Rena | Alex, Ezra, Eventing ‘B’ Team, Sully
The next morning, Rena awoke to find the faintest streams of light falling in through the curtainless window at the end of the dark room. Admittedly groggy, she shifted under the heavy layers of sheets, trying to get a better sense of where she was. Despite low levels of intoxication, many of Rena’s memories were barely accessible due to the mental state she’d been in for the last few months.
As she shifted her body, she became suddenly aware of Sullivan’s presence beside her, his arm strewn casually across her midsection. Things were becoming clearer, but no amount of remembering what had happened could provide reasoning as to why she’d made the decisions she’d made the night prior. Sullivan was the only friend she had at this point with Alex still as distant as he was. Of course, she knew people around here–lots of them, in fact–but not to any level of depth that she could categorize as friendship.
“Morning,” he mumbled sleepily. His voice sounded different than normal, more gentle, more vulnerable. She turned gently to face him, studying his soft expression with skeptical brown eyes.
“Good morning,” she replied icily, seeming to grow more defensive and apprehensive as she became more awake. With her tone, Sullivan forced his eyes to remain open, detecting her face for any indication as to why her behavior was so unpredictable, and if he’d done anything to trigger whatever was going through her mind at that moment.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing,” she replied blankly.
“Are we okay?”
“Yes.”
“Do you regret that it happened?”
She inhaled slowly, studying his eyes briefly. They were so gentle, so capable of love. She knew in an instant that she would never be enough for him, that it would never work out in the end. “No,” she replied, her voice much higher than normal. She’d said it with her back to him as she hastily got up, gathering her clothes as she braced for some sort of response from him. Her voice had cracked too much, it had been too superficial.
“Yes.” He smiled weakly, half awake and watching her frenzy of movement across his floor.
“Listen, I just- I need time to figure things out. I need to think. I’ll see you later?” By some stroke of luck, she was wearing a shirt of Sullivan’s that felt more like a dress, one that she recalled being given in the middle of the night as a result of being too cold. In this way, she didn’t have to be as naked as she felt under his gaze, and she didn’t have to worry about making herself decent to walk two steps across the hall into the safety of the isolation of her room. All of the boxes were still on the floor, barely packed. She had no right calling it hers, it was simply a room that held her stuff. She was still prepared to flee at any moment, and now felt like a good one. Still, she was being paid heaps of money by Emily to work more jobs than she felt capable of managing, and the university down the street was too prestigious to give up furthering her education. She would have to make do for the time being, even if it meant living with the discomfort and the fallout of her poor decisions for a few years. Surely it’d go away, especially as long as no one had to know about it except for the two of them. “I’ll see you at practice.”
As she opened Sullivan’s door, prepared to reach her own in a second, she realized that a familiar figure was lingering outside of her door. “Rena.”
“Alex, I-” Her stomach dropped and her face felt hot. She hadn’t felt panic in a long time, but the feeling was so familiar, as if she was dizzy, as if she would drop to the floor in a matter of seconds. Her gaze was flighty and impatient, willing him to let her go–at least for the moment. She couldn’t stand to see the fallout of this, to face the consequences of their poor timing. It seemed as though the universe both willed them together and forbade them from happiness. Behind her dull, hardened gaze, tears threatened to spill in her eyes. It wasn’t supposed to end like this, it wasn’t supposed to end like this…
Before she could escape the terror of this moment, which was still somehow better than what would have awaited her in Sullivan’s room, Alex cut her off. Being the gentleman that he was, his gaze had never wavered below her face, prolonging the anxiety that Rena felt regarding breaking his heart even more than she already had.
“You told me to think about it, and now I have.” These words had no right to give her such hope, to make her feel anything, especially after what she’d done. Whatever she’d been telling herself he’d been doing with his time, she’d been wrong, and somewhere deep down, she had always known it.
“Rena, I just want to go back to being someone you say hi to and have shitty talks with at four in the morning and – I don’t even know. God, I just want to be friends.” Though her tears had been building the entire time, this was the sentiment that finally got her to break. She choked out a breath, streams of tears now falling down her face. These were the words she’d wanted to hear for days, and the decisions she’d made in the desperation of her own hopelessness had put them at jeopardy again. Here he was, extending an olive branch, and she’d ruined her chances at being his friend before they even began. She could see the confusion in his eyes at her tears, the way he searched her for both validation and reassurance that she was okay.
“I’m ready, if you are.” I am, she thought to herself. Her heart begged her to say the words, but her brain knew it was already too late.
“Alex, I-” Before she could manifest any kind of explanation or apology, she followed his gaze on the path of fallout. She turned around to find Sullivan there with a towel around his waist, gentle but uneasy smile on his face.
“Alex, hey…” He studied both of their expressions, then added, “it’s nice to see you. If you need anything, I’ll just be in here.”
Still in shock at the way everything was going down, Rena took half of a step forward to allow Sullivan’s door to shut. Undoubtedly, that was why he’d gotten up: to see if Rena was okay and why she was still standing in his doorway six minutes after her rushed exit.
“Um, you know what, I think I’ll just–” Clearing his throat, Alex shifted backwards, eyes anywhere but the scene in front of him. “See you around, yeah?” Though Sullivan had already left the two of them to speak, she felt as though the words were more for him than for her.
“Alex, wait, I-” Still, she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. She didn’t have anything to say that would help the situation, and she had no right chasing him down the hallway in this state. She’d spend some time alone, thinking, processing, figuring out what the best plan of action was for all parties involved. Then, she’d act on her clearly raw emotions.
Sunny
