He’d hurt her – but she’d been hurt because he hadn’t lived up to some idea she’d had, and she’d hurt him by doing the exact same thing. There had been something that had seemed so easy, at first, about finding someone else who understood the weight of the kinds of expectations they had been raised under, the fear of not living up to that role – but it had been hard, impossibly hard, for a time at least, to just let go of the need to be perfect, to be separate, and it had all just gotten so tangled up that they’d both tripped up, and now….

Now, here they were.

“You don’t make me feel like…that,” she assured him – or at least, hoped it functioned as a reassurance. “I just…know that I was wrong about some things, and I want to do better.”

Part of her wanted to say or do more things – to try to fix things or at least try to improve them or plan to improve them, or…something – but she wasn’t sure any of them would be helpful. She definitely wasn’t sure enough that any of them would be helpful to risk saying them. She had read enough of the employee handbooks and school handbooks and public notices to know that there were so many ways to make things worse, and that it was a delicate situation, and the last thing she wanted to do was make things worse. Even if they had still been fighting, there were some things that went past petty arguments or enmities and rivalries. She wouldn’t even want to push someone she hated toward doing something like that, because it was wrong to do things like that, and she knew she’d feel guilty. With someone she…had more complicated, to put it mildly, feelings with, anyway, it would be…she could not deal with that. So she sat quietly with him, hoping that counted for something.

She smiled slightly when he thanked her – not so much because of the thanks as because he called her Jess. Nobody else called her that, and while it had never crossed her mind to be called that on purpose, she had missed that. “Any time,” she said.

When Felipe continued, Jessica was briefly just struck with what a contradiction he was. Last year – nothing. Not a glimmer of sympathy. This year – he’d just tried to kill himself and here he was being concerned about her, of all things. But then…a few weeks ago, she’d been absolutely vile to him before she had panicked, and here she was now, offering hugs and support. They were one heck of a pair, she had to admit, but it was better to be a heck of a pair than to be alone, she guessed. Being alone – her heart constricted painfully just at the memory of her first four months of school here. The memory of what it had been like, being all alone in the dark.

“I guess we’ve tried almost everything else,” she said, smiling a little sadly, “and it looks like we both do better when we’re on the same team. Deal.” She looked down for a moment, her eyes wanting to focus on the wavy ends of her long red hair, or the ruffle covering the closures of her pink housecoat. “Not that I’m saying, ‘oh, if we’re friends again, that can just magically fix everything and yay’. I’m not that arrogant,” she added, with a bare gleam of a smile at her own expense. “Not quite. But I know what it’s like when it’s too loud in your head, and I think it’s better to just…say it, to someone who knows what it’s like and won’t think you’re crazy or anything. So you can do that with me, if it helps you, too.” She looked back at him just as earnestly as he had looked at her. “And if I say or do something that doesn’t help – promise you’ll just tell me? I promise I won’t take it personally, I’ll just stop doing whatever it is. Okay?”

16 Jessica Hayles It's okay. People say I'm a little Much sometimes anyway. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

August 26, 2020 9:47 PM

I think you're perfect. by Felipe De Matteo

This was one of those sticky things where Felipe found himself pulled back out of the moment. He wanted to argue with Jess, tell her that she hadn't been wrong, that she was never wrong, but that simply wasn't true. It was the sticking point of their whole relationship; they were both entirely too flawed to get anywhere. Zara was probably flawed too, but so far she didn't really seem like it, and she seemed to see good in Felipe. But Felipe and Jessica saw something else in each other. Maybe that meant they saw the worst parts of each other, or maybe it meant they saw the realest parts. He wasn't sure. But he couldn't say she was wrong, even though she also wasn't quite right.

Any time. Little things were always harder because they were most often not thought out as much as big things. Did she mean it? Any time? Maybe that only meant any time of day, and that she didn't mind losing sleep to be there for him. But maybe it meant any time, whether it was a good day, a bad day, or a Bad Day. Maybe it meant the moment before he fell from that cliff, or the moment before he jumped, or the moment after he landed. Little things were the biggest things, and Felipe wasn't sure what he wanted her to mean, or what he could reasonably hope she meant.

"Don't be too confident," he grimaced, glancing up at the stairs to his room. "Sometimes I hurt people on my own team."

Her request for him to promise that he would express himself, stand up or himself, and be there for himself was harder. What if he didn't know what was hurting him? What if he didn't care? What was he supposed to do when he wanted to be hurt and got stuck in a paradox of wanting pain and not wanting pain? What if he was already too full of pain to care? Ugh. Just being in his own head made him feel sick. Hearing his own thoughts was too much.

"I can't promise that," he decided finally, his voice cracking, although he managed to keep his cheeks dry for a moment. "It's hard for me to . . . it's hard to acknowledge that. And harder to say it out loud. It's exhausting just thinking of it." There were a lot of things that were exhausting to think about and he found that one was swirling around in his head, just begging to be made a question of. Perhaps if he just asked, he could clear the cobwebs and everything would be simple. Except that, he knew, nothing was ever simple, and especially not when he was listening to his own mind.

Steeling himself regardless, Felipe took a breath and shifted his weight a little. The room felt heavy again and he felt like he was already waiting for her answer on the edge of his seat, even though he hadn't asked yet. Even though there probably wasn't any good reason to ask. Even though her answer didn't matter. It couldn't matter. But he had to ask. "Jess..." He fiddled with his fingers before deciding that if he was going to play with fire, then he was at least going to watch everything catch fire. "If things were different . . . or if things had been different . . . would you have wanted me?"

22 Felipe De Matteo I think you're perfect. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

August 27, 2020 8:58 AM

I'm just a girl who wants to help. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica followed the glance toward the stairs and her lips quirked into something close to a smirk. “He doesn’t count,” she said. “Honestly, the whole House should just get an annual punch-Mordue allowance, or at least you and Martin should. I’m not sure it’s actually possible to be more of a jerk than that guy. Last year he was running his mouth at me, mostly about how I’m not a good enough witch, and he ended up being so racist that before I walked off, I ended up sticking up for….” She remembered herself a few seconds too late, considered, and then finished her sentence. “Zara,” she concluded, and then raised her hands placatingly. “Who I won’t say another word about unless you ask,” she promised. “But yeah. That happened last year.”

She knew that sympathy was probably a more correct expression to have when Felipe answered her request about letting her know if she was doing something wrong, but she knew just as well that she almost certainly looked mostly startled instead. She ducked her head for a moment, then had to smooth a lock of her hair back from her face as she looked back up again.

“It’s kind of uncanny how close that was to something I was thinking a few minutes ago,” she said softly. “I was thinking about - before, and how it felt, feeling like someone really got it - but how it was still so hard to let go on purpose, instead of only when I didn’t have a choice. How hard it was - and is - to own up to things that aren’t the things we put in the catalogue pictures.” She smiled, running a hand through part of her hair at the back. “Guess the House system got something right, anyway – we really are two of a kind.”

It felt almost inappropriate, somehow, to make even a glimmer of a joke - not even a proper joke, really, just a wry observation. She knew that when she lost her head, though, that it usually only made it worse if people treated her like she was as fragile and cracked about the edges as she felt. The trouble with using that as a standard to decide what to say with, though, was that while she had had thoughts about wanting to just - escape from the pressures of living, she had never taken it to the point of harming herself, at least not unless one counted a few scratches. Therefore, she didn’t know at all that Felipe would feel like she thought she would have. It was so hard, knowing what to say, or what not to say....

“New version then,” she said. “Tell me if I do something wrong and it’s a day when you feel like you can say so. How’s that?”

Jessica understood his question, or thought she did, pretty much directly. Somehow, she thought she should have been more surprised than she was, too. Still, though, she paused before she answered. Illogically, it abruptly occurred to her that she wasn’t wearing a bra. This was not in fact a matter of consequence – even had she not been speaking with someone who had rather more serious issues than her breasts to deal with, she was not particularly voluptuous, and she was, furthermore, wearing a fully fastened-up housecoat over a long, velvety nightgown with thick fuzzy pyjama pants under that; she would not, it seemed, be terribly keen on Ireland in the wintertime, if she ever lived there – but it jammed itself into her head anyway, bringing heat to her face. She also didn’t know if there was a right or wrong answer, one which would make things worse somehow, and how that stacked up next to the assertions she kept getting from him that honesty would be the best policy, and –

“Probably,” she said after a moment, going with honesty. “You’re handsome, you kinda grew up like I did, I’ve only ever seen you be unkind, like, literally once….” To her, but, well, they were moving past that. “And you were – I don’t know how to explain it,” she admitted. “I felt like things were going to be okay, when I was with you – like maybe I could find somewhere to belong…here.” She waved a hand at the common room. “In all this, and without the company and everything. Like I still mattered, even if I wasn’t Miss Arvale anymore.” She flushed even more deeply at admitting that – hadn’t she specifically made up her mind never, ever to admit that? To anyone? Not to her pastor, to either of her sisters, to any shrink she ended up with, to anyone at all? “Why? Did….” She didn’t even know what she was asking, or if she wanted to ask it, and so trailed off and didn’t pick up again, waiting instead.

16 Jessica Hayles I'm just a girl who wants to help. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

August 27, 2020 2:22 PM

I'm just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her not to love him. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe almost indulged in a chuckle about Jeremy being punch-worthy but the rest of what Jessica had to say made him feel squirmy. He knew that she knew about how literal that was, after the incident she cited even. It wasn't exactly that, of course; he'd only wanted to confront Jeremy about being a scum and then he'd used that awful idiom and then Felipe had punched him. "A bludger can do a lot more damage," he pointed out, running his hand through his hair. "And since I've done both now, I'm pretty sure he's got the leg up on claiming the moral high ground."

He nodded along with her comment and then did manage a small smile. "And I was just thinking that. We are similar, for better and for worse. But you're right . . . it is hard enough to keep the doors closed; once they're opened, it feels impossible to close them again, and certainly to only open them a little bit here and there."

Jessica seemed very thoughtful. He remembered from their conversations here before that she usually did seem especially thoughtful at night, when the Common Room was empty except for their own small conversations. This conversation seemed so different somehow. For everything that they had had, they had also missed a big chunk of each other's lives, and they were not the same people anymore.

He smiled again, feeling a little better about her second request. "Alright. I'll try."

Jessica answered his question, which was surprising enough on its own, but the answer itself surprised him. He blushed a little at being told he was handsome. His skin felt prickly and he was very aware of the fact that they were alone together. For a long time, he had assumed that it was his friendship with Jessica that had been relegated to another lifetime, but he wondered now whether that's all it was.

Zara came to mind, with her smile full of sunshine and her eyes full of mischief. The way she tasted and felt and the way she took the world on head first. She was brave and bold and everything Felipe always wanted to be, but somehow she found something special in him. Even before there had been Zara, though, there had been Jessica. She was her own sort of brilliant and her own sort of fierce and Felipe didn't feel like quite so much of a slug when he was with her because he wasn't the only one who was squishy and a little bit gross sometimes.

It seemed melodramatic to say at fourteen, but he was pretty sure that he could have loved Jessica, or maybe that he already did. But that, like the friendship they had shared, had been relegated to another lifetime. The only bits of that that got to show up here were in the moment that he would never admit happened when he thought he would very much like to lean over and find out what Jessica tasted like, too.

It was cruel, really, because people were not playthings. He knew that. The problem with objectifying himself as a coping mechanism meant that it was too easy to do the same thing to other people too.

His mind spun, playing flashes of memories of Jessica and Zara both, but the ones of Jessica ended abruptly and the ones with Zara kept going. They became bold and beautiful and exciting in new ways and Felipe found that he regretted asking. The problem with life was that you just got one, and there weren't always compromises. All the training in diplomacy and negotiation couldn't make it easy to care about two people and then pick one. But he didn't really have to make that decision now, because he already had. Zara was the sun in the sky and he'd beaten himself over the head with a rock; for just a moment, he'd forgotten to look up. That wasn't a mistake he could make again; he'd already proven that impulse control wasn't necessarily his strong suit.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked," he replied quickly, albeit kindly. "You're beautiful," he added, looking up with dark eyes. She'd paid him a compliment and he wanted to make sure he did the same, especially when it was an honest one. "I only wondered. But I shouldn't scratch at old scabs like that. For either of us. I was only curious," he added, admitting the truth with a quiet voice. "But you do belong. You always belong."

22 Felipe De Matteo I'm just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her not to love him. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

August 27, 2020 4:35 PM

She tried that. It didn't work very well. by Jessica Hayles

“That was on purpose, with the Bludger? Wow,” said Jessica. “Still, either way, I don’t know – a person is on pretty low moral ground when I’ve got to say that something bad they said about She Who I’ve Promised Not To Name was a wrong thing to say,” she joked. Sort of. With her tone, anyway. She couldn’t actually point to anything in that statement which wasn’t accurate, though. That girl had yet to do or say anything to give Jessica any impression other than her first one, which was that Zara was nothing but a spiteful, manipulative, dishonest shrew. She had more sense than to say it to him right now, but now that she was forced to think about the rhymed-with-witch, Jessica couldn’t say she would be surprised if it turned out that Zara was partially to blame for Felipe not thinking that there was any way to improve his situation short of dying. The Felipe she’d known for two years had been someone with a plan and a purpose, someone confident in his beliefs even when they were challenged – at least by a friend. Even then, though, Zara had had this bizarre hold over him, had been able to make him doubt himself and everyone else who cared about him. Then for a year his only friend had been Zara, and now he was a wreck….

Her heart was abruptly pounding too hard, and she had to remind herself about being good. How proof that letting the bad days overwhelm you wasn’t a good idea was sitting right in front of her now. How there might be a time to not be in control, but that the bad days weren’t that time – at least not in general. It was maybe one thing to lean on someone, but it was another to do what the thunder said. She could not go there.

“Anyway. I think you have to hit a racist a lot more times than you have to give him the moral high ground,” she concluded.

“It’s hard, but – maybe it’s worth it. Sometimes,” she offered tentatively. “I mean, I know I made a real mess of it, when I tried that first time – but maybe, if we work out the trick to it, maybe it can make things a little better.” She rolled her shoulders, her hand drifting up to rub one of them. “I don’t know if it could be the same for you,” she said, half-reassurance, a quarter admission, and a quarter warning, “but – God. There were so many times I wanted to say something – even when you were mad at me, it was the longest time before I really believed that was just - ” She made a chopping movement with one hand into the other, as though one hand was a cleaver and the other was a block. “Going to be that. If I ever really did, considering – well – here we are,” she added wryly. “Maybe it can – work out somehow, if you learn how to open the door when you want.”

She smiled, too, when he agreed to her second set of terms. “I think that’s all anyone can really ask,” she said. “Thank you.”

Whatever she had been asking got a sort of answer. Jessica wasn’t sure what to make of that answer exactly. It did not escape her notice that the only compliment she got back was that she was beautiful, but her ears still went hot upon hearing it. Her parents and sisters and the staff had all told her, of course, that she looked beautiful on appropriate occasions – but not often just that she was beautiful, and anyway, it was…different, somehow. She had quite given up the idea, really, that anyone would ever see her that way, or say that to her….

“But where?” she asked wistfully, but then shook her head. “Now’s probably not the best time to worry about it,” she agreed. “Things are always changing – maybe someday things will be enough different that we need to talk about that – but for now…For now, it doesn’t make any difference to what I said,” she added quickly. “About me being here for you. As your friend again. If…if you’ll have me, of course.”

There was always that – the one thing that could make this evening a point which they could both move forward from, and hopefully improve, or one where she’d offered him free access to her weak points and had had them run through again for her trouble. Except this time, she wouldn’t even be able to withdraw, to give herself the luxury of being angry instead of hurt – you couldn’t just leave someone to drown when you knew they were too out of it to keep swimming alone, not like this. So all she could do now, between venturing and finding out the results, was hold her breath.

16 Jessica Hayles She tried that. It didn't work very well. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

August 27, 2020 7:17 PM

Shoot. by Felipe De Matteo

"No, no, it was an accident," Felipe said a little too loudly, grimacing at having been misunderstood. "I just definitely am not... I don't think I get a free swing." He wrinkled his nose at Jessica's comment about Zara but didn't otherwise comment on it. He nodded in concession of Jeremy being racist and punch-worthy though still.

He frowned again at the reminder that he'd been a terrible friend. "I'm so sorry about that," he said softly. There was something in him that wanted to apologise for not having been there for her, but he also couldn't help thinking that that was for the best.

Jessica sounded like she was trying to leave room open for . . . for them? For a future where he changed his mind? Or where she did? He couldn't be sure. He wanted to say he couldn't imagine that happening but . . . well, he wouldn't imagine it at least.

"I'd like that," he agreed, squirming again at her phrasing. No, he wouldn't have her. He couldn't. He wouldn't even if he could, right? What did that mean, to 'have' someone? He knew it was an idiom for tricking someone, or for sleeping with them, or for maybe having them in your life again? He thought that maybe there was a reason those three things could all fall under one verb. To have someone was to hold their strings, either to uplift them, or drag them down, or to hold them back. Or perhaps something of all of those. He wasn't sure which one he would say was which category either. "I don't know what that looks like," he admitted, thinking again of Zara.

22 Felipe De Matteo Shoot. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

September 03, 2020 12:51 PM

Guess you're stuck with me. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica nodded when it was explained that the Bludger incident had been an accident. “So you’re good then. You both punched once, and he’s a racist, so he deserved it. You’re still doing better morally,” she decreed, comfortable and confident in this judgement, pleased with the ethical equation balancing so well and easily for her.

Her heart squeezed again, this time in something like pain rather than fear, when he apologized yet again. This, she thought, was absurd. All she had ever wanted was for him to admit that they had both made mistakes, and that he was sorry for his as well. Now that he was doing it, she felt badly hearing it! Context, though, was important, and she’d never imagined this discussion happening after…what had happened apparently.

“I forgive you,” she said. “Really, and truly. It’s the past now. I think we both said and did things we regret, but – we can’t change that now, and I think we just hurt ourselves more if we just…let it be all about regretting it, instead of being about doing better. Do you think?”

She smiled, a little amused, when he said he didn’t know what her being there for him as a friend again would look like. “Whatever we want, I assume,” she said. “Or…need, anyway. We might want to put off planning that joint vacation to Italy until we see how this being open and up front thing goes for a little longer-term,” she suggested with a slight chuckle, picking an extreme on purpose, “but for now…we said we could work together sometimes in class. That still sounds good to me. Have lunch some days. Hang out in the middle of the night down here, of course. Yeah? Or just...whatever you need, if you need to talk or anything,” she added.

16 Jessica Hayles Guess you're stuck with me. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

September 03, 2020 7:57 PM

Just so long as you don't love me. by Felipe De Matteo

Jessica was clearly just being nice, and probably being a bit silly at that, but her reassurances felt good regardless and Felipe settled in them for a moment, feeling warm and comforted knowing that someone thought he still had the moral highground over the pond scum he roomed with. "That is a very low bar," he pointed out dryly. "But I'll take it. Thank you."

He was surprised to hear her wholly and unapologetically expires her forgiveness. "Yes," he agreed quietly. "We just hurt ourselves more." There were few things Felipe understand as well as that sentiment. All of this pain, all of this doubt and self-loathing, it all just became fodder for a fire he lit under himself. It was a useless flame, not the sort that buoyed him on to new heights or that pushed him to try harder, it just hurt. It was really no wonder that he'd eventually jumped right off the flame, or at least tried to. But that was no excuse, he knew now, because he should have just learned to put the fire out instead. His mind turned to Zara again and he wished he could be with her and hold on to her.

He blushed some when she remembered their talk of traveling to Italy. Again, another lifetime perhaps. "We can make it up as we go," he realized a bit quietly, smiling some despite himself. "We've got two Crotali, some of the biggest planners ever known, whatevers to estates where planning is of the utmost, and here we are. Winging a friendship."

The thought crossed his mind that he was going to have to tell Zara about all this, but it was easier to imagine that maybe he wouldn't have to. Of course, there was no good answer. He'd have to tell her, because if he didn't and she found out, it would be bad news. If he didn't and she didn't find out, and then they all graduated and things just ended with his friendship with Jessica, that would also not be great. But if he told her . . . what if she left him? Or made him choose? He'd done that once already and the choice was easy enough, but then, it also hadn't worked out. He wanted both of these people in his life. Plus, if they were going to work together in class or hang out at lunch, Zara would find out at some point. Belatedly, he also considered the moral rightness of it and decided that even if none of those things were true, he we like to think he still would have told her.

"I've still got a bunch of canned pineapple and other snacks," he smirked. "Witching hour in Crotalus commons. Sounds like a plan to me."

22 Felipe De Matteo Just so long as you don't love me. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

September 10, 2020 11:14 AM

We'll worry about semantics later. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica grinned at the point that ‘better than Jeremy’ was a low bar to vault. “You’re welcome,” she said, as straight-faced as she could, when thanked for offering that medal of dubious distinction.

She did think it was worth something, though she didn’t know how to express the thought correctly. It always felt like it would be so easy to just…not jump over even the lowest of bars. To just refuse to have a go at the hurdles no matter how easy they were some days – or to try tunneling under them and taking pride in hitting a lower level.

“Yeah,” she agreed when Felipe echoed her words, reaching out to put a hand on his. “I don’t think that’s really something either of us needs to do at all.”

Jessica laughed, too, at the idea of them ignoring their exalted planning skills and just ‘winging’ relationships. “Scions,” she said in English. “Uh – what we are, to our estates now,” she explained. “I think we still count as scions, even we aren’t heirs. I just don’t remember the Spanish word for that, or even if I ever knew one, actually,” she admitted, her voice turning momentarily thoughtful on the last part of the last sentence. “Is there a word for that? Or do we both need to get our dictionaries?”

She smirked, too, at the callback to pineapples. “Definitely,” she said. “As long as we’ve got pineapples, we’re good, we can figure out the rest of it.”

16 Jessica Hayles We'll worry about semantics later. 1442 0 5