It carelessly slips out of his mouth and hangs there in the air and she hates how it makes her heart constrict and her stomach drop. She feels sick and she doesn't want to be at this school anymore, because everything is too too loud, and it's giving her a head ache. But she stays, acting as weird as she always does and no one suspects a thing.
The scene is engrained in her memory she thinks. He's flirting with Tori because she's beautiful in the modest way and she throws a snide remark towards him because he wasn't even looking at her (and she needed him to, she needed it) and he counters with a "I never flirt with you" without even throwing a glance in her direction.
She feels like an idiot, so stupid, so god damn stupid, to have fallen for someone who doesn't care.
She's walking out of the school at the end of the day, having gone out of her way to avoid him in the hall ways. But it's with one call of her name that her heart catches in her throat, and as soon as he directs an apologetic smile towards her, everything is fine again because Cat is forgiving that way, and it's the cycle once again. It's a one sided love relationship, she assumes (even though sometimes, he stares at her longer than necessary, but she doesn't pay attention to things like that).
-
He feels so horrible and disgusted after he says those stupid, meaningless words to her, and he hates, hates to see her sad. It's a flash of disgust and a flicker of regret that crosses his face at his big mouth and he watches her smile fall and suddenly, the girl in front of him isn't important anymore, because this one is the one that matters (but he would never tell her that).
She walks away, with a careless air, screaming one second, and laughing the next and he thinks she's okay (but he pretends not to notice that the bounce in her step has lost height, and her laugh has lost the ring he loves).
He is an idiot, a stupid, stupid idiot. He slaps himself with Rex a few times and watches her eat lunch by herself, because she doesn't have many close friends. He tries to work up the courage to go and apologize to her, but he doesn't, which makes him a coward and an idiot he guesses. He spends the entire day trying to bump into her and apologize but he realizes soon that she's avoiding him.
It's the end of the school day when he does it.
"Hey, Cat…wait up."
She turns around, and the corners of her mouth are turned up on the end, and this warmth is spreading up to his face because one of his favorite things to do is make her smile (but no one knows that, they know about ventriloquism and pretty girls like Tori, but no one knows about Cat, she is his best kept secret). He smiles apologetically at her and asks if she wants to help him practice ballet which she takes as a good enough apology and smiles that smile and he wants to laugh, so he does, because he's so god damn happy.
She's too good for him, he understands, because she's beautiful and forgiving and funny and he's just waiting for one day, when another guy realizes it too (even though she'd pick him and Rex over any other guy in a heart-beat).