6 years later
The lazy summer warmth of a June night wrapped around her as she stepped from the community centre and swung her bag onto her shoulder.
The smells of the city were comforting, food and fumes, as she wrapped her long hair up in a topknot, her face shiny with the sweat of her workout. She felt her phone vibrate on her pocket.
"What's wrong, I'm almost home" she warned as she paused on the bottom of the steps to her walk up.
"There's no food in here. Like nothing…" Finn said over the line. She signed and turned toward the parade of shops just a little further down.
"What were you thinking of?"
A little while later, she made her way up the three floor walk-up, a hot pizza box in her hands, for only a mere moment, until the door along the hall whipped open, and it was whisked away.
"You're an angel" Finn said, disappearing inside with the pizza.
"Not that I mind, but why aren't you at your new place?" She asked, kicking the door closed behind her, and setting her bag down. Finn was sitting on the couch, pizza box already open before him, and Catherine was lounging in her door way. Two bedroom, third floor walk up, it was small and old fashioned, and Rey loved it. Yes, making rent every month could get a bit dicey but it was her place, and she was proud of it.
"Rose doesn't mind… she's at work" Finn said, his mouth already full of cheese and bread.
"Really? I thought she was off until Saturday" Rey muttered.
"Someone called in sick"
"And let me guess, they chose Rose to beg to work extra, because that girl is an actual angel and can't say no to anybody" Rey breathed, grabbing a piece of pizza, and offering some to her new roommate.
Catherine had just moved in, coming to city for a position in a start-up company, her last hurrah before dedicating her life to academia. The timing had been perfect for Rey, as Finn had just moved in with Rose. While she was happy to see her favourite childhood sweethearts take the next step, she missed coming home to her best friend too.
"I'm fine" Catherine murmured, before retreating to her room.
"So, how's your gang of misguided youths coming along?" Finn asked, kicking up his feet on the coffee table, in his usual position, as Rey curled up opposite him.
"Not so differently from us, I guess, at that age"
"Yeah, but, these kids will be able to defend themselves" Finn muttered.
"I hope so" Rey said as she picked a piece of pepperoni off her slice.
"Poe's back, at the weekend. I'm picking him at the airport"
"Wow, that went fast" Rey muttered, thinking about the last time she saw her friend, at Charles De Gualle airport in Paris. They had just had a huge fight, and she had felt like crying, then he had kissed her on the forehead and left, unwilling to see her disappear through security.
"He asks about you" Finn said quietly.
"What do you tell him?"
"Oh the usual, that you're the same as always, married to your work and you have no time for dating."
"It's the truth" Rey said. Finn studied her moment longer.
"If the right guy came along, you'd find time Rey, that's the truth. You and Poe should just be friends, and it sucks that he feels that way about you, and has done for so long… but you don't owe him anything. You've always been clear with him" Finn said, and she looked up at him, surprised.
"Rose and I talked about it" he said, colouring faintly as he turned away.
"Well, she's a wise woman"
"Believe me, I am aware" he said with a smile and Rey felt her heart twist with longing for a moment.
"You see, you two have ruined me for life, given me these great expectations" she complained as Finn turned on the TV. Finn snorted in response.
"Please, it's not all roses, pun intended" he said, laughing as Rey lobbed a pillow at his head.
"But seriously, relationships are hard, and there are a lot of bad parts. But if the good parts outweigh them, that's the goal" he said.
"This is all very sage advice for someone with an orange moustache" Rey said seriously, before tucking into Finn's side and turning to the TV.
The next morning, Rey dressed in her usual painting grab of paint splattered jeans and an old vest, pulled her hair up into a bun and sat down at her latest piece, coffee in hand.
It was coming along, the skeleton of the image was there, and she was starting to think about colour and texture, filling in and broadening out. It was already getting warm, and she had opened all the windows, enjoying the smells of frying meet and kimchi from the Korean downstairs, missed with the smell of acrylic and coffee.
It was a perfect New York morning here in Brooklyn, she thought happily, as she hoped off her stool and got to work. Catherine had left early, the only one of her friends to be working a traditional office 9-5, though at First Order Finance, it seemed more like 7-10. It seemed strange to see her suited and booted, blonde hair pulled into an elegant chignon, grey blazer crisp and professional, in their undoubtedly artsy flat. Antiques and keepsakes from travels dotted the counter tops, art, both homemade and picked up on the way decorated the walls. Rey's bedroom itself had a mural wall, she'd painted when she'd first arrived. It was the woods by Jack's. She'd needed something to ground her and comfort her. It didn't matter that the tree where she'd first spoken to Ben was in it. It comforted her and made her smile.
Her cell phone rang on the counter and she groaned, seeing the name of her boss. They were going to ask her to cover someone tonight, her supposed night off. She worked as a hostess at the gentlemen's club called Resistance. It was full of drunken business man from all over, having meetings and ordering outrageous amounts of expensive liquor. But they weren't handsy, and the management were strict on rude customers. She didn't like it, but she couldn't deny the pay was essential for her to keep time to paint and volunteer. She tried to paint as much as she could, though recently she had started helping Jessika, who had taken over the reins of her uncle's business, an interior design company, and she had taken Rey with her once to an interview. They had been booked, and the client had requested Rey's eye for the artwork for the hallways in the palatial mansion. It wasn't quite being the artist she wished to be one day, but it was in the art world and interesting, beside, it helped Jessika. Since then, Rey optimistically submitted some of her own pieces in her design portfolio, though she was yet to be asked about them.
Later as she munched through the sandwich she'd cobbled together, she got into her work outfit. Hostessing at the Resistance came with a standard uniform of short, formal shorts and a sleeveless blouse tucked in. She could at least be grateful the tops weren't low cut, though the shorts probably made up for it, with the wide expanse of leg they revealed. Rey put on make up, another requirement of the job and caught her hair half up half down. It wasn't her thing, dressing up fancy in impractical clothes, and she was pretty sure it showed. But a job was a job, she reminded herself grimly as she caught the train into the city.
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Catherine Phasma watched the clock in her cubicle count down to 10pm. She was sitting casually, scrolling through work emails, and watching as one by one, cubicle lights went off, and people left for the evening. She was nervous. She didn't want it to get too much later, it might look suspicious if she stayed in the office too far beyond 10pm. If only everyone was considerate of her timetable, she thought sourly, glancing at the glass office in the middle of the open plan work space, where harsh light emanated into the surrounding darkness, and she could see a dark head bent over spreadsheets. All the man did was work, or have secret conference calls with the CEO. Abruptly, he stood, all 6 ft 3 of him towering over his desk and cracked his neck, back and forth, his hands loosening his tie. Catherine practically gaped at his evidence that her boss, Kylo Ren, was in fact human, and not a cyborg. He stared into the darkness beyond his office and his eyes immediately fixed on her lit cubicle.
He watched a moment, as she pretended to be busy. Out the corner of her eye, she saw his light flick off. She held her breath as she clicked into an excel spread sheet and randomly looked at the figure in it.
"Phasma. Burning the midnight oil?" he asked suddenly, emerging soundlessly from the darkness. She jumped, her nerves higher than ever.
"Yes, I just wanted to finish something for the Wolsely account" she said, cursing her dry mouth. She turned slightly and glanced up at her boss, the man who used to be called Ben Solo. He was inscrutable. He studied her in silence, his hard jaw clenched, his calculating eyes on her computer.
"Try and see to it that you manage your work load within the working day." He finished instructed, and she nodded, a little embarrassed at the rebuke.
"Remind me, what brought a journalism major to finance? I seemed to recall your parents being teachers" he said suddenly. She was shocked he remembered her at all, never mind her parents. She was also surprised he remembered her major without her c.v in front of him.
"Professors" she corrected instinctively, before shrugging.
"There's no money in teaching" she said, hoping he would accept her weak justification. The stare went on a moment more, and just when she was about to fidget, something she never did, he nodded to her, dismissing her, settling his coal black coat over his black suit, despite the warm summer and heading toward the doors. She shivered in his absence.
There was something so creepy about Kylo Ren, she thought, thinking of the watercooler gossip she had heard about him. That he was a control freak who never showed affection or humour, or basically any other human emotion. She had heard he was estranged from his mother, and of course, there was that business with his father.
She remembered Ben Solo from high school, a loner, a misfit, violent and lonely, but then, weren't they all. Catherine certainly had been, but she had used those feelings to push her to make some friends, get out her comfort zone. She thought of Rey, and instantly felt the same shame that had dogged her since she'd moved in with her. Rey had no idea that Catherine was working for the boy who had torn her heart in two during high school. Catherine didn't want to stir all that up again, and anyway, as far as she was concerned, there didn't seem to be much left of the boy Rey had cried over. It was better this way, she told herself as she slipped her elicit thumb drive out the concealed bottom of her coffee cup, and made her way to Kylo Ren's office to get the scoop of the century.
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"Don't watch the staff, all you'll see is the end hitting you in the face. Watch my shoulders, my eyes, see my intentions, and move to block where I will be" she said, shifting her staff slowly into an attack arch, while signalling strongly with her body her intensions.
Her staff struck another with a hollow clack, and she stepped back smiling.
"Well done! You are getting better everyday, Layla" she said, resisting the urge to reach out and ruffle the hair of the girl standing before her. Her expression as hard, already so hard for a 14 year old as she rolled her eyes sarcastically.
"Whatever you say" she said, popping more gum in her mouth, and moving to sit down against the wall. Rey knew it was a front, just like she'd had at that age, and she also knew that Layla was pleasing, there was a hint of pride in her eyes as she sat amongst the younger students, who were shooting envious looks her way.
"Ok, that's it for today. We will pick up on Wednesday, I hope to see everyone there. If you can't come, text me, so I know you're ok" she called, knowing it was mostly useless, but wanting to try anyway. She wanted them to know she would be there if they really needed her, at the other of the phone, anytime.
Knights of Ren was a beat down community centre at the heart of the neighbourhood, and it just used to be a free masons venue. However, Rey had found that by volunteering at a local youth centre, there weren't enough activities to keep the kids occupied and out of trouble at night. Not to mention, there were far too many girls, some as young as 12, who were completely vulnerable and in bad living situations.
She had started a mixed martial arts defence classes for girls, at the centre, which had plenty of hall space for hire. She had wanted the class to be mixed, but as the girls ended up not participating if there were boys around, which frustrated her, but Rey had to remind herself to take baby steps. They gave her the hall space for next to nothing, which was necessary, given she had next to nothing left over to pay with. She had about 15 regular students now, and the cause was very dear to her heart, another reason she couldn't afford to give up her hostess job just now.
She watched the girls file out, friendships already formed amongst them, and she hoped that would help keep them safe.
"Miss?' she turned to see one of her younger students, a very shy girl waiting for her, fidgeting nervously.
"What is it Anayah?" she asked, gathering up her blocks and punching pads, transferring them into a carrying bag.
"I was wondering, when are you going to start up a boys class?" she asked tentatively.
"I don't know, I don't really have enough time or money to do it, why, do you know someone who wants to come?" Anayah nodded.
"My brother" she said quietly. Rey hunkered picked up her heavy bag and started for the door, holding it open for Anayah.
"How old is he?"
"16" Anayah said. Rey bit her lip. 16 was old for class, and he was a boy, meaning he'd be much stronger than the rest.
"Why do you want him to come?" she probed. Anayah looked down, at her hands, anywhere but at Rey, and spoke at length.
"He's always getting in fights. There's these boys, they used to be friends, they used to come over to our house sometimes, but I guess they fell out, and now Mikey doesn't like them anymore. Sometimes he just comes home and goes straight to his room, he doesn't speak to any of us, not like mama tries anyway, and later when I go in there, he's been bleeding" Anayah said, with a worried noted in her voice. Rey rested her hand on the young girls' shoulder.
"I'm sorry, it's hard, being a teenager, sometimes it's really hard. I'll tell you what, bring Mikey by on Friday, he can see what he thinks and we'll see what the other girls say" Rey said, and was rewarded with a bright smile appearing on Anayah's pinched little face.
"Here, no one finished these" she said, passing the bag of orange slices to Anayah, who took them a little too quickly.
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The next evening, Rey was gulping down a quick glass of wine before her friends arrived at the pub they were meeting for dinner at. It wasn't that she was nervous to see him, just that she might need a little liquid courage to make the conversation run smoothly.
"Starting without us, I see" Poe's warm voice brushed her ear as he leaned into her from behind and placed a soft kiss on her cheek. She felt her cheeks scorch red, as she slid further into the booth and gave him a smile.
"Hello, sunshine" he said with a grin. He looked good, tan and lithe, all dark stubble and flashing white teeth. Then he was sliding into the booth, pulling her close for a long hug, apparently deciding that just a kiss on the cheek wasn't enough. He smelled great, she knew it on every level. He leaned away, leaving his warm palm warming her spine as his eyes fairly twinkled into hers.
"Happy to see me? Or… not really, after Paris" he asked softly, tipping his head to the side. Rey shook her head adamantly.
"Of course, happy, I'm always happy to see you." She said. Poe watched her, not missing the way she couldn't hold his gaze for too long, or the tremor in her fingers.
"Rey, I did a lot of thinking once you'd left Paris, and I just think we are going about this all wrong. I'm sorry I pressured you, it wasn't my intention. I never want you to feel uncomfortable with me. Ever" he said, taking her hand and pressing a kiss onto the back.
Rey gulped, afraid that Finn's reasonable advice didn't seem to have taken with his best friend. She was thankfully saved from having to answer by a loud shriek she recognised as Jess's, and turned to see Jess, Rose and Finn approaching. She didn't see how Poe caught her thankful expression, his own turning a little pensive even as he turned to greet his friends.
Rey ate sparingly, listening to the conversation flowing around her. It was hard to see Poe and hear him talk about Paris without feeling all the confusion and shame she associated with it, since she'd last seen him.
6 years ago, Rey had never gone to prom with Poe. The night she had gotten home from Ben's graduation, she had gone to bed, and stayed there for several days. She couldn't eat or drink, and Jack had only prised her out by threatening to go to the Solo's and demanding answers from Ben himself.
So, Rey had dusted herself off, and put on a happy face, well happy enough for her, and trudged on. She'd feigned illness as an excuse for prom, and afterwards, she had never really told her Insorto friends about Ben. Surprisingly, Catherine Phasma had been the only one she'd told, when she'd run into her at the library during a scorching summer where she had looked for Ben around every corner with equal parts longing and horror. Only Phasma had known Ben, and she told her, when pressed. She had agonised wondering if he had left already, and had slowly started to accept that she'd never know. She wasn't part of his life anymore. The pain of that realisation had taken a long time to develop, and then, when it was at full bloom, it had last a long time too, as did its slow ebbing.
Rey was someone who had been disappointed by people she'd loved, her mother and absentee father laying the path for the dysfunctional way she would form attachments afterwards. When she had met Ben, her soul had met its match, and her heart had latched on, without realising that there were two people in that equation. Ben hadn't wanted what she'd offered him. She'd had nothing to offer him, except herself, and he hadn't wanted it. The trauma of that had stayed with her. It had affected her in ways she could barely recognised, so far-reaching were they.
The main one, and the one she planned to start therapy for as soon as she could afford it, was her sex life, or lack thereof.
In college, Rey had drank and partied with the same reckless abandon that her peers had. She had kissed guys in bars and at parties, sometimes even letting them get below her clothes, but always seemed to sober enough to realise that her body was unresponsive. She had gone on dates sparingly, too invested in her studies and working part time to make ends meet. Jack had given her many gifts, a real home for one, someone to love her, a father figure, and her college education was just one of them. Toward the time for applying for college, Jack had sat her down at the scarred kitchen table in the cottage and asked what her plans were.
"I don't have any plans. I haven't really thought that far ahead" Rey had muttered, not saying that the subject was particularly difficult for her, and do almost anything to avoid it.
"Well, I'm told it's time to get going with all that"
"Told by whom?" she'd asked accusingly.
"Finn. Who told me that Rose told him to call, so I know it's true" Jack had said, before reaching out and pulling a bank book from his pocket.
"Now, I now it won't cover everything, but it's not too late to apply for a scholarship, and I'm afraid you'll have to work, for living money and that, but I know you're not afraid of hard graft… but it's a start" he had mumbled, seeming embarrassed about the whole situation. Rey had taken the little book in her hands and stared numbly at the amount in the savings, and then noting the name near the top of the page.
"It's your money Rey, everything left over from your mothers – passing, and I had savings, being a bachelor my whole life, and I've added everything I could over the years."
"Jack, its more than a start – I can't take this, this is yours, and you should use it to do something you want to do…"
"What I want is for you to go to college. First in the family, my girl – that's what I want, if you want to" Rey had felt a tear run down her cheek at his soft proud words.
And so, Rey had gone to college, close enough to still visit Jack every month, because that mattered more to her than the fear of running into Ben in the city.
Her time at NYU had changed her. Challenged her and scared her and pushed her. She had loved every second of it, her terrible stats at dating notwithstanding.
She had seen Poe during it, as he was studying the same as Phasma, Journalism. He'd gotten a serious girlfriend the very first week of classes, and that had lasted a long time, several years in fact. It wasn't until the last year of school, when they'd been celebrating Independence Day, that Poe had kissed Rey for the first time.
She remembered it like it was yesterday. She'd only had a handful of meaningful kisses to treasure, and more than half of them belonged to someone it still hurt to think about. Poe's kiss, on the roof top of Rose' dorm, watching July fourth fireworks, while Finn burned the hotdogs, and she had a warm, cheap beer bottle hanging from her fingertips, watching the coloured lights appear over the city she was falling in love with again, was something to be remembered. He had been leaning against the railing with her, his arm casually brushing hers with increasingly frequency, and then, it had been slipping around her and pulling her close into his side. She'd turned to him with a smile, ready to tease him, when his lips had met hers. They had kissed for only a short moment, sweet and chaste, and she had leaned away to see his sincere eyes holding hers.
"I very much want to do that again, if I can" he'd murmured, and she'd nodded, half dazed and surprised. And so, he had kissed her again, stronger, sweeter, until Finn's catcall had broken the moment, and Poe had pretended to throw his bottle at him.
That night he'd walked her home, tentatively holding her hand, and kissed her again outside her apartment.
"Poe, I'm flattered, I really am…"
"Don't Rey, don't say what you're just about to"
"I just-" she let out a long breath, shoulders rounding in defeat.
"I'm just not girlfriend material"
"Hey, you take that back, that's my friend you're talking about" Poe had threatened before pulling her back into a lingering kiss.
"Sunshine, you couldn't be more wrong about that, but its ok, I'll show you"
They had seen each other for dates separately from then a few times, nothing too serious, Poe seeming to know instinctively that it was hard for Rey. She never told him why she shied away from greater intimacy.
Rey knew though. She stared at her naked body, and felt there nothing there to appreciate, nothing she wanted to share. She had shown it to someone she had loved, and he hadn't wanted it. She knew it was a simplistic interpretation of events, and knew she should be better than that, but she wasn't.
She had told Rose some of it, Rose, who was putting her huge brain to good use and becoming a physiatrist. Rose had talked to her about it at length, well, made Rey do most of the talking. She had reasoned, at length, that what had happened with Ben had actually traumatised her, which seemed odd, after all she'd been through before. Rose suggested that maybe, just maybe, she hadn't really processed all the changes that had happened to her in that year she'd met Ben. Losing her mother, her neighbourhood, the odd collection of constants she'd had, meagre as they'd been, and moving to Jacks, a new school, new town. All that fear and change and loss had coalesced around Ben, someone who Rey had identified with, had felt understood by, and had put an inappropriate amount of emotion into what essentially was only about a year long friendship. Maybe she had projected things onto Ben, given him a role to fill, responsibilities to hold over her, that he wasn't emotionally equipped for himself.
Yes, he had rejected her harshly, but through Rose' eyes, she had finally started to see that maybe there had been a kindness there, underneath everything else. Would sleeping with Ben, someone she was helplessly in love with, in some strange twisted scene in which she played the sacrificial virgin, laid on the alter of his needs, and nothing for her but his presence, would it have been something she'd have regretted, even more than his harsh rejection? She could never know, but she did start to understand that she had been messed up long before she met Ben Solo, and even now, with her difficulty with intimacy, may well had been created in that pressure cooker of teenage hormones, first love and unresolved feelings of loss and abandonment issues.
She thought all these things when she was feeling kind. Kind to past Ben and past teenage Rey, who were both just messed up kids who'd hurt each other and made mistakes. So, as an adult, she was a virgin, and not one who was particularly in a hurry about becoming intimate with someone, maybe she never would. Not everyone was sexual, and, given her mothers past, who even knows what other issues Rey harboured deep in her psyche.
In her harsher, less kind moments, she hated that boy with the flashing eyes and the seldom smile with a deep intensity that whispered of unresolved love and hated herself for allowing him in so far in the first place. She'd had no walls, when she'd met Ben, not to his brand of brokenness. And he had stormed in and taken the fortress of her heart, only to abandon it later, once it had been wrecked.
Poe's hand brushed hers as she reached for another sip of her wine. The contact brought her back to Paris, and a hotel room nestled in the 18th Arrondissement, surrounded by snow dusted streets.
Her bag fell with a hard jangle in the silence of the room, as Rey walked backwards, with Poe slipping his hands around her waist. The wine at dinner swam through her veins, as he kissed her neck, and she let her yes fall closed. She could so this, it felt good, and safe, and she wanted so very much to be the girl who would let a sweet, kind man make love to her in the most romantic city in the world. Paris dripped sex, from the food and art to the Parisian couples in the restaurant they had eaten in, chicly brazen in their desire for each other.
Poe's mouth moved to her shoulder, and he was pushing the straps of her dress down. Rey sucked her stomach in, as he laid his hand on her belly. She deliberated where to put her hands on him, and settled for resting them on his shoulders.
"Rey, are you sure?' he was breathing, rough and urgent against her neck.
"Yes, I'm sure, please" she'd replied, ignoring that swimming feeling moving to her head, not as relaxing as she'd thought it would be. His hands were pulling away her bra, and she fought the urge to cover herself, and felt his mouth move down. His lips were soft, and as she tried to sink into the sensations, she heard herself whimper.
"Harder" she whispered, twisting his hair sharply to try and chase after the ghostly touch of lust, so fleeting, it was as though she'd imagined it. He made an encouraging noise, unperturbed by her demands. His soft lips continued to kiss her, gentle as a petal fall, and frustration built in her for a moment. She pulled his head away, and spun around, leaning her back against him, and reached up, directing his head to her neck, and she felt his lips move against her skin and pulled her hands to cup her breasts. Again, she reached for something, harder, sharper, more…
She walked to the bed and sat down, pulling her skirt out the way, she reached her hand out for Poe, who stood looking at her with an ego inflating look of awe.
"Rey, you're breathtaking" he said, and then the wine was making her head spin again, and his voice was wrong, too soft, too gentle. She held her hand out to him, and tugged him down to cover her. He kissed her, and she pushed herself into it, rolling her hips under him, trying to achieve some kind of friction. He moaned on top of her, and she felt the disparity between their experiences, but the ambition to overcome this block of hers pushed her on. He kissed her slowly, his hands touching her all over, and she tried, she really tried to feel something at his touch. She cared for him so much, he was an amazing man, and when he smiled at her, she felt all sorts of excitement, but here, underneath him, all she felt was trapped, and that feeling was starting to make her feel desperate.
She grabbed his hand, and pushed his fingers under the waistband of her panties. They both stilled, as his fingers froze. Then, he gently stroked her. It felt… nice, she supposed. He stroked again, and she couldn't help but grab his hand, and increasing the pressure, the urgency.
"Put it inside me" she asked, trying very much to get them where she wanted to go. He tried then, and she gasped as the intrusion, as gentle as it had been, scraped against her dry flesh. He tried again, slipping his fingers into his mouth first to wet them, but they only succeeded into getting about an inch into the taut arid flesh.
"It's ok, it's normal for the first time, we just need to-" he was saying as Rey felt the last urge to try and feint desire flee. She flopped back, pulling his hand out and clapped a hand over eyes. Poe was hesitating beside her, and she felt more awful than ever.
"Rey, it's my fault, I need to warm you up more" he said saying, his hand moving toward her breast again, and she felt for a second that if he touched her again, she'd turn to stone.
"Stop, please… stop" she muttered, and he stilled immediately. She knew he was right of course, understood the mechanics, however, what he didn't know was that she didn't feel anything, she was cold and unmoved by all it, and his hands on her body were threatening to make her cry.
"I'm sorry, it's not you. It's me. I'm broken inside" she said, turning to curl on her side, and giving into the tears that wouldn't be held back any longer. She could feel Poe's pain, and it made it all the worse.
"Rey" he sounded so despondent, so worried for her and she hated herself even more.
"I told you, I'm not girlfriend material" she'd sniffed, turning her face into the pillow, and curling up in ball. She wanted to tell him not to touch her, not to care, because it was all just making it worse, but instead, she couldn't strangle the wrenching sobs ripping from her chest.
"I don't know what to do" he had finally admitted, rubbing his face in his hands. She couldn't pull herself out of her downward spiral, couldn't break through the shame and embarrassment that lay thick in the air.
"I don't want to leave you, but I don't know if I'm making it better…"
"Nothing can make it better, just… go, it'll be better if you go"
The sound of a glass clinking pulled her from her morbid memories of that disastrous night, and she was lifting her glass as well, trying to focus on her friends and not lose her head to the past.
