Chapter Ten: Blue Christmas

"Marinette?" The world stopped when he looked at her. He felt awful for being the reason that she was sitting in the familiar cafe, sobbing into the bowl of soup. The kind woman who owned the cafe was nowhere in sight. He assumed she left Marinette alone so she wouldn't be embarrassed to cry.

To him it seemed like they were the only two people in the world in that moment. The fate of the entire universe could be resting on his shoulders at that moment, and it might as well have been. The amount of stress, tension and anxiety that he felt in that moment, looking at her and her red rimmed eyes, couldn't possibly compare to what shouldering the entire world felt like.

When she didn't respond he took it as an invitation to sit across from her at the table. "Marinette, I really need to talk to you."

She let out a sniffle, but otherwise refused to acknowledge his existence.

"Listen, Marinette, I know you probably hate me, and you have every right to do so, but I need to explain what happened. What you saw happen in there was not what you think." He could still feel the shadow of Chloe's lips on his and he wanted nothing more than to cover them up with Marinettes.

"You're saying I didn't leave to go to the bathroom for two minutes, then come back in and find you lip locked with a girl that wasn't me?"

"Yeah, that's what happened, but I need to explain something to you."

Marinette crossed her arms and looked him in the eyes, her deep blue orbs becoming frosted over, like the ocean turning into a glacier. "You want to explain?" She took a deep breath, licked her lips, and blinked rapidly, trying to stop the onslaught of tears. "Listen, Adrien. There's nothing for you to explain. We weren't dating. We aren't dating. I just had the wrong idea about us. I- I thought there was chemistry, or something. I wanted to be with you but I guess that wasn't true for both of us."

"That's not true, Mari. It wasn't one sided."

"It had to have been, or everything that happened between us would have made me some horrible home-wrecker and that's not what I want to be. I thought things would possibly work out between us, that we could start as friends and go from there. You were this perfect guy, nice, enthusiastic, handsome, hell, you were, no, are, everything that I want. I was stupid to assume you were still available." On the table sat a glass cup and a pitcher of water. She grabbed the pitcher and filled her glass, taking sips to calm herself and rehydrate through the tears that were now falling once again. It pained him to see Marinette like this. She was a strong, enthusiastic. She was willing to help others at no cost to herself. She didn't deserve this kind of hurt.

She deserved the truth. He wanted to give her the truth. "Marinette, please. I really need to tell you what happened. I know you probably don't want to hear excuses, or, hell, you might not want to hear anything at the moment, so I wont tell you. But I will. In three days, the twenty-third, can we meet? Can you meet me in front of my Christmas Tree? You'll have time to process everything and I'll have time to sort through personal affairs that I desperately need to attend to. I'll live with the guilt of what I did in the mean time. I deserve to, because I don't deserve you, Marinette."

"Three days? I want to trust you, Adrien. You've become one of my best friends. I really want to trust you, but how do I know you're not going to use those three days to come up with a story to feed me and win me back." She took another sip of her water. "I don't think I could handle it if you lied to me. I don't think my heart could."

A bit of hair escaped from one of the twin tails she sported today. He wanted to push the strand of hair behind her ear and tell her what she meant to him, but he would resist for now. "I went to the bakery earlier today looking for you. I talked to your mother, told her what happened. If my story doesn't match up with hers you can walk out and never talk to me again. You can forget this whole month ever happened. You'll never have to see me again. I can be some stranger." This prospect seemed to intrigue, yet sadden the girl sitting across from him. "Marinette, I would do anything to see you happy. It kills me to know I'm the reason you're crying. I never meant to hurt you."

"Hurt me? Adrien, you broke my heart." A tense silence filled the small space and neither of them spoke for a few minutes, letting the words broken heart linger in the air. "Adrien, you broke my heart and it's not fair to either of us for me to say so. There was nothing going on between us. Right now, frankly, I doubt there ever will be." This tore Adrien to pieces to hear her say that, but he didn't interrupt. "You talked to my mom and she didn't kill you? I guess that means there's something I'm missing. I'll be at your house in three days, on the twenty-third. You can explain everything to me then. I don't want to lose you, but I don't want to feel this hurt ever again."

He gave her a tentative, sad smile, glad that she was allowing him to go on with his plan. "Thank you, Marinette." He got up from the table and placed a twenty euro note on the table. "This is for the soup. I was planning on taking us out to lunch today before everything happened. This is a sort of consolation." He left the cafe with as much composure he could manage to conjure up. He wasn't going to let Marinette see how weak she made him. Not right now, at least. There was enough going on in her head.

Those three days went by slowly. Adrien's life was filled with angry phone calls from Chloe and Andre, both reluctantly letting Adrien out of his engagement to the girl on the condition that anything that went out the the media would be handled by their PR team. Adrien agreed to this, as did Gabriel, eventually.

His father agreeing to the breakup came as a surprise to Adrien. He thought his father would have demanded he stay with Chloe and just forget about Marinette, but his mother seemed to make her way back into his mind. "Adrien, I never wanted you to suffer like I did when your mother died. I was grieving and I thought it would be best to shelter you from that kind of pain. I see now that my intentions were misguided. I only ever wanted what was best for you. If you think that it is in your best interests to leave Chloe and pursue this baker's daughter then I will support you. I arranged the marriage with Chloe because she came from an influential, well off family and you would want for nothing if anything ever happened to me or the company. I just don't want you to make a mistake you'll end up regretting later. You're my son. You're all I've got left."

That phone call made Adrien shut himself up in his room and cry for about two hours. He had never thought about why his father had set up the arranged marriage. He suspected it was for political and business gain but never had he considered the marriage was for his sake.

There was one other phone call he made to his father, requesting something for Marinette's sake. "Father, I want to preface this with I approached her, not the other way around. Frankly, I don't think she had any idea who I was when we met."

"Go on."

"I want to give Marinette a Christmas gift, and I was trying to think of what to get her. Marinette wants to be a designer and I know your company is one of her favorites. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to give her an internship or a private design session? I screwed up with her, and I want to make it up for her. She's done so much for me I want to do something in return. Even if things end up not working out between us I think the-"

"A private design session?" His father pondered the idea over the phone. "I can arrange that. If she happens to be as good as you lead me to believe then it is possible that an internship can come from that."

"Thank you father!"

Finally the third day came. Adrien paced the living room waiting for her to come. At nine sharp the doorbell rang and Adrien opened it, seeing Marinette with a hot chocolate and a bag of his favorites from the bakery. Despite the sweets, an awkward tension filled the air, the two not sure whether to greet one another with their usual hug, or just hang back and wait until after things were settled to let affection come between the two of them. The latter was decided when Adrien went in for a hug and Marinette sidestepped to avoid hugging him, walking into the house and sat on the couch where she had seen Adrien kiss the other girl just days before. Adrien sighed and went to sit beside her, but not too close as to not make things more uncomfortable.

"So, you said you had a good reason?"

"I was engaged."

"Huh," Marinette placed her head in her hands. "So I am a home-wrecker and..." she trailed off and Adrien assumed she didn't want to say the words two-timing son of a bitch to his face.

"It was an arranged marriage. When I was ten I got engaged to Chloe. I liked her as a friend, but never loved her. I thought I would be okay living a loveless life until I met you."

Marinette lifted her head from her hands and looked at him. "You were in an arranged marriage? Since you were ten?" The anger on her features turned to pity. "You thought you'd be okay living without love?"

"Yeah. Until I met you. I was trying to ignore my feelings for you but eventually I just couldn't do it any more. I decided to break off the engagement with Chloe and I was in the process of breaking it off when she kissed me. I wanted to kiss you so many times but I had to keep stopping myself. I wanted to do things right. Chloe had cheated on me before. I didn't want to do the same to her."

At this point Marinette started laughing. "So, this whole thing was just a giant misunderstanding? You were kissed by your fiancé, who you had no feelings for, because you were being forced to marry her? You were trying to break it off but I just have the worst luck in the world?"

He nodded. "Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it. You can call your mom and corroborate. Hell, you can even wait a week for some tabloid to come out talking about how me and Chloe's big split, if you'd like."

She shook her head. "No, I trust you."

"Does this mean you'll forgive me?"

"I'll forgive you," she said, "for now."

"Can I kiss you?" He leaned in, preparing to place his lips on hers when her hand shot up between them, his kiss landing on the knuckles of two of her fingers.

"Not yet. I trust you and I really want to kiss you but I still need some time to process everything. How about I let you know tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow?"

She nodded. "Yeah, tomorrow. It'll be Christmas Eve. We'll meet at the park and I'll give you my answer then. Sound good."

"Alright, tomorrow. At the park."

"Now why don't we go play some video games. Even if nothing happens, tomorrow, Adrien, you'll still be one of my best friends. I can promise that much right now."

"If being just friends with you is worse case scenario then I think you and I will be just fine, Marintte." And he genuinely felt that way. Everything was going to be great.

We are so close to the end, guys! Yay! It means Christmas is almost here! Woohoo! I just have one request for y'all now. On my profile I have a poll advertising four new stories, and towards the middle I have plot summaries for each of these stories. I need to know which y'all want to see next. This poll will be open until January 1st, which point I will close it and make a final decision on what story I will write next. It would really mean a lot if y'all went to vote on it! Besides that, let me know what y'all think and I'll see y'all tomorrow!