Clarke had very few regrets so far in life, which she supposed was good, considering that she was not yet even seventeen years old. All of the decisions that could be viewed as bad or irresponsible had ended up benefiting her in some way or another, and so she found herself mostly grateful for the way that things had turned out. She didn't think that anything over spring break would leave her with any regrets, but as it turned out, on Saturday night, she was left with a disappointed ache in her chest over something she hadn't said.
Saturday itself was a bit of a blur. The four of them spent the day at the beach – they built dumb sandcastles and wrote cheesy messages in the sand to take selfies and pictures with, and they did lots of happy, cute spring break photos by the ocean as well. They got lunch from one of the plentiful taco trucks, hung out some more, and then Raven and Lexa had to leave.
Clarke was pretty sure that she and her girlfriend kissed for at least thirty seconds before Raven gently broke them apart. The Latina had been a lot nicer about their sappy moments that day, no doubt realizing how hard it was going to be for them to split up later. Clarke reminded her that they had to make sure to see each other soon, and Lexa promised that Clarke couldn't keep her away if she tried.
The moment had only been a few minutes long in all, but the goodbye in its entirety felt like hours of tormenting. And when Raven's car disappeared down the street, Clarke realized the one thing she hadn't said – not the night before nor anytime that day.
The thing was, Clarke was scared of saying it. She wasn't sure that it would've been a good idea to tell Lexa before she could even say it to herself, but the knowledge that it could be months before she got the chance to say it in person made her feel awful.
It didn't help that her mood was below average anyway because of the end of her week of bliss and happiness.
Octavia tried desperately to cheer Clarke up for the rest of the night, but the blonde barely managed to muster any positive emotions until she got a text from Lexa a little over two hours after they'd left, saying that they'd successfully made it back to their respective homes.
Once Lexa was contactable again, Clarke let herself be cheered up a little, and she and Octavia spent their last night in Los Angeles going to an improv show that successfully got Clarke to laugh and smile and enjoy something that was unrelated to her girlfriend. It was almost like a reminder that she could be happy without having Lexa around her every second, but that night, she still had a significantly harder time falling asleep in a bed all by herself, and she had to text Lexa continuously until sleep finally took over her body.
"Hey girls!" Abby exclaimed happily once Clarke and Octavia walked into the house, the blonde dragging her luggage behind her. "How was the drive back?"
"Not too bad or long," Clarke replied with a smile. "Octavia decided to hang here for a while, if that's okay, because her parents were out of town last night and won't be back for a couple of hours anyway."
"That's fine," Abby said, though her suddenly change in expression said otherwise, "just… maybe you can go upstairs for a moment, Octavia. I need to have a word with Clarke."
"Yeah, sure," Octavia said, flashing the blonde a nervous glance. "I'll take your stuff upstairs, C."
"Thanks." Octavia grabbed the bags from her and hurried up the stairs with them, and Clarke slowly returned her gaze to her mom.
"What's up?"
"I just want you to know," Abby started, "that you need to start working on keeping contact with me and your father if you expect to be going out any more. You only texted or called us if we were the initiators, and that is unacceptable when you are over an hour away from us for longer than a day. Understand?"
"I understand, sorry."
Her mother nodded. "Good. Go ahead and go upstairs." Clarke quickly ducked out, and on her way upstairs, the depressing realization that she was back to her normal, mundane life weighed down on her. Her steps got heavier, and she suddenly missed Lexa's positivity – the happy, reassuring vibe that Clarke could feel just from being near her, the intoxicating joy and adrenaline Clarke got from being close to her. When she walked into her bedroom, she closed her door, barely noticing Octavia sitting on the edge of the bed, and collapsed into her pillows in a heap.
"What did she want?"
"Just to make sure that I know that I should've been texting her and dad to keep them updated on my whereabouts more often."
"Oh."
Silence filled the air for a few beats, Octavia likely coming to the same realization that Clarke had. After a few beats, Clarke choked on air and murmured, "I miss Lexa." And just like that, the first tears Clarke had ever cried for her girlfriend began spilling out of her eyes, along with uncontrollable sobs, and Octavia wrapped her arms around her best friend, stroking her hair but not saying anything to try and help. She knew that it wouldn't have helped anyway, and even the physical contact from Octavia didn't really do much to help.
Lexa wasn't there, and nothing could change that.
Octavia had gone home once her parents had texted asking her to do so, and since then, Clarke had stopped crying. She hadn't moved from her bed, though, and was texting Lexa. Although she'd considered it, she decided not to mention her momentary breakdown to the girl. She didn't want Lexa to feel bad or worry about her at all.
Anyway, Clarke was sure that she would fall back into the old swing of things pretty soon and get used to being without Lexa physically.
It was getting a little late when there was a knock on her bedroom door. "Clarke? It's me." It was her dad. Sitting up in her bed and locking her phone, Clarke cleared her throat.
"Come in."
The door creaked open, and Jake smiled softly at his daughter. "Hey, kiddo. Your mom said you hadn't come downstairs since you got home, so I just wanted to make sure that you're doing alright."
"I'm fine."
Jake raised an eyebrow, clearly reading right through the lie. "You don't sound fine."
"I just miss being in LA. It was an awesome week. I don't want to deal with school and… people again," Clarke muttered. "It's whatever, though, I'm fine."
"Are you hungry?"
Clarke shrugged.
"Helpful, Clarke. Come on, your mom made pasta. You don't have to even say anything if you don't want to, just eat, alright?"
Clarke gave in, leaving her phone behind so that she didn't end up texting Lexa all throughout dinner and raise any suspicion from her parents. Still, exiting the room without said device was hard to do, because she knew that it was all she had to connect with her girlfriend.
Lexa was eating some of the leftovers from her fridge on Sunday night, the day having inched by slower than ever. It hadn't entirely sunk in that upon waking up tomorrow, Clarke wouldn't be within touching distance by any means. The previous night had been hard, but at least after only a day, it could've just been that she and her girlfriend had separate things to do. Once it started to get longer than that, it became real again.
The sound of the front door opening while Lexa was eating caused the brunette to jump in surprise, and she looked with confusion at her mother as she walked into the kitchen. "Oh, you're back," the woman said plainly. "How was LA?"
"It was good."
"What kind of stuff did you do?"
"I met up with my girlfriend," Lexa replied. "She lives in Santa Barbara."
"That seems rough, dating someone that far away." Despite the apparent concern, her mom sounded fairly indifferent as she began looking through the fridge.
"Some people have it worse."
"You got that right."
"Did you just work all week?"
"Yep. Daily grind. Let me tell you, Alexandra, life is a pain in the ass. If you fuck up one thing, the whole rest of it could fall to pieces. You better not let it happen to you like it did to me." Lexa pursed her lips, unsure of how to respond. Luckily, her mom continued, while grabbing a beer from the fridge, "If your life falls apart like mine did, it means that I failed at literally everything possible, so don't make me a failure."
With that, Lexa's mom slammed the fridge shut and sauntered out of the room.
Lexa finished her dinner quickly, unfortunately not getting any messages back from Clarke, and then escaped back to her bedroom. Once there, Clarke finally replied.
Clarke – Sorry. Had to suffer through dinner with the parents.
Lexa – Don't worry, I get it.
Lexa – What's really weird is that my mom just came into the house while I'm here and SPOKE to me without any real malice or anything. Granted, she did tell me about how easy it is to fuck up my whole life by doing one thing wrong and that if I do that, it means that I would also represent the last failing piece of her life, so that's no pressure or anything.
Clarke – Are you kidding? What could you do to fuck up your life? You're the kind of person who would grab life by the horns and own it.
Lexa – It think most people these days would say grab it by the balls.
Clarke – I don't want to picture you grabbing balls, Lexa.
Lexa – That's fair I guess ;) But yeah, you're probably right. I wouldn't let one mistake fuck up everything.
Clarke – What was your mom's mistake?
Lexa – Getting with my dad. She's talked about how if she'd just had me and not married him (she married him after giving birth to me already), she could've started steering herself in the right direction with the motivation to take care of me. But the five years she spent with him kind of tore both of them apart, because he didn't work or try to support us, he really just didn't care. When he left, my mom was left in a worse off position so she didn't have any wiggle room, and she's kind of been stuck doing the same thing since. Thankfully, once I move out and she's not supporting me anymore, she should be able to help herself for once. Sometimes I feel bad.
Clarke – For what, living? It's not really your fault…
Lexa – I know that… I just feel bad that HE left. There are pictures of her and me together before he left, and she was always smiling in them. I never see her smile anymore.
Clarke – I'm sorry :(
Lexa – Yeah, it's fine. I just hope she can get whatever life she used to want when I leave. I've only really got a year left to go anyway. Last year things were really not good with her and I actually thought about moving in with Raven, but I didn't want to put that kind of pressure on her dad, so I just tried to make nice with my mom. Evidently, things are getting better between us.
Clarke – Well that's good
Lexa – Yeah :)
Clarke – Hey, I'm sorry to be lame, but I just remembered that math homework I have to finish before tomorrow. Can I text you in the morning?
Lexa – Please do, and don't fail your math homework, can't have you flunking out of school lol.
Clarke – Of course XD Alright, I'll text you tomorrow then!
Lexa stared down at the message, wanting to type out some other response before the conversation was officially over, but the only thing she could think of to add was… not timely. She had to say it out loud before she typed it – but when to say it, that was the question.
When should she tell Clarke that she loved her?
Nathan Miller's spring break started off pretty smoothly. He had plans to hang out with his dad some, but his plans with his friends had been a bit more tentative. Some of them wanted to go camping, others wanted to drive into the city and hit up some clubs. A few wanted to go to the beaches in Santa Barbara or maybe further.
Nathan decided to stay impartial in the decision, letting his friends know that he was cool with whatever.
One thing that Nathan didn't count on during his spring break was running into Brian, whom he hadn't spoken to in matter of weeks. It was a bit of an awkward run in, when he'd been jogging early in the morning and the other guy had been going to grab the mail from the mailbox down the street. Nathan had been conscious of how close he was to the guy's house, but in all honestly, he didn't think that there would ever be a reason for Brian to be out so early.
The two of them talked for a matter of minutes, but it quickly became clear that Brian wasn't interested in rekindling whatever it was that they'd had before Clarke accidentally walked into them at school, so Nathan left him alone. Truth be told, he was pretty much over it.
Another thing that was kind of a bummer about spring break was that he didn't talk to Clarke much at all – seeing as how she was in Los Angeles. He never really felt that they talked a ton, or that he was at all reliant on his conversations with her, but sometimes she was the only one who he could talk to about things. However, during the break, he only got replies from her during mealtimes, probably because that was the only time she had to sit still and check her messages.
Finally, at the end of break, Nathan's friends texted in a group chat that they were going drive into the city, hit up a club or two, and then roam Santa Barbara a bit. Nathan, still indifferent, texted that he would definitely be there.
That was Friday. When it got dark out, Nathan jogged over to his friend's place and they all piled into two cars and started to the city.
"Dude, we haven't been to any clubs in ages," one of the guys said to another.
"At least we know the girls there will always be hot."
"Thank goodness that never changes."
"I'm really trying to get laid tonight. If I get back from spring break with nothing to boast about during practice, what's the point?"
"I bet I get a better one than you."
Nathan tried not to roll his eyes. Sometimes his "friends" were rather… well, misogynistic would probably be the politically correct term, but he almost preferred the term barbaric or just flat out assholes.
"How about you Miller?"
"How about me what?" he asked quickly.
"What have you been doing all week? Hooked up with any girls? Or do you at least plan to? Hasn't it been awhile since you got laid?"
"No – he's dating that weird quiet girl, right? I heard that her one positive quality is that she's good in bed."
"I'm not dating Clarke," Nathan insisted, trying to roll her eyes, "and that's not true – she's really nice."
"Anyone ever tell you that you're a pansy, Miller?"
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means that you act like a fucking girl."
Miller's face darkened. "Why? Because I don't treat women like shit?"
"You don't treat women like anything – you barely associate with them. Aside from that weird girl – what's her name? Claire?"
"Clarke, and she's not weird."
"Whatever you say man."
"Hey Miller, when is the last time you got laid?"
"Your balls getting blue yet?"
Nathan clenched and unclenched his fist. "Shut the fuck up, it's none of your goddamn business."
"Ooh, maybe Miller does have a set of working balls after all."
"Hey, I've got an idea," one guy – Eric – said. "Let's check his phone – bet if he's hooked up with any girls, he'd have their numbers."
"Yeah right, man, I'm not giving you my phone."
"What's the harm, Miller? Hand over the phone."
"Fuck no, back off."
"Just hand it over, if you have nothing to hide, what does it matter? You saying you having something to hide?"
"Pull the car over, I'm going home," Nathan demanded to Harrison, who was driving, and who didn't even avert his gaze from the road to acknowledge Miller's request. "Harrison, let me out of the fucking car."
"You heard him, Harrison, he wants to get out. Let him."
At that, Harrison began to pull over. They were already nearing the main downtown area of Santa Barbara, so Nathan knew that it wouldn't be too difficult to get an Uber or something. He opened the car door, pushing out into the salty night air. He relaxed a bit as soon as he was away from the guys, until he heard Eric call out, "I guess we all know that pussies will be pussies. You can't change 'em. Once a fag, always a fag."
Nathan spun on his heel so quickly that he almost lost his balance. "What the fuck did you just say to me?" Eric wasn't in the car anymore.
"I called you a faggot." Eric stepped around the car and closer to Nathan. "That's what you are, isn't it? Or is there some other reason that you don't ever hook up with girls and you're always acting like one?"
"Shut up, man, you don't know anything about me."
"You're right – no one here seems to. I think it's time we change that." Suddenly, Eric's fist landed on Nathan's chin, knocking him to the side but not throwing him off of his feet. However, it quickly became apparent that Eric's goal hadn't been to get him down, but to render him defenseless for just enough time for Eric to grab his cell phone out of his pocket and bolt back to the car.
As soon as Nathan recovered from the blow, he found himself staring at the retreating car, dumbfounded. He wasn't quite sure what exactly had just happened, or how or why, but he did know something for sure.
Within the next few days or the week at least, he was going to be outed to the whole school.
And so was Clarke.