Perhaps it was because he had heard she had been in the Masque Ball, where it was reported to have been snowing, dismissed as a Halloween prank. Perhaps it was because she had come home, dress and hair rumpled and brushed apart her parents concern and simply went up to her room without a word. Perhaps it was she was just tired of making excuses.
Whatever the reason, she is sitting right in front of him now in the cafe they had agreed to meet. They are quiet; she shifts her gaze down to her cup, lifting it up to her lips. He waits for her to finish before he spoke. He knows she hates being interrupted while eating or drinking, because she had once admonished him, saying that she could choke if it was some kind of joke.
He knows her, and she denies coming to terms with it because it irritates her. Because he shouldn't know her like that.
"We passed each other in the street last week." He says, after she sets the cup back in its rightful place in the saucer.
"Did we?" She asks and he stares at her, eyes studying her face. Her expression is incomprehensible, even to her own self. She doesn't have a smile, she doesn't know how to react, doesn't know how to feel.
He speaks after a moment of silence, elbows propped up on the table, fingers intertwining to create a bridge for him to set his chin on. "You think of me as a stranger." It was no question. It was a simple statement.
This is when she is reminded that he knows her again.
How does he do that? Had she really let her guard down so much back then, even after the news reached her ears and changed her outlook on romance forever? How does he know what she is thinking? How does he know that she doesn't want to think of him, that even when she passes by him, she does not want to say hi to him? That she just wants to brush by without a word, like the wind that touches but never acknowledges?
It irritates her and always has, or more specifically, it is a reason for her to get irritated by him. Sometimes she thinks it was because everyone else said he was the perfect boyfriend, and even she thought he was and still is, And that to push herself away, she found one simple thing that was easily overlooked. That simple thing to focus on and make it annoying to serve as an excuse.
"Do you want me to apologize?" She asks. "Maybe I didn't mean to." She wonders if she should cross her arms at this juncture, but it might come off as being hostile.
And today, she wants to sort everything out.
"I know it's because of... what happened," his voice catches as he doesn't go into details; again, it's because he knows it is a sore spot that she doesn't like to talk about. "I know that's why you drifted away."
"If you've figured it out," she points out, "then why are you still harping on this?"
"I know about Seth." Her head jerks up; she was focusing on playing with a tassel at the end of her scarf, when he speaks that name. Of course. Of course he had gotten curious when they had met in the hospital. Of course he had to pry and find out who she had been visiting.
"He's a friend."
"Are you really?" He questions, eyes boring right into her, and she stares back. What gives him the right to intrude into her life? Because he was her first boyfriend? Because he is close to her parents?
"Do you want to know why I left you?" She tells him, palms gripping her cup. "That's what you really want to know, isn't it? You want to know why even though you were supportive and was always there and never faltered a step, I still left you." He is silent and she takes it as a yes to continue, and she does, voice rising as the words tumble out, one by one. "Because I knew I didn't love you as much as I should. Because I knew I couldn't love you as much as I should. I knew I couldn't rise up to even match those emotions. I... can't." Her voice trembles, and blond curls shake. "I can't fully immerse myself in something that requires so much commitment. I can't immerse myself in something that will open me up to be vulnerable. I don't ever want to hurt myself and go to that extreme."
"You're selfish." He tells her and she smiles bitterly, because she knows this to be true. "All you care about are your feelings. Have you ever thought about what I would feel?"
"I don't think you deserve someone who can't love you as much as you love her."
"You say that." His eyes flash at her. "But then what about you being with..." Before he can even say the name again, she silences him with a glare.
"I'm not in a relationship." She states clearly. "I'm not, and I never will be. If you ever hear anything that says otherwise, it's either lies or about another Eve Summers that isn't me."
"You can tell yourself that." He says, looking at her from the side of his eyes as she stands up. "But you can't control what you feel."
"I can't control the armor that melded onto and gripped my heart with the refusal to let go." She says, stopping by his seat but not looking at him.
"You say that to make yourself feel better." He says softly, lifting his cup to his lips as she leaves.
It irritates her.
She hates that it's like she's so see-through to him. She hates even more that there's a part of her, deep down inside that says he is right. She hates when whatever he says about her leads her question herself and fall into doubt when she has already established the concrete of what she believes in. What she thought she believed in until he breaks everything with the logic of his words.
Her phone buzzes and she brings it out to see a text message. He is the sender.
She wonders if she should just delete it, and then go on to delete him from her contact list. Delete him out of her life entirely and pretend that she had never ever met Adam Hale.
But he also knows she hates that kind of pretense, and that she would want to end it cleanly without any loose ends.
Text message
8.03PM
7.59PM, 06/11/10
►
From Adam Hale
Are you lost?
Are you lost?
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