Chapter 24
When Bellamy got home the next morning, his mom looked like she was getting ready to leave. She often roamed around in the morning with a burnt piece of toast stuck in her mouth, gathering up any bills she needed to put in the mailbox and getting dressed while she ate. This morning, though, she took the toast out, stopped what she was doing, and gave him a teasing look. "Should I just rent out your room to drifters?" she asked. "You're hardly ever here anymore."
"That's not true," he denied, hanging his coat up in the closet. "I was home . . . a couple nights ago."
"Four nights," she said.
Had it really been that long? Huh. Time sure flew when he was . . . having fun.
"It's okay," she said, putting on her coat. "I don't blame you for wanting to spend more time with Clarke right now. Are you moving in with her?"
"Gradually," he said, reaching into his pocket. "Look what she gave me." He whipped out his keys and held up the one to her house, unable to help beaming with pride like a total spaz.
"That's exciting," his mom said with a smile.
"Yeah," he agreed, setting his clump of keys down on the kitchen counter. "What do we have for cereal?" he asked, rummaging around on top of the refrigerator.
"Nothing good," his mom replied.
"I don't care. I'm starving." He grabbed a box of Lucky Charms and shrugged. That shit was pure sugar, but it would do.
"Did you get enough to eat last night?" his mom asked him.
"Oh, yeah," he said, having to look away when he couldn't suppress a mischievous grin. Clarke had let him go down on her twice. But she'd been complaining about feeling uncomfortable this morning, so . . . no sex for breakfast.
"Well, help yourself," his mother urged. "I'm already late for work, so I'd better head out." She started for the door, then turned back around and said, "Oh, almost forgot." She slid one envelope out of the pile of envelopes in her hand. "This came for you," she said, handing it to him.
Curiously, he took it. "What is it?" He never got mail.
"I have no idea," she said. "I'll see you later." On her way out the door, she tacked on, "Maybe," with a knowing grin.
He chuckled, not sure he'd be home at all tonight. The plan was to head straight over to Clarke's after work.
Momentarily, he forgot about the cereal he planned to shovel down and opened the envelope in his hand. It was a school envelope, he noticed. Hadn't gotten one of those in years. But back in the day, whenever the school had sent anything home, it usually hadn't been good. Report cards. Info about parent teacher conferences. Those things had never been particularly great for him. But why the hell would the school send anything to him now? They'd gotten rid of him years ago.
He read the first few lines of the letter, going slowly to make sure he understood what it was saying. And just like old times, it wasn't saying anything he felt good about.
...
Whenever Clarke set foot in the Arkadia Youth Center, she was amazed how expansive it had become. What had just been Kane's "little project" a couple of years ago was a full-blown facility now, and so many kids around town frequented it. Sure, it was aimed at kids who came from rougher backgrounds, like the Finn type, but nowadays, even kids who came from money showed up for tutoring services. Clarke recognized some athletes in there—football players whose season was long done because the team wasn't any good anymore, and wrestlers and basketball players who were preparing for the start of their season. There was some talkthat Arkadia might actually have a good basketball team this year if some of the seniors kept their grades up and didn't spend so much time on the bench.
"Looks busy," Clarke remarked to Kane once he finally had a free moment to come talk to her. He was sort of like a traffic director, it seemed, except his job was to direct available tutors to open students.
"Yeah," he agreed. "Please tell me you're here to help."
"I can, if you need me." She considered herself a pretty well-rounded student, so she felt like she could help in most subjects.
"I do," he said. "Every one of these kids could use some tutelage from a valedictorian."
"Well . . . salutatorian," she grumbled, still a bit pissed that she'd just barely missed the top spot in her graduating class. "Wells Jaha beat me."
"Ah, yes, the Jahas," he said. "They are very academically-driven."
"Probably didn't help that I got an A- the year I was dating Bellamy," she said. "I got kind of distracted with . . . well, dating Bellamy."
Kane laughed lightly. "Well, yes, we'll still take your help around here," he said. "A- and everything."
"Can I talk to you about something first, though?" she asked. As willing as she was to tutor, that wasn't the reason she'd stopped by.
"Sure," he said. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah. Kind of. It's just . . . my mom," she said, making a face. "She's being a total bitch to Bellamy."
"Oh, Clarke . . ." He grabbed her arm and pulled her away from some of the younger students. She really hoped the little girl at the closest table hadn't heard her swear.
"What all has she told you about me and him?" Clarke asked Kane. She was curious what, if anything, her mom had told him.
"Just that the two of you had a very intense relationship back when you were sixteen," Kane answered. "She said she always felt pretty nervous about it, but she tried to support you as best she could."
Clarke rolled her eyes at that nice, sugarcoated version. "She's never really been all that nice to him," she said. "And now that he and I are back together, she's being super judgmental."
"Because . . ." Kane said leadingly.
"Because I'm pregnant, and she doesn't think Bellamy's really gonna wanna be with me once the baby's born," she said, talking a mile a minute as the anger started to take over. "Like, I get that people are gonna be skeptical. I'm pretty much anticipating that. But she has no right to say something like that to him. It's rude. It's rude, and it just—it pisses me off, Kane, and you do not wanna see me get pissed off right now."
"I'm sure I don't," he said calmly. "And she doesn't, either. I'll talk to her."
"Will you?" If anyone could get her mom to calm down about things, it was this man.
"Yes," he said. "No guarantees she'll change her tune, but I'll try."
"Thank you. I really appreciate it," she said. Hopefully, if her mom just vented things to him, then he'd talk some sense into her, and she'd own up to her rudeness and apologize to Bellamy. That was all she wanted.
Pushing the mom stuff out of her mind, Clarke looked around and asked, "So who do I need to go tutor?" There was a middle school kid with an open science textbook sitting at one of the corner tables. Science was kind of her forte given what she was majoring in.
"How about Connor?" Kane suggested. "He's the kid eating his math assignment."
Clarke followed her eyes and cringed as she watched a chubby little boy tear a page out of his workbook, crumple it up, and shove it in his mouth. Did he think that was going to work as an excuse for not having it done? Kids like that just confused the hell out of her and made her hope that her own kid was easier to understand.
It ended up taking an hour to get Connor though one math assignment. Twelve problems. Basic addition and subtraction. He was an ornery kid, but at least his teacher anticipated that he'd do something to get rid of his assignment, because she'd made a copy of the page and stashed it in his very messy backpack. Clarke sat with him and tried her best to be patient and redirect him whenever he became unfocused. Which was often. He was more interested in telling her about his Pokémon cards than he was in doing math. But they slaved away and got through it at long last. Clarke tried to get him to put it away in his backpack neatly, but he just shoved it in there carelessly. It was doubtful he'd be able to find it when it was time to hand it in tomorrow.
After tutoring, she went over to Raven and Murphy's for a while. She'd stupidly agreed to take part in some dumb skit Murphy was filming for his channel. There was a script, but it was impossible to follow, so Murphy ended up just scrapping it halfway through. She and Raven were starving after that, so they went out and got a food while Murphy filmed an episode reaction to some new show he was watching.
It was late when she ended up getting home, but she was delighted to see Bellamy's car parked out front. The lights were all on, and when she walked inside, he was sitting on the couch, using her laptop for something.
"Ooh, I like getting home and having my boyfriend here," she said, leaning down over the back of the couch. "Giving you a key was a good idea."
He turned his head to the side and gave her a quick kiss. "How was your day?" he asked her.
"Good," she said, taking her jacket over to the coat closet. "I cried a little."
"Why? What happened?"
"Nothing. I was just thinking about how I could find out the gender of the baby soon, and I started crying." She shrugged, shutting the closet door, and put one hand on her little bump as she treaded back into the living room.
"That happens, huh?"
"It's started happening." Spontaneous bursts of emotion were a pain in the ass to deal with. "Fun, right?"
"We'll manage," he said, his eyes returning to the computer screen. His fingers started clicking away, not super rapidly because Bellamy still used the hunt and peck method for the most part, but he was definitely typing something.
"What're you working on?" she asked.
His answer surprised her: "A speech."
She seemed to recall him telling her once that he'd improvised all his speeches in speech and debate class, and that he'd aced every single one of them. "For what?" she questioned, not sure what he'd need to sit down and actually type something out for.
"Read the letter on the counter," he told her.
She looked into the kitchen and spied a small stack of mail, hers, but there was a letter off to the side addressed to him. When she took it out of the envelope and read it, her mouth dropped open. "Oh my god, Bellamy," she gasped, skimming the first paragraph again to make sure she'd read it right. "They're inducting you into the Rocket Athletic Hall of Fame?"
He didn't say anything. He didn't even stop typing.
"That's awesome!" she exclaimed. "When is it?"
"End of the week," he replied. "Nice of them to give me such advanced notice, huh?"
"Do you have something going on?"
"No."
"Then what's the problem?"
"Well, what if I did have something going on?" he said, sounding more perturbed than he did excited. "They should've let me know sooner."
"Oh, well," she said. "We'll go. We'll have a good time." This would be so much better than those charity events at the hospital were. Not that she had anything against charity. It was just nice that the school was celebrating Bellamy in this way.
"Oh, there's more, too," he said. "Keep reading."
She started to read the next paragraph, mumbling bits and phrases of it out loud. "Officially retire your . . ." She trailed off, her chest swelling with pride. "Bellamy. They're retiring your jersey?" She was pretty sure that had never happened for a Rocket football player, and she only recalled a few retired jerseys hanging up in the gym, one for a volleyball player, the other for a basketball player back when men's basketball shorts had been way tooshort. "That's incredible," she said. "Congratulations."
"Yeah," he muttered. But for some reason, he didn't sound too excited.
"Is that what you're writing the speech for?" she asked.
"Yep. It's crap." He pressed the backspace button and started deleting line after line.
"I'm sure it's not," she said, figuring that the speech-writing aspect of all of this was what was frustrating him. "You're so good at public speaking."
"Not this kind." He exited out of the whole document without saving, closed the computer, and set it on the coffee table. "I'm kinda tired," he said as he stood up. "I'll be upstairs."
She watched him trudge up the staircase, looking like all the energy had just been drained out of him. She didn't quite understand why. Had work been hard? Was this speech bothering him that much? Something just felt off about him. He wasn't being as attentive as he usually was, and . . . why wasn't he happier? This whole Hall of Fame thing was good news. So why did she feel like she was more excited about it than he was?
If Bellamy wasn't going to stay awake for anything, then there was no point in her trying to stay awake, either. She stayed up a little later than he did, searching up some info about the Hall of Fame banquet on the school's Facebook page. They had pictures from last year's, where they'd inducted a former wrestling coach, and everyone in attendance was dressed in fancy clothing. That meant she'd have to try on her dresses, see if anything still fit right now or else go buy something new. She didn't want to wear something that emphasized her baby bump at all. Even though a lot of people knew by now, she didn't want to take any attention away from Bellamy. It was his night, whether he wanted it to be or not.
When she came out of the bathroom that night after brushing her teeth and flossing, she stopped in the doorway and watched as Bellamy slept. Or at least she thought he was sleeping. Maybe not, because he wasn't snoring yet. But he was flat on his back, one arm above his head, eyes closed, so if nothing else, he was trying to nod off. He hadn't even bothered to turn the TV on.
She looked at him now, this grown man with his beard and even bigger muscles than he'd had back in high school, and she felt like . . . like he deserved this honor that the school was giving him. In fact, a couple years ago, she was pretty sure he would have welcomed it.
...
The fight song ended with the rousing chant of, "Go Big Green! Go Big Green! Go Big Green! Go Big Green!" and Clarke did her bounciest, sharpest cheerleader motions in time with the words. She and Raven stood side by side in the front line of the formation, eyeing each other competitively. They had a little friendly rivalry going to see which of them could be the loudest at this pep rally, kick the highest, smile the biggest, and so on and so forth. The rivalry really served no purpose other than to pump the crowd up. Not that they needed to be pumped up. The state finals game was all anyone had been able to talk about the whole week.
As the captain, Raven took to the microphone and said, "Let's hear it for our Rocket football team!" once the noise had died down. But that, of course, brought it all back up again. The middle school kids, grades six through eight, had gotten to attend this pep rally, too, and they were little hooligans, screaming and cheering at the top of their lungs. Clarke wasn't sure if they were actually going to the game or if they were just happy to get out of class for the last twenty minutes of the day, but either way, their energy was explosive.
Raven invited the entire team down to the gym floor, and while the cheerleaders were prepared to stand behind them, Zeke slid his arm around Raven's waist, and Bellamy came to stand beside Clarke, too. We must look so all-American, she thought. Him in his jersey, me in my uniform . . .
"Congrats on an amazing season, you guys," Raven said, talking over the noise. "We're gonna let your coach have the microphone first to say a few words."
"Thank you, Raven," the coach said, taking the mic from her. "Although I'm sure all these guys are tired of hearing me talk."
That got a laugh out of everyone, and some vigorous nods from certain members of the team. While the coach started in praising the team and talking about all the hard work they'd put in this season, Bellamy looked at Clarke and quietly said, "You look really hot when you dance."
"I missed a kick because I was too busy looking at you," she said.
"Didn't mean to mess you up." He grinned.
God, that smile of his should have been illegal. It always made her feel weak in the knees. "Focus on the pep rally, Bellamy," she urged him. His mom had taken off work to be there and everything. "It's for you."
Clearly he just wasn't focused, though, because his eyes kept looking her up and down, and finally he just bent down and whispered in her ear, "I just wanna fuck you right now, you know that?"
Oh my god, she thought as a tingle zipped up her spine. After this pep rally and before practice, they were going to have to find some place to . . . do something. Maybe she could just give him a quick blow-job or something. She wasn't opposed to that.
"But I think the guys could talk about that better than I could," the coach finished up. "Who wants the mic?"
"Bellamy," the rest of the team said, stepping out of the way.
"What?" Bellamy's head snapped up. He hadn't heard a word of what his coach had said. The rest of the team passed the microphone down to him, and although he grumbled, "Why do you guys make me talk?" Clarke didn't doubt that he'd do fine.
"Because you love the sound of your own voice," Miller teased.
Bellamy laughed into the microphone and quietly admitted, "I do like the sound of my voice."
So do I, Clarke thought. It was so deep and gruff. Some of the guys in high school were still waiting for their voices to drop—they were that immature still. But Bellamy sounded like a man.
"Alright, I'm gonna keep this short, just like I do in the huddle," he said. "The expectations for this season were set pretty high, and we all knew it. So from the first day of practice onward, we've trained harder than ever before, and now we're playing better than ever before. It's no coincidence. We put in the work, and we're gettin' the results, and tomorrow night, we're gonna get you guys a state championship."
The crowd erupted with noise. Clarke clapped, already planning on being at the school on Sunday night to decorate the boys' lockers in celebration.
"Now I wanna see all of you at the game," Bellamy went on. "Not just the high schoolers, but you younger ones, too, alright?" He pointed to the middle schoolers. "'cause you guys are the future football players and the future cheerleaders and the future everything in this school. Someday you're gonna be the ones wearing these uniforms, so come on out, cheer us on, and watch us win."
More applause, more cheers. This time, some overtly loud sixth grade got a chant of Bellamy's name going, and the kids around him joined in. "Bellamy! Bellamy! Bellamy!"
He handed the mic back to Raven and said, "Wow," as he looked over at the kids in amazement. To them, he was like a celebrity. They all looked up to him so much.
Clarke wrapped her hands around his arm and gave it a proud squeeze. He really was a role model to those kids. He was good with them.
...
Crawling into bed, Clarke nestled against Bellamy, quickly figuring out that he wasn't at all asleep when he put his arm around her and pulled her in close. "You wanna cuddle, huh?" he said.
"Just for a couple minutes. Then I'm gonna need space." She would have cuddled with him all night if she could, but lately she just had to move around so much to try to get comfortable that it wasn't fair to him.
"I'll take what I can get," he said, his eyes staying shut.
She put her hand on his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath the fabric of his t-shirt. Although she wasn't sure whether she should ask about it or not, the words were on the tip of her tongue, so she let them out. "Why aren't you excited, Bellamy?" she asked quietly.
His expression didn't change, and his eyes still didn't open. "Just go to sleep," he said, even though that wasn't an answer. That wasn't an answer at all. In fact, he'd pretty much just ignored the whole question. Why would he do that? Unless . . .
Unless there was something he wasn't telling her.
...
All week, Clarke had to tread lightly when it came to the Hall of Fame topic. Whenever she mentioned it, Bellamy would just sort of grumble a few things and shut it down by changing the conversation completely. He didn't let her see his speech and even turned down her offers to practice it with her as a captive audience of one. He claimed he was just going to wing it when the time came, but when Clarke got up to pee in the middle of the night, he tended to be sitting up on his side of the bed, clicking away on the laptop.
Since he didn't want to talk about it a whole lot, she tried not to bring it up. Personally, she was still excited, though. People at the bar were buzzing about the event, and word had gotten around that she was Bellamy's girlfriend, so she got to brag him up a lot. It also gave her an excuse to go get a new dress. She ended up choosing a supremely comfortable maxi dress, dark blue from the waist down, white sequins on the short-sleeved top. It disguised her bump and gave her room to breathe and was probably the kind of dress she would have gravitated towards even if she hadn't been pregnant.
The night of the ceremony, she did her hair all fancy—styles were limited now that it was shorter, but she could pull it back in a low ponytail and keep some loose tendrils curled around her face. Bellamy told her she looked beautiful, and he even used the word glowing. Pregnancy glow was supposedly a real thing, so she happily took the compliment.
They drove over to his place to pick up his mom and his sister, and on the way to the school, Octavia dominated the conversation with complaints about how slutty and mean the cheerleading squad had become over the years. "I hate cheerleaders," she growled angrily before touching Clarke's shoulder and adding, "No offense."
"I always liked 'em," Bellamy said with a shrug.
"You just liked getting to touch their . . . pom poms," his sister claimed.
"Octavia!" Aurora hissed from the back seat.
"What?" Octavia said innocently. "It's true."
"It is," Clarke confirmed. "But he was always very supportive, too."
"That's right," Bellamy said. "I went to a couple of your competitions. I sat through state."
"Ten hours of your life you'll never get back," Clarke joked.
"Ah, that's okay." He reached over and grabbed her hand. He didn't have to say it out loud, but Clarke knew he'd enjoyed getting to watch her perform, being the one to cheer her on and support her. Being her cheerleader back in the day.
When they got to the school, the parking lot was already swarming with cars. Bellamy ended up having to parallel park in the bus loading/unloading zone.
"Looks like a lot of people showed up," his mom remarked.
"Great," he muttered as he got out of the car. He darted around to Clarke's side to help her out. Very gentlemanly.
"Thanks," she said, pulling her white shall tighter around her shoulders. It was chilly out there.
"God, it feels weird being back here," Octavia said as they headed up the sidewalk towards the activities door entrance.
"You only graduated a couple months ago," Bellamy pointed out. "How weird can it feel?"
"It feels like a different life," Octavia insisted.
"I get that," Clarke told her. A lot changed in between high school and college. A lot.
When they walked inside, Clarke was delighted to see that the whole cafeteria had been transformed into . . . like a banquet room or something. The tables didn't look like regular lunch tables anymore. They were decorated in fancy tablecloths and had pretty floral centerpieces. The lights had been dimmed, so it wasn't that usual severe overhead brightness, and the kitchen, which usually served whatever slop the federal government demanded, was now a buffet style walk-through line. Student council members, clad in the same stu-co jackets Clarke remembered wearing her junior and senior year, were serving the food, and it looked good. Unsurprisingly, Clarke had shown up with an appetite.
The best part, though, had to be the fact that there was basically a shrine to Bellamy on display up on the stage. Lots of his old football gear, newspaper clippings, and from a distance, Clarke was pretty sure she spotted a few of the drawings she'd done to decorate his locker. Aurora must have held onto all of those things. Surely she'd been the one to provide them, because Bellamy, with his downer attitude about this whole thing, wouldn't have done that. There was a video slideshow projected up behind his memorabilia, too, showing film of some of his greatest plays. Maybe that was the highlight reel he'd sent out to colleges. Clarke remembered Monty putting together something for him back then.
And of course, there in the center of it all was his jersey, dark green with a number seven on the back. Since the jerseys were worn year after year, they didn't typically have the player's last name on the back. But Bellamy's last name was on the back of this one now, and the whole thing was stretched out inside a thick glass frame, on display for all to see.
"Let's sit in the back," Bellamy suggested, already veering in that direction.
"Oh, I think we're supposed to sit up front," his mother said, pointing to a table front and center that said Blake on a little sign near the centerpiece. "See, they've got a table reserved for us."
It made sense, Clarke figured, to put the night's honored guest at the best table, but Bellamy didn't look too happy about it as they made their way there. It felt like it took forever just to get to their seats, because they kept getting stopped by people who wanted to congratulate him, and to congratulate Aurora by extension. Octavia started to look bored, but Clarke was totally in the moment. She loved having her arm linked with Bellamy's right now, getting to be the girl by his side tonight. It sort of felt like old times.
"You look so nice," he told her again after they'd finally managed to sit down.
"So do you," she said, adjusting his tie for him. "Very dapper." Bellamy didn't often wear a suit, but when he did . . . damn.
"Yeah, not bad for a rental, huh?" he said, loosening his tie again. He looked around and grabbed a student council kid who was walking around with a tray of drinks. "Hey, is there any alcohol tonight?" he asked.
"It's a school, Bellamy," his mother reminded him. "They can't serve alcohol."
"Dammit," he swore. Motioning to the glasses on the tray, he decided, "I'll take whatever that is then."
"Me, too," Clarke said.
"All of us," Aurora added.
The student council member set a glass down in front of all four of them, breathing a sigh of relief when his tray was suddenly a lot easier to balance and carry. Clarke took a sip, immediately noting the taste of ginger ale. "Mmm, works for me," she declared. This stuff had really helped her with her nausea during her first trimester.
"I was hoping for champagne at least," Octavia complained. When both her mother and her brother shot her a look, she tried to cover up her slip-up. "I mean, not really, because I'm underage," she said, "and clearly I've never had a drink before ever in my whole life."
"Oh, yeah, clearly," Bellamy muttered sarcastically.
Clarke gave his arm a little whack. It'd be pretty hypocritical for them to sit there and lecture Octavia about drinking in high school when they'd done plenty of that themselves. Especially him.
"Oh, look, there he is!" Octavia exclaimed suddenly, looking back over her shoulder. She waved excitedly towards the entrance.
"Who?" Bellamy asked. He must have spotted Lincoln around the same time Clarke did—the guy was hard to miss being so Hulk-like and all. "Oh, fantastic," he grumbled.
Octavia stood up and threw her arms around her boyfriend when he came to the table. "You made it!" she squealed.
"Of course," Lincoln said. "This sounded like a big deal." Before taking his seat, he smiled at his girlfriend's mom and greeted, "Hi, Aurora."
"Hi."
"Clarke," he acknowledged with a polite nod of his head. "Bellamy, congratulations on all of this. It's quite the achievement."
"Thanks," Bellamy said, taking a drink of his ginger ale.
Octavia was all excited for Lincoln to sit next to her. She made him scoot his chair closer and everything, probably because she wanted to show him off. Clarke couldn't really blame her for that. Lincoln was a gorgeous guy, and he looked like James Bond in his suit.
"My parents should be coming, too," Clarke said, somewhat disappointed that there were still two empty seats at their table. She'd kind of been hoping that her mom would have to sit somewhere else.
"Your parents?" Aurora echoed. "Both of them?"
"Well, my mom and her boyfriend," Clarke clarified. "My future stepdad." She hadn't actually invited them, but they'd heard about it, just like everyone else in town, and Kane promised her that he'd made Abby swear she would be on her best behavior.
"Oh, are they engaged?" Aurora asked. She took a drink, too, probably wishing that there was some alcohol on the premises now that she knew Clarke's mom would be showing up.
"Not yet," Clarke replied, "but they're gonna be." Hopefully having Kane here would help tonight. He got along with everyone.
"I can't believe your mom's actually coming," Bellamy said.
"I know. But she swears she'll be nice." Clarke had her fingers crossed for that. Sometimes her mom made passive-aggressive types of jabs, and those were just as annoying as the obvious kind.
"She'd better be nice," Octavia said, "otherwise she can sit at a different table."
"Oh, don't be silly," Aurora said to her daughter.
"No, I agree with her," Clarke piped up. "If she says so much as one mean thing to anyone, she's outta here." There was no reason for her to sit at the Blake table if she wasn't going to be nice to the Blakes. Simple as that. "God, I need some food," Clarke mumbled, looking over to the kitchen.
"I need booze," Bellamy mumbled, rubbing his forehead
"They're still sore," Clarke told him quietly.
"No, booze, not boobs."
"Oh. Oh, come on now," Clarke said, amazed that he was still being so grumpy about all of this. "This isn't so bad. It's all for you."
"Yeah, but I didn't ask for any of it."
She frowned, not sure how this speech of his was going to go tonight if he didn't manage to muster up a little enthusiasm.
Her stomach was still rumbling with hunger when her mother and Kane finally arrived and approached the table. "Hello there," her mom said, managing to sound perfectly pleasant. She was wearing a long gold dress that made her look like a trophy, and Kane was in a full-on tux.
"Abby," Aurora said with a smile—either it was a genuine one or she was one hell of a good actress. "Nice to see you."
"You, too, Aurora," Abby said. "Can we sit here?"
"Of course," Aurora said.
Kane pulled out Abby's chair for her and made sure he was seated before he took a seat himself. "Hello," he said.
"Hi," Octavia returned, eyeing him up and down. "Nice tux."
"Thank you," he said.
"Octavia, you look so much older than you used to," Clarke's mom noted.
"So do you," Octavia said with a smirk.
Aurora's eyes widened in alarm, and she whispered her daughter's name harshly.
Clarke couldn't help but laugh inwardly. Honestly, her mom, Bellamy's mom . . . they both looked great. But it was nice to see her mom get a taste of her own medicine for once. Octavia Blake had no filter, so if she wanted to fling a few insults as payback for everything Clarke's mom had said to Bellamy the other morning . . . well, that was fine.
Abby, to her credit, didn't act all offended. She kept a smile on her face and turned to Clarke. "Hi, sweetie," she said. "And it's the man of the hour. Congratulations, Bellamy. This is quite the athletic accomplishment."
"Yep," he agreed sullenly, "that's what everyone's been saying."
Just the way her mom phrased that, though . . . not just an accomplishment, but an athletic accomplishment. Like she wanted to differentiate between that kind of accomplishment and what in her mind was probably a 'real' one. Clarke didn't want to read too much into it, though, so she tried to keep the conversation moving when she said, "Um, Aurora, do you know Marcus Kane?"
"I do not," Aurora said. "But I know of him. Nice to meet you."
"You, too," he said. "You must be very proud of your son."
Aurora reached over and squeezed Bellamy's shoulder. "I sure am."
So am I, Clarke thought, wishing he would just be proud of himself tonight, too.
"And who's this?" her mom asked, gesturing to Lincoln.
"My boyfriend," Octavia replied. There was pride in her voice, too. "Lincoln Woods."
"Hi," Lincoln said, waving to the two new adults at their table.
"Hi." Abby waited until Lincoln and Kane had started up a conversation to turn to Clarke and quietly ask, "And how old is Lincoln?"
"Okay, I am not gossiping with you right now," Clarke whispered back. She was grateful when Bellamy suggested they go get something to eat, but before he could even stand up all the way, the student council sponsor told him to stay seated and said that they would bring out food for the entire table.
The food ended up tasting as good as it looked, which meant that there was no way it'd been cooked in the school cafeteria. It had to have been catered in from somewhere. Pasta, chicken parmesan, lasagna . . . the works. Clarke was thankful there was no seafood, because she couldn't indulge in that the way she could in this. And besides, Bellamy didn't care for seafood anyway.
She ate fast, faster than anyone else at the table, and decided not to be embarrassed about it since they all knew she was eating for two. She was still hungry when she was done, though, so she looked around, trying to attract the attention of a stu-co member, and wondered aloud, "Can I get another plate?" Surely as the girlfriend of tonight's Hall of Fame inductee, she could eat as much as she wanted.
There was no need for another plate, however, when Bellamy handed her his garlic bread and used his fork to slide his lasagna off of his plate and onto hers. "You spoil me," she said.
Her mom, of course, was eating slowly. Portion control and all that. She pretended to be all interested in the memorabilia on display, even though Clarke knew for a fact that she still thought football was way too dangerous and didn't condone it being played in schools. "Where'd they get all these things?" she asked.
"From me," Aurora said. "I've kept so much over the years. Someone reached out, asked me for photos and anything else I might have. Of course I had plenty."
What if my kid does sports? Clarke thought. With Finn's genetics, it was at least a possibility. She was going to have to make sure she held onto things, too, just in case she was ever the mom at an event like this.
"When did you start playing football, Bellamy?" Abby asked as she rearranged the food on her plate. "I forget."
"When I was really young," he answered vaguely.
"Five," his mom added. "They had a kindergarten team."
"How interesting," Abby said, even though the words she actually felt like saying were probably How dangerous. "And why'd you stop?"
Bellamy didn't say anything. In fact, the whole table fell silent.
Even I don't know the answer to that one, Clarke realized. Bellamy didn't seem to have a problem talking about his time away from Arkadia—hell, the other night, she'd gotten a half hour lesson in how to be a good gondolier—but when it came to his one and only year of college, he was more of a closed book.
"Abby, your dress is just beautiful," Aurora said, breaking the awkward silence. "Where'd you get it?"
"Oh, it's custom-made."
Aurora continued chatting about the dress, and it reminded Clarke of what Bellamy himself would do when he didn't want to talk about something. He'd just start talking about something else.
"Hey," she said to her boyfriend, forgetting about the food in front of her so she could direct all her attention to him. "Your speech is gonna be good. You have nothing to worry about. Are you winging it?"
"No," he said, pulling a folded piece of paper out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket. "I wrote something."
"Okay, then just remember, if the words on the page start to blend together, just stop, take a breath, shut your eyes for a minute if you have to. Then open them again."
"I'm not worried about the reading," he said, his eyes downcast, his brows creased tightly. He looked so tense. Clarke wanted to give him a massage or something to try to loosen him up, but this wasn't the place, and they didn't have the time, not when Bellamy's former football coach stepped up onto the stage, tapped the microphone and said, "Testing," and then waited for everyone to get seated and quiet down. It was starting.
"Thank you all for coming out tonight," the coach said. "The Hall of Fame committee asked me to introduce this year's honored inductee."
Bellamy let out a heavy sigh, so Clarke reached over and squeezed his hand just like he'd done to her in the car.
"For four years, Bellamy Blake was a young man I was privileged to coach, to watch grow and develop both as a player and as a person," the coach started in, reading off his notes. "Early on, I recognized his immense potential for the game, but even I didn't anticipate that he would end up being the finest athlete I've ever worked him. During his time as quarterback, Bellamy re-wrote all the record books. He holds more records than any other athlete in school history, including some that will be difficult for anyone to ever break. With his leadership, the Rocket football program achieved unprecedented success. He inspired his teammates, the fans, and even me, and his talent was so big that a college all the way down in central Florida took notice. It's no wonder every guy I coach wants to wear number seven." Glancing up, he smiled at Bellamy. "Please join me in welcoming to the podium, this year's Rocket Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, and its youngest inductee ever, Bellamy Blake."
Everyone clapped, and Clarke was pretty sure she heard a few whistles mixed in there, too. "Good luck," she told him as he got to his feet and walked up to the stage. His coach shook his hand, then stepped aside. Bellamy had to adjust the height of the microphone, and he said, "Thank you, Coach," as he took his own speech out again. He unfolded it, laid it out on the podium, and waited a few seconds before beginning. "Uh, when I first found out about all this, I wasn't really sure what to think," he admitted. Pausing, he looked out at the crowd, then mumbled, "I'm still not sure, to be honest."
Clarke thought back to the eighteen year old version of him, standing in front of people at the state pep rally. There had been an absolute sureness to him back then. He'd been sure that they were going to win the championship.
"It's, um . . . it's a huge honor," he said, nodding. "But the truth is, I'm not the best person for today's high school students to look up to. I didn't get good grades, and I banked my entire future on being able to throw a football. Looking back, I wish I'd made my academics a bigger priority."
Fair enough, Clarke thought, even though she hadn't expected him to bring that up. Looking back, there were things she wished she'd done differently, too.
"While I was fortunate enough to receive an athletic scholarship to the University of Central Florida, I failed to graduate from that or any other post-secondary institution," Bellamy said. He sounded so formal and so serious, leading her to suspect he'd revised this speech several times. "Therefore, I want to take this opportunity to emphasize to Arkadia's current student athletes that what they do off the football field, the basketball court, or the wrestling mat matters far more than events such as this one may lead you to believe."
The crowd started to become very quiet. Most likely, everyone had expected Bellamy to give a speech that was more . . . celebratory? Or at least less self-deprecating.
"This isn't to say that I'm not grateful for my experience as a Rocket football player," he clarified, reading off of his paper more fluently than Clarke had anticipated he'd be able to. Maybe he had gone ahead and practiced. Just not with her. "I enjoyed every second of every game I played, and my coaches and teammates were a second family to me. I will forever be grateful for the experiences we shared, for the lessons we all learned together, and for the memories we made."
But? Clarke thought. She sensed something else coming.
"If the Hall of Fame committee feels I am the right person to induct this year, then I will humbly accept the invitation," Bellamy said. "I understand that the statistics I generated as a four-year quarterback warrant such an inclusion and am very grateful for the recognition." He stopped for a moment, swallowed hard, looked over at his coach, then out at his mom, and said, "However, I must respectfully decline the committee's decision to retire my jersey."
An ominous buzzing started up amongst the crowd. Lots of shocked whispers and a few murmured questions about what exactly was going on here. Up on the side of the stage, the coach looked completely dumbfounded.
"Please understand that I mean no offense by this," Bellamy said, "but I would like to see the number seven worn for generations to come. Whether it's a quarterback, running back, or someone else entirely who dons that number, my sincere hope is that you wear it with pride, and that you give it a larger legacy than I did. Because while I produced stats for the record book, I did little else with my notoriety as a student athlete."
Clarke frowned, not understanding why he was being so hard on himself. The Athletic Hall of Fame was about . . . well, athletics. There was no requirement that had to have done anything other than produce some amazing victories for their school. And he had. He'd done that time and time again.
"My challenge to anyone who wears that jersey is to take it further than I did," he said, making brief eye contact with some of the current high schoolers in attendance. "Play in college if that's your dream. Make it to the NFL. Or even if you don't, at least make number seven a number that represents success in the classroom in addition to out on the football field. Give that number a reputation of helping people. Do with it the things I neglected to do. Be better than me. Be the kind of person whose jersey is retired not only because of the athlete you were, but because of the man you turned out to be."
Clarke's frown intensified. How could he . . . how could he even insinuate that he wasn't a good man? He'd done so much for her since he'd been back, and he'd always been such a good brother to Octavia and a good son to his mom.
"Thank you," was all Bellamy said to finish up. He stepped down off the stage to tepid applause. People clearly weren't sure how to react to that. And instead of returning to the table, he headed towards the entrance. Clarke didn't expect him to walk out, but that was exactly what he did.
"Well," her mom said, "that was unexpected."
Clarke wasn't sure whether she should just sit and wait for him to come back or go after him, see if she could figure out what was going on. But ultimately, her curiosity won out. "Excuse me," she said as politely as she could manage. She tried to be inconspicuous as the head of the Hall of Fame committee, an old man who held a plaque in his hand, took to the stage unsurely, and simply announced that Bellamy Blake was thereby inducted into the Rocket Hall of Fame. As Clarke was leaving the cafeteria, she noticed Aurora stepping up on stage to accept the plaque on her son's behalf.
When she got outside, Bellamy hadn't gone far. He was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, and he still looked as tense as he had when he'd been preparing to give that speech.
"Bellamy," she said. "What was that?"
With a flippant shrug, he replied, "My speech."
It really hadn't been a bad speech at all—for someone who didn't enjoy writing, it'd been pretty eloquent, actually—but it just seemed to have caught everyone off-guard. Including her. "Look, I get that you think you let people down," she said, "but . . ."
"No, Clarke, it's not about those people. I didn't owe them anything," he said, whirling to face her. "So I don't want anything back from them. I don't want this."
"But what your coach said was true," she protested. "You did inspire people. You did make the football team great. Retiring your jersey . . . it's just a way of celebrating all of that."
"Then why not celebrate Miller?" he suggested. "He was the first openly gay player in the history of this team. Or Zeke. I heard he runs a non-profit in Virginia now. That stuff's a hell of a lot more important than anything I did."
She shook her head, feeling like he was still missing the point. This wasn't some community service or diversity award. This was about recognizing talent, and Bellamy was one of the most talented athletes to ever compete for the Rockets. "I don't understand," she said, not sure why he would try to downplay his own success. "Is this about state?"
"No."
"Because I know that probably still stings . . ."
"It was a game, Clarke. Just a game," he cut in. "Not that big of a deal."
"Then if it's not that big of a deal, why not just let them retire your jersey?" she said, desperate to make sense of his point of view. "Why not just-"
"Because I don't deserve it," he blurted, saying the words as if it were a fact. She saw something so deep and recognizable in those dark eyes of his, so . . . profound, in a way. Regret. What he was feeling right now . . . it all came back to regret.
Clarke didn't know what to say to him, but she sort of expected that he'd be able to pull it together and go back inside for the remainder of the night. It didn't look like that was possible, though, when he handed her his keys, then turned and walked down the sidewalk. He walked past his car, but Clarke didn't know where he was going. Back to her place? His mom's? Or was he just going to wander around town all night? She wanted to ask him, but she doubted he even knew the answer. Right now, it seemed like all he wanted was to be left alone.
