The sides of her forehead throb a little at night.
It's a comforting feeling—the one-two-three-are you dead yet?—and it makes her proud that she's accomplished something today.
It's never been the same since three years when her voice and words flowed out silver-sweet, and her twig thighs fit perfectly into Block-borrowed Sevens jeans. He had complimented her once on them, too many years ago to a time that shouldn't have been remembered. It was hardly a compliment but it was a marked change from his usual noncommittal remarks of nods and glares.
"I called you." She imagines saying this, and instead chooses—"The homework assignment was difficult."
His eyes meet hers bluntly, and she flinches at their disdain. A moment later, the look has passed. She has imagined millions of words that come out of his mouth, from the expected to the words found in rom-com 2005 K-dramas (sweet and unrealistic and naive), but is caught at, "I wonder if you're going blind."
She almost smiles but a bell rings and a group floods in and he leaves. Don't delude yourself, she remembers, he's only here because he has to be.
(Not having expectations is easier said than done.)
There is raw emotion in this boy of sixteen years and she says it occasionally from the distance.
The twitches of his smile and how he ruffles her hair and passes notes to her—the entire class is watching them too, placing bets on when the two will get married (it's the end goal, after all, the Block-Harrington alliance).
You had your chance, she remembers, and looks away, focusing on her math homework. It's better to focus on the things she can change (but so much easier to focus on the things she can't).
(Except there was never a chance.
She had known him first, yes, and had fallen in love with the boy in sixth grade who had borrowed her glue stick and never returned it. The one who in seventh grade who walked with her from orchestra to English (he didn't have to, he really didn't), her heart pounding fiercely the entire time. The one who in eighth grade followed her until she purposely distanced him—and it was her fault in the end. Lying about how she felt so that her friends would stop.
And it only made sense that he would move on (and she wouldn't) when the new girl, the talented one, with the thick hair and the first-chair violin seat came along).
Her head throbs a little more, and she never forgets.