It wasn't that Clarke was sitting on the sidelines of Bellamy's life waiting for him to realize that she's the one for him. It wasn't what she was doing, even if that's what her friends—their friends—thought, it's not.
Okay, so maybe it was. She was with Finn when she began realizing how cute he was and then Raven happened and she kind of banned herself from ever dating again. All the while Bellamy was sleeping with whomever he pleased, taunting her and slowly becoming her best friend. And then her sexual awakening happened thanks to Lexa being so bold as to kiss Clarke after telling her that love is weakness in this big elaborate speech that looking back on seemed all too well rehearsed. And then Lexa moved away and Clarke went off to Camp Ton D.C. as a junior councilor, had a fling with a councilor named Niylah and when she came back, Bellamy was with Gina and they all went to Ark U together and Clarke wanted to scream. She liked Gina, she was nice and pretty and made Bellamy smile in a way that Clarke had never seen on him before, a smile she wished she could be the one to put on his face but then Gina got into the school she wanted in the specific field she wanted and it was in Alaska so she broke up with Bellamy and he was broken, Clarke had never seen him so torn up and she didn't know how to put him back together. She was his best friend and she didn't know how to fix him.
And so after Gina, after he got over her, Clarke thought that maybe he finally got himself together, maybe he saw her how she's secretly seen him for the last few years and maybe, just maybe, Bellamy was in love with her too.
Then she saw him with Bree a few nights at the bar, they were there with their friends for trivia night, Bellamy had the history trivia down pat and Clarke rounded them out with the obscure, weird, and artsy trivia. They were key parts of a team and Clarke was losing more and more focus the longer she saw him with Bree, the more Bree wore him down each Tuesday night until she saw him cave and they lost, partly because he wasn't there to answer the last history question but also because Clarke's answers to the obscure and artsy questions were completely wrong because she could only focus on Bellamy walking out of the bar with Bree.
"You really should just tell him," Raven said that night with a look that screamed Clarke was being pathetic.
"How doesn't he know? It's not like I'm exactly hiding it."
"Denial? Maybe he figured you would never feel that way for him so falling into bed with Beth or whoever is his only choice."
"Whomever and oxymoron. He's not that stupid."
"Oh, come on, he's pretty dense. He didn't even realize you were his best friend until two years ago."
"He still goes to Miller for all his guy shit."
"He goes to you for all his guy shit too. Seriously, I think if you had a dick, you'd be his roommate instead."
"You're saying we can't be roommates because we're the opposite sexes? That's sexist and incorrect. I'd place a wager on Bellamy and I being able to be roommates but I think I'll just wind up breaking my own heart doing that."
"Probably."
Bellamy and Bree didn't become a thing. She was leaving town the night they hooked up and so Clarke never had to see her again. Except in her dreams, nightmares rather, where she kept watching him walk away with her, with another blonde on his arm instead of her and it hurt, seeing that he could break his streak of brunette, only not for her.
Months flew by and Clarke was almost going to tell him, let him in on how she felt when she saw the acceptance letter from Tufts University for his MFA. He was graduating and she was staying at Ark for two more years finishing her bachelors. He's leaving.
"Clarke?" he asked when he walked in the door of his apartment, finding her standing at the kitchen island that was always cluttered with his and Miller and Murphy's mail, still staring at the acceptance letter, she didn't know if it was seconds that she'd been staring at it or minutes, or hell, even hours. She just couldn't wrap her head around it.
"Clarke?" he asked again, closer this time, probably next to her but he sounded muffled, so far away. It was like when her mother came to her in the waiting room all those years ago to tell her about her father dying, that his injuries were too much all at once, that the crippling pain was too much for him to push through and he was gone. Bellamy's already gone.
"Don't leave," she said, knowing how selfish she was being. Knowing how her voice sounded, knowing that her asking him to stay wasn't going to do him any good because this was what he wanted. Tufts University MFA was his dream and she's his best friend, she's replaceable.
"Clarke..."
"Don't. I can't hear you say it."
"We've been through a lot together haven't we?" he scoffed, placing his hand over hers over his acceptance letter. "We can get through this too. It's only, what? A nine hour drive. It's nothing. We'll see each other all the time, O will make sure of that."
"Will she? She's made it pretty damn clear that everything horrible in her life is your fault. What makes you think she'll make sure you visit or that she'll want to visit you?"
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
"Fuck me if that's true," Clarke uttered under her breath, her eyes glued on the Welcome to Tufts at the bottom of the letter, she couldn't look away. "Were you going to tell me?"
"Grad party," he shrugged. "Clarke, listen. You have Raven and Miller and O, Murphy's coming with me for Gods only knows why. We're not going to be alone and I'm never going to forget you. How the hell could I forget the princess?" he chuckled and Clarke smacked him in the chest playfully.
"I don't know how I'm going to do this without you," Clarke admitted as Bellamy pulled her into his chest, kissing her temple.
"You're the amazing, resilient Clarke Griffin, if anyone can do it, it's you."
Clarke nodded, burying her face in his neck, Gods does he smell amazing, grass and maple and just man. "Just... hurry."
Bellamy chuckled, "You can't rush perfection."
Clarke scoffed.
Bellamy went to Boston three days after graduation, he had an internship that Pike got him into at a publishing house. He can learn the ins and outs of the publishing industry before deciding what side of it he wants to be on. It's a good opportunity even though it kept him busy, too busy for phone calls and barely enough energy for texts but Octavia said he was loving it, after she visited him there for Independence Day weekend, the city goes all out for the holiday and Bellamy snuck her some Guinness while they were walking in the park.
Clarke was happy for him, he's her best friend, she's proud of him for going after what he wants, even if she doesn't quite understand why he wants to be a writer or in the publishing business at all. She knew he was a fantastic writer, his essays read like a short story that excited her and his professors to read what he had to say but she was always better at grammar, punctuation, and rhythmic flow than he was so he always had her check them before he handed them in and she did, even if it meant that she would be handing in her own papers late. She was his go to proof reader and she hoped that didn't change even with six hundred miles between them.
He didn't, it was infrequent but she still got emails from him asking her to proof a story he wrote, a poem. Hell, there was even a song. He sent the same story multiple times with more and more chapters added in and Clarke wondered if he was paying the school to have him write a story instead of a publishing house paying him for the story. Maybe that's what an MFA is. He had a week for Christmas and Clarke wished she could have stayed in town to see him, already having plans to see her mother in Chicago. Their spring breaks didn't match up and he wanted to go to Portland for some AWP conference and the first night he was there he called her overwhelmed and broken-hearted.
"I don't belong here," he said.
"Yes, you do. You made a biology paper sound like a Jules Verne novel."
"That's an exaggeration but I did make it entertaining and poetically fun."
"That's an oxymoron. Anyway, you're an amazing writer, compelling and I lose hours in your words so you definitely belong. More so than half the people there if you can get me to read an actual book," Clarke joked.
"That's true, you're the most stubborn person I know. Wait, you read Jules Verne?"
"Audiobooks in high school. I had to go to the library for them but now Audible exists so..."
"God, I could go for some Saucy's barbecue right now," he sighed.
It was a tradition, starting with someone Clarke didn't even know, that Bellamy knew before she and Octavia became roommates freshman year, he was missing it this spring break and probably next year's too.
"We can go this summer, are you coming back before your internship?"
"I... I have to see, I might have time. I'm really hoping I do, I've missed you more than I miss Saucy's."
"I might not go this year, give you some incentive to come get some with me at the end of the semester."
"Clarke..."
"It's been ten months, I just want to see my best friend."
"And you could have if you didn't go see your mom."
"Because you can say no to her? You know I couldn't."
He knew she made a good point, he was never good at saying no to Dr. Abigail Griffin and knew that everyone else that knew her had the same issue.