Silence is Louder
adult
"Don't look at me like I've betrayed you."
"No, no betrayal implies an action. You just stood there and said nothing."
That brought silence. Uncomfortable silence after the shouting that had been raging for the past several minutes. Silence that was terribly, horribly loud.
Sofia braced herself with a shuttering breath. "It wasn't - I -" she licked her lips once before pressing them together. She crossed her arms.
Cedric held her gaze before letting his head hang.
A little time passed with the two of them standing still. Their actions behind them, their words running marathons in their heads.
Cedric took a step towards her. Sofia let his hands cup her face gently. His thumbs traced below her eyes. She stared up at him, eyes searching his with more and more desperation as he leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, lingering there for a long moment. When he went to pull his back, Sofia clung to his hands, fighting to keep him there.
"No! No, I -"
"Sofia, please don't make a bigger scene than we already have. We agreed."
"Well I don't agree anymore! Cedric -"
He freed his hands from hers with an effort and took a step back from her before giving a perfectly perfunctory bow.
"I believe your obligations await you, Princess."
Frozen, Sofia watched as her title struck her heart, as her lover walked away, as the sounds from the ballroom filtered under the door again calling her back to reality and loneliness amid a sea of people who would never love her the way he did.
"Does," she whispered under her breath, pressing her hand to her heart. "Please, please still be does."
A/N: Meaning "does love me" - present tense, not past. In case that wasn't clear.
This felt done here. The story isn't, but the scene is. Maybe revisiting this later. I was watching Miss Congeniality for the first time in an AGE and the first 2 sentences of this drabble are taken right from it. The bug bit and I had to write. Getting my feet wet before tackling the big kahuna, which is open in my browser tabs. Woo!