Chapter 20
Clarke had to drive the van to the elementary school parking lot on Halloween night. She opened up the trunk and took out the decorations one at a time, all of which were pretty lightweight and safe for her to lift. They had an ugly old rug that she'd painted green to represented the turf, and Bellamy had painted white yard lines on there a bit unevenly. Then she set up their skeleton football players and their monster-masked refs out on the fake field, and put some air in the inflatable goal post the way Bellamy had shown her. The whole scene came to life pretty well.
"So where's your partner in crime?" Raven asked as she moseyed on over from her assigned parking space. She and Murphy's car, which they'd designed into a pirate ship, was right next to the van, and Murphy appeared to be donning a Captain Hook costume, complete with fake teeth, a hook for a hand, and an eye patch, while Raven's pirate costume was a lot prettier.
"He had to work late, but he's on his way," Clarke explained as she taped the last of the spiders, bats, and ghosts to the goalpost. "Yours appears to be eating all your candy."
Raven looked over her shoulder and scolded Murphy as he sat on the trunk gorging on Snickers. "Oh, Murphy, stop! You wanna win this, right?"
"Of course," he said with his mouth full.
"Well, we can't do that if we have no candy to hand out. So put it down."
"Aye aye, captain," Murphy mumbled as he set their bowl in the trunk.
"See? I'm the captain," Raven boasted to Clarke. "Because I'm usually on top."
"Your costume's really cute," Clarke told her, envious of how long and lean Raven's legs looked in her short black skirt. She was able to show some stomach, too, in a corset-like vest, and she had on a bandana that she managed to make look cool and some knee-high boots that she managed to not make look slutty. She didn't look like a real pirate at all, of course, but she looked good. "I wish I could pull that off," Clarke said enviously.
"You could," Raven assured her.
"Not right now." Her belly was pooching too much for that, which was part of the reason why she'd just decided to show up in a black tank top that said Not a food baby on it. It was pretty warm out that night, but she had a jacket, too, just in case she got cold "I was supposed to be a zombie cheerleader, but I couldn't even fit into my uniform," she lamented.
"This is cute, though."
"Do you think anyone's gonna be surprised?" she asked, holding one hand to her stomach. "Or does everyone already know?"
"I think a lot of people suspect," Raven said, "but this is a creative way to confirm it."
Yeah, she figured she could just take a few pictures tonight, post them online, and once people on Instagram saw her shirt, they'd know. There were a lot of people from high school she'd lost touch with over the years and didn't bother talking to anymore, so this was the perfect way for them to find out. "You know what else is creative?" she said, motioning to the set up around the open trunk of the van. "This haunted football field."
"Oh, you really think you're gonna win, huh?"
"Oh, yeah." Harper and Monty had a Disney theme going with theirs, which was cute, and Raven and Murphy had done well on the pirate idea, but knowing Murphy, he'd probably scare all the trick-or-treaters. "Wait 'til you see Bellamy," she said. "He's gonna be a zombie football player."
Looking over Clarke's shoulder, Raven pointed over to the other side of the parking lot. "You sure about that?"
Clarke spun around, surprised to seeing Bellamy walking towards her not dressed in his old football uniform, but instead as . . . what even was he? He had a light grey t-shirt and dark jeans on, sunglasses, some extra beard hair, and one of those baby carriers that moms and dads could wear on their chests. And he had a Cabbage Patch doll in it. "What's this?" she asked him.
"My jersey wouldn't fit, so I had to improvise," he replied. "I'm Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover. Figured it'd be a shame not to utilize my awesome beard."
"Wait a minute," Raven said, motioning in between the two of them, "you guys didn't plan these costumes?"
"No." Neither one of them had managed to match their theme.
"So you show up in a pregnancy shirt, and you show up in a dad costume," Raven said, smirking. "That's called destiny, folks." She left them alone and headed back over to her own vehicle, where Murphy was once again trying to sneak some of the candy.
"Cheer skirt was too tight?" Bellamy guessed.
"Oh, yeah. To be honest, it would've been too tight even without the baby bump."
He shrugged. "We'll still win, though."
"Hell, yeah." When he raised his hand, she high-fived him, feeling confident.
Anytime a new car came into the parking lot, everyone who was already there scoped it out to see if it was just another lame trunk with teeth attached or if the owners had gotten more elaborate with it. A couple of Bellamy and Clarke's skeletons fell over, so they had to stand them up again, and Bellamy made sure they were in an actual football formation. They'd dressed them up and everything, so it was completely ridiculous, but the quarterback skeleton had on a #7 Blake jersey, the running back skeleton a #1 Miller one, and so on and so forth. While Bellamy hung some fake cobwebs from the car, Clarke dumped some candy into the football bowl she'd painted. It'd been a while since she'd painted anything, but it'd turned out nice.
About ten minutes before the event was set to start and most people were putting the finishing touches on their display, the six of them congregated together, and Raven said, "Okay, let's be real: The competition's right here. None of these other people even stand a chance."
"I don't know, I think the luau one's pretty good," Harper commented, looking down the row.
Murphy grunted. "Better than yours."
"Shut up, Murphy!" Harper yelled.
"Yeah, we were strategic," Monty said. "Everybody loves Disney." He, of course, was dressed as Mickey Mouse, and Harper was Minnie.
"I don't love Disney," Bellamy mumbled.
"Yes, you do," Clarke said. "The Little Mermaid's your favorite movie."
"Clarke!" He growled, clenching his hands into fists. "You weren't supposed to tell anyone about that!"
"Are you serious?" Raven gave him an incredulous look.
He didn't respond, so Clarke answered for him. "Mmm-hmm." They'd actually watched it together once, a long time ago.
"She just wanted to be part of his world, okay?" Bellamy said dramatically. "Is that too much to ask?"
Everyone laughed, but Murphy shook his head in mock disgust and said, "Everyone told me you were cool, man."
"I am cool," Bellamy insisted, readjusting the baby on his chest. "Fuckin' homecoming king here."
"Don't swear when the kids get here," Clarke told him. "That'll make us lose points."
The teasing and smack-talking probably would have continued had a big blue truck not backed into a space close to them. The bed of the truck was stocked full of huge props, such as big Hershey bars and candy canes, oversized gum drops and lollipops. How the hell had that thing even been allowed on the road with the big Candyland banner on top of the truck?
All of them just stood there with their mouths gaping when Jasper—Jasper Jordan, of all people—hopped out of the driver's seat and exclaimed, "Hey, guys!" Maya got out of the passenger's side and had some colored plastic squares in her hands. She started dropping them from the bed of the truck outward, like spaces in the board game.
"What the fuck, Jasper?" Bellamy roared.
"Jesus Christ," Murphy swore.
"That is impressive," Monty admired.
Jasper shrugged, reaching into the backseat to take out several latex balloons. "It only seemed logical. Where else would they wanna go on Halloween but Candyland?"
It was so colorful and so extravagant that it made all of theirs pale in comparison. Clarke had no idea where he'd gotten that stuff, or how he'd made it, but Monty was right. It was very impressive.
Turning to Bellamy, she said, "We'll still win, though," even though she definitely didn't feel as confident, or even deserving, anymore.
"Of course," he agreed.
When the kids started showing up, the competition was on. Most of them started at one end of the parking lot and shuffled on through, but for the livewires who just went running away from their parents, everyone tried to lure them to their vehicle first. Maya was good at doing that for Jasper. And of course the kids wanted to go see Minnie and Mickey Mouse with Harper and Monty. Raven's outfit was so hot that some of the parents wouldn't let their kids go anywhere near her—either that or they didn't want their husbands anywhere near her—and unfortunately, some of the little girls were less interested in Bellamy and Clarke's haunted football field than the boys were. Bellamy was a good talker, though, always had been, so he coaxed a few over. It helped that a lot of the parents recognized him, too. While their kids dug through the candy bowl, they'd say things to him like, "You're the guy who played quarterback a couple years ago," and "You were such a good player."
Bellamy conversed with everyone, but he focused most of his attention on the kids. Apparently their votes were the only ones that counted. Before they left, he said, "Alright, but make sure when you vote for the winner, you vote for the haunted football field, alright?" One particular little boy, who'd actually dressed up as a football player, grinned from ear to ear and nodded at him enthusiastically. "Alright," Bellamy said, "give me a fist bump."
The little boy fist bumped him right before running towards Candyland.
"Do you think he's gonna vote for us?" Clarke asked, taking a seat in the back of the van, dangling her legs over the side.
"Not a chance," Bellamy said, sitting beside her. "Look at the way they're just flocking to Jasper's truck. That's not even his truck. It's his dad's."
"This isn't my van," she pointed out.
He shook his head, competitive as ever, and said, "I gotta turn this around. Hold down the fort. I'm gonna go get something." He shot to his feet and darted off in the direction of his car. Clarke wasn't sure what he was going to get, but seeing him run off with a Cabbage Patch doll strapped to his chest was a hell of a lot different than seeing him run into the end zone, and it made Clarke laugh.
When another little boy, this one just wearing vampire teeth, approached, Clarke said, "Hey, you want some candy?" and held out the bowl. The kid looked shy until he got close, dug both hands into the bowl, and ran off with two fistfuls. "Hey, not so much!" she called after him, but he was gone.
A woman wearing cat ears, who Clarke took to be the boys' mother, didn't even make him go give any candy back. She just strolled along with him towards the next vehicle, and Clarke was irrationally outraged. She set the bowl down, got up, and scurried towards her, tapping her shoulder before she could get to Raven and Murphy's car. "Um, excuse me? Excuse me," she said. "Your son just took way too much candy out of my meticulously-painted bowl here. Do you think you could get him to bring some back?"
The mom shrugged nonchalantly. "Kids like candy."
Yeah . . . that was kind of the whole basis of the holiday, but that didn't make it okay. "He's being greedy," Clarke stated simply.
"And you're being a bitch," the mom said.
"What?" Clarke gasped.
"Yeah." Looking at her shirt, the woman snarled, "I feel sorry for your baby."
Clarke's mouth dropped open in astonishment. "Oh, that's it!" she shouted, flipping a switch when that woman decided to bring her own kid into the mix. "You wanna see a bitch, bitch?"
Hands on her shoulders tugged her backward, de-escalating the situation. "No cat-fighting," Bellamy said. "You're pregnant."
"I was just gonna hit her with a verbal smack-down," Clarke said, allowing him to lead her back to the van. "Not like we're getting her kid's vote anyway."
"What'd she say?"
"Oh, it doesn't matter." She supposed petty, catty, bitchy moms were in her future. Some of the women in this town were a piece of work.
Bellamy had a small blue Nerf football in his hand, and she asked him, "What's that for?" Their skeleton football players, two of whom were about to tip over again, were set up with a tiny pumpkin as their football.
"A game," Bellamy said. "Kick it through the goal post, get an extra piece of candy."
"Hmm." That might garner some votes, as long as they didn't run out of candy. They only had a few more bags left. "Looks like you've got your first player," she said as a boy in a lion outfit came towards them.
"Trick-or-treat," he said, holding out his plastic pumpkin.
"Hey, that's a cool costume," Bellamy said as he dropped a Snickers bar into it.
"What's yours?" the boy asked him.
"Oh, I'm a character from The Hangover," he explained.
The little boy tilted his head to the side curiously. "What's a hangover?"
Luckily, Bellamy had an answer for him. "Something adults get when they wake up and can't find their self-respect."
Clarke laughed and left him to run his little football game with the lion boy while she went to check in on Harper. "How's it going in Disneyland?" she asked her friend.
"Good," Harper said. "We're totally losing to Jasper, though."
"Yeah, I think we all are." She wasn't going to throw in the towel, but Jasper's truck was like a freaking amusement park right now. There were so many kids over there. "Bellamy's trying, though," she said, watching as he demonstrated how to kick the tiny, squishy football. The boy set his pumpkin down and tried, but he missed it completely, so Bellamy let him try it again. It didn't go through the goal posts, but Bellamy let him have another piece of candy anyway.
"Seems like he's really good with kids," Harper remarked.
Clarke gave her a look. "Is that supposed to be a hint?"
"No. Just an observation."
Well . . . Clarke had to admit, it was something she'd been observing, too. Bellamy was just good with people in general, but perhaps because he'd helped raised his younger sister, kids were kind of a soft spot for him. So of course he was good with them. He pretty much always had been.
...
Leaning back on the metal bleachers, Clarke asked, "Why are we here?" as the junior high football game continued to play out in front of her. It was pretty boring, because neither team knew how to score very well, and there were more dropped passes than completed catches.
"Because our boyfriends are here, and we have nothing better to do," Raven replied as she plucked a tortilla chip out of her plastic nacho holder. She dipped it into the cheese sauce and held it out for Clarke. Clarke took it, ate it, and made a face ar the taste. Way too spicy.
The truth was, this game was going nowhere fast, and the food at the concession stand wasn't much consolation for the boredom. But Bellamy, Zeke, and a couple other guys from the high school team had come out here after their own practice had gotten done, to stand on the sidelines and sort of assistant coach the kids. The eighth grade quarterback was about half the size of Bellamy and couldn't throw to save his life, so whenever he came off the field, Bellamy was working with him, demonstrating what to do and how to do it well.
"Our junior high team's not very good," Clarke remarked, glancing at the scoreboard. It was only 6-0 with two minutes left in the first half, but they were trailing the visiting team, and so far, they hadn't made it past mid-field.
"Nope," Raven agreed. "And the varsity team's not gonna be very good next year, either. Not without Bellamy. I mean, Zeke's a good player, too, and so is Miller. But Bellamy just is our offense, and our backup quarterback sucks."
"Who even is our backup quarterback?" Clarke pondered. Wasn't it some freshman?
"Mr. Irrelevant as long as Bellamy's on the field," Raven said.
Clarke imagined the Rockets team next year, a team without Bellamy on it, and it definitely didn't seem promising. "So next year, school spirit's pretty much gonna tank, huh?" she predicted. "No one thinks we're gonna be able to win."
"It's gonna be rough," Raven said. "And not just on the crowd." She gave Clarke a pointed look.
Clarke sat up straighter. "What do you mean?"
"Well, Zeke's not gonna be far away, so he'll be home all the time," Raven said. "But Bellamy's gonna be out of state. You won't get to see him very much."
Up until a couple months ago, that wouldn't have even affected her. Other than losing some major eye candy in school, it wouldn't have really mattered. "So you're saying next year's gonna be hard on me?" she said, not quite sure what to make of that.
"Well . . . isn't it?"
For a moment, she thought about it, picturing not only the football team without Bellamy now, but her. Her sitting at the lunch table without him next to her. Her walking down the hallway without him holding her hand. Her at parking lot parties, maybe just mingling with friends or . . . spending time with someone else? Flirting with someone else? Kissing someone else? Right now, it was strange to contemplate. "I'm not really thinking that far ahead," she decided.
"Not at all?" Raven pressed. "Clarke, you guys are, like, joined at the hip. Literally and figuratively."
She couldn't help but blush. The literal joining was quite fun.
"You've been spending so much time with him," her friend went on. "You guys are like two peas in a pod."
Although she hadn't exactly sat down and calculated how many hours per week she and Bellamy hung out . . . yeah, it was a lot. But there wasn't anything wrong with that. "We spend a lot of our time screwing," she mumbled, even though she'd actually helped him with homework the other night. English. They were reading a novel.
"But not all of it," Raven said. "I noticed the cuddling at lunch yesterday. You just looked so couple-y."
"Well, we are a couple," she said simply. "For now."
"But when he leaves for college . . . what, it's just over?" Raven made a face. "It's a relationship with an expiration date? Are you really gonna be okay with that?"
An expiration date? Clarke hated the way that sounded. She and Bellamy didn't have to stop being friends, even if he became some hot-shot campus quarterback and started hooking up with other girls. "We'll . . . deal with that when the time comes," she said, not exactly loving this conversation.
"Clarke . . ."
"What?" As much as she loved Raven, her patience was wearing thin here. "I don't wanna think too much about the future," she decided. "I just wanna live in the moment and enjoy what we have right now."
Raven didn't seem particularly satisfied with that response, but she must have sensed that Clarke was tired of talking about it, because she dropped it by muttering, "Okay."
Clarke looked at the sideline again, where Bellamy was now high-fiving some of the defensive players as they trotted off the field. Apparently they'd gotten a stop against the other team, but Clarke had missed the play.
"I'm gonna go get some nachos," she said, rising to her feet. It was going to be halftime soon, and she felt like she needed a little space from all the questions her best friend had just asked her.
...
Clarke couldn't take her eyes off of Bellamy. He was totally focused on the trick-or-treaters, on putting on a good show for them. One little girl in a cowgirl costume couldn't stop giggling at him, so he must have been saying something funny as he dumped some candy in her basket
"He's been really great, doing this with me," she said, hearing a slight wistfulness in her words.
"Yeah," Harper agreed, "it ended up being fun for everyone."
It really had—a hell of a lot more fun than some stupid party like every other year. Maybe it was the start of a new tradition.
Clarke moseyed on back over to her haunted football field and stood by the goal post, waiting for a lull in kids to ask Bellamy, "Do you think the game's gonna give us an edge?"
"We don't need an edge; we got this in the bag," he boasted. But one quick glance at Jasper's truck made him add on, "But yeah, it won't hurt."
Clarke picked up the squishy football and regretted not bringing her pom poms. Sure, they were wrinkled as fuck from being shoved in the back of her bedroom closet at her mom's house for years now, but if she shook them out and dusted them off, they would have still looked nice enough. Some of the little girls visiting their display may have enjoyed playing with them.
Speaking of little girls . . . "Twick-or-tweat."
Clarke nearly melted when an adorable girl dressed up as a fairy princess shyly approached the van. She looked so out of place on their haunted football field, and she even knocked over one of their skeletons, but Clarke didn't care. She was so damn sweet in her pink frilly dress, with her hair all curly and sparkly wings on her back. She was wearing a little crown, too, with fake gems in it.
"Oh, look at you," she cooed, feeling a sudden flood of emotion. "You're so cute. What's your name?"
"Mandy," the little girl replied quietly.
"Hi, Mandy. I'm Clarke."
"She's a princess, too," Bellamy added.
"No," Clarke denied, "not a real one."
"Yeah, a real one," Bellamy claimed, even though he was the only one who ever called her that. "She's a real-life princess."
The little girl's eyes got wide in astonishment, and she set her basket down so she could wrap her arms around Clarke's legs and squeeze her. Clarke was . . . surprised, because she didn't look very much like a princess right now. She wasn't dressed fancily or made up prettily. She was just . . . she was just Clarke.
Smiling at Bellamy as the actual little princess continued to hug her, Clarke let herself pretend for a moment that what he said was true. Because that would have meant that her life was a fairy tale.
...
About an hour into the event, things started to slow down. There were still trunk-or-treaters, but not nearly as many of them. Bellamy got an extra bag of candy out of his trunk—real crappy stuff like tootsie rolls—and had some for himself. Clarke had one tootsie roll and spit it out. She said it tasted like plastic. Personally, he didn't think they were that bad, but then again, her tastes were all out of whack.
"I'll be right back," she announced, hopping off the back of the van. "I gotta pee."
"Where you goin'?" he asked.
"Just behind that bush," she said, pointing to the far corner of the parking lot. "Don't let anyone sneak up on me." She scampered off in that direction.
Only a few seconds after she had left, someone else sauntered up to the van and took her seat. It was that girl she used to date, the hot one who he'd met at her surprise birthday party.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey . . ." He wracked his brain for her name and managed to come up with it. "Lexa."
"Nice set-up here," she remarked.
"Thanks." They definitely should have found a way to anchor the skeletons in place, because they'd been falling down all night. One of them just wouldn't stay up no matter how hard he tried, but oh, well. Football players fell down on the field sometimes, even skeletal ones.
"Sorry I couldn't participate," Lexa said, "but my car's a bike."
"That's alright," he said. "You're a neutral observer then. Tell me, who would you vote for?"
"Well . . ." She looked around, then said, "Jasper's is really good."
"It's not scary, though," he argued, as that was pretty much the only argument he could make against it. "Halloween's supposed to be scary."
"Hmm, you're right." She pointed to Murphy and Raven's pirate ship and said, "I'd definitely vote for theirs then."
"What?" he spat in disbelief.
"Yeah, do you see how creepy Murphy looks? Nothing scarier than that."
Although his competitive fire hadn't been extinguished, Bellamy was gradually beginning to lose hope that he and Clarke could pull out a victory. "Here, you want some candy?" he said, holding out the bowl. "We got enough left."
"Sure." She unwrapped a tootsie roll and began to chew it with a great deal of effort. Maybe some of them were like plastic. "This candy sucks," she informed him.
"I had to get the cheap stuff. I work construction."
She spit it back out into the wrapper and dumped it in the trash bag Bellamy and Clarke were filling up. "Well, it was nice of you to do this with her," she said. "I think she needed it."
"Yeah, she did." He looked over in the direction of that bush and caught sight of her blonde head of hair behind it. She must have really had to pee. "Hey, before she comes back . . ." he said, sensing an opportunity to have a candid conversation with someone who knew Clarke pretty well. "Can I ask you something?"
"Go for it," Lexa invited.
"It's kinda . . . personal," he warned.
She just continued to look at him expectantly.
"Alright, I know you and Clarke dated for a year," he said, trying not to get distracted picturing two hot girls like themselves going at it. "Was it . . ." He wasn't sure how to ask what he was wondering without sounding like he was prodding, sticking his nose where it didn't belong. He really wanted to know how serious their relationship had been, though, so he went ahead and got the question out. "Were you guys . . . in love?"
"Oh, I definitely loved her," Lexa replied without hesitation. "Still do, but on more of a friendship level these days. And I know she loved me. But I don't think we were ever in love. That's kind of why we both decided to break up."
Never in love, he registered, considering what that might mean. "And Finn . . . did she love him?" he questioned.
Lexa thought about that one for a moment, then answered, "No. I think she tried to, but he was never the greatest boyfriend in the world. She wanted to make things more serious with him, but he wanted to have his whole slacker year . . ."
"Which he's currently having," Bellamy muttered, wondering if the guy was sleeping easy at night knowing that he'd knocked Clarke up and had left her to fend for herself.
"Unfortunately," Lexa agreed. "So it was just never gonna work out. Besides, I always got the sense that she was just . . . waiting."
That was an interesting word to use. "For what?" he pressed, feeling like there was more she wanted to say.
"Well, isn't it obvious?" Lexa said, looking him up and down. "She was waiting for you, Bellamy."
For me? he thought, wishing he'd come back just a couple months sooner. If he had, then maybe she never would have slept with Finn again. Her whole life could be different, and their whole relationship . . .
Everything could have changed.
...
Moment of truth. At the conclusion of the Trunk-or-Treat event, after all the votes had been tallied, the elementary school principal gathered everyone in the middle of the parking lot and announced, "Looks like we have a winner."
Bellamy was squeezing Clarke's hand tightly, and she heard him whispering, "Please, please, please," over and over again.
The principal drew it out for dramatic effect, but the result wasn't a surprising one when he exclaimed, "Candyland, Jasper Jordan!"
"Yes!" Jasper screamed, throwing his hands in the air.
"No!" Bellamy wailed, doubling over.
"Rigged," Murphy grumbled.
Monty, however, shrugged and admitted, "Fair."
Everyone clapped for him, but the best part of the celebration was when Maya threw her arms around him and hugged him, and then they kissed.
"Ooh, get it Jasper!" Raven exclaimed.
He and Maya both pulled away, looking at each other in surprise, but then they smiled and kissed again. It was cute, and Clarke couldn't really be too upset about it.
Bellamy, however, could. "This is bullshit," he said, tearing the Cabbage Patch doll out of his costume. He tossed it in the air, then kicked it through their inflatable goal posts.
"You might wanna think twice before you let Bellamy hold your kid," Murphy cautioned her.
She rolled her eyes. No, with a real kid, Bellamy would do just fine.
Cleaning up didn't take nearly as long as setting up had, and the night was still young, so Raven and Murphy invited them all over to hang out for a while. Clarke was feeling tired, though—seemed like she could barely stay up past 9:00 these days—so she politely declined, and of course Bellamy declined with her. Thankfully, he agreed to drive the van back to her parents' house, because just driving it to the school had been a lot for her. She was used to a smaller car, so she hopped into his vehicle and followed along behind him. After they dropped that off and popped in to wish her mom and Kane a happy Halloween, they went back to her house, where the first order of business was to head up to the bathroom and remove Bellamy's fake beard.
"Hey, be careful," he said as she used a pair of tweezers to pull away the pieces. "Don't take off the real stuff."
"I won't." She peeled back another strip of fake hair, and he grimaced. He'd used some glue, so it was kind of like peeling off a Band-Aid. But that appeared to be the last strip. "I love how proud you are of this thing," she teased.
"Well, aren't you?" he said. "Did you know I could do this?"
"What, grow facial hair? Yes."
"But such manly, rugged facial hair." He rubbed his chin and boasted, "That's quite the accomplishment."
"I'm very proud of you." She wet a washcloth and started to wipe some of the glue residue off his face.
"Thanks." He sighed frustratedly, shoulder slumping. "Oh, I can't believe we lost."
"I know," she agreed. "Ours was so good. But you have to admit . . ."
"Jasper's was good, too. I know," he droned. Even though Bellamy hated losing, he sucked it up and shrugged. "It's alright. I've already got an idea for next year."
"Next year?"
"Yeah. Christmas in October. We paint the van white, make a winter wonderland. Kids love that shit."
"That would be pretty cool," she said, picturing it. Setting the washcloth down, she thought out loud, "God, I'll have a baby by then."
"We can dress it up like an elf," he suggested.
She smiled at him. "You're thinking ahead. You never used to do that."
"Yeah, well, things change," he said. "Some things. Not everything."
No, she thought, distracted now by the brush of her hand against the back of her own. Not everything. His touch was still so electric.
"Hey, Clarke?" His voice was quieter.
"Hmm?"
No longer in costume and no longer in competition mode, he gazed at her intently, like he had something he was just itching to say. "I know it's been years," he started, "but . . . there's something I gotta know."
There was? Maybe she was the wrong person to ask then. Because there was so much she didn't know right now.
"When we were in high school," he said, "when we were together . . ." He trailed off, his eyes never drifting from hers, never blinking. It took him a moment, but finally, he asked, "Did you fall in love with me?"
For a second, she swore she stopped breathing. Because what kind of question was that? Did she fall in love with him? Back in high school?
Of course she had.
She'd never admitted it to him, never admitted it out loud to anyone. In fact, she wasn't even sure she'd ever admitted it to herself. And this question . . . it put her on the spot. If she said no, then she was lying, but if she said yes, then . . . then maybe she was just opening up a door that they'd tried to shut a long time ago.
In the end, though, the truth won out. She couldn't exactly say it, so she just nodded, not breaking eye contact with him, even as tears stung her lower lids.
He waited a moment, took that in, and it didn't seem to surprise him in the slightest. Then, he nearly knocked her off her feet when he blurted, "I fell in love with you, too."
She wasn't sure why that came as such a shock, but it did. Maybe because they'd just never allowed themselves to have this conversation before. Maybe because, just six weeks ago, she'd been living a life without him. But now he was here, and he was being more honest with her than ever before, and it forced her to be honest with herself.
Bellamy wasn't just an ex-boyfriend. He wasn't just the guy she'd lost her virginity to and spent her sophomore year with, and what had developed between them hadn't just been some high school fling. It'd been so much more.
