Note: Based on the Tumblr prompt request: "I don't want your apology."
this is how it ends
"I don't want your apology."
The words greet Elizabeth the moment she steps into Henry's apartment.
She stops, key still in the lock.
Henry stands at the kitchen sink, his back to her. His sweatshirt sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, and he's scrubbing a pot so vigorously it's like he's trying to wear a hole in it.
"Good," she says. She pulls the key from the lock, closes the door, and returns to facing Henry. "What exactly am I supposed to be apologising for?"
She can't remember doing anything wrong, certainly nothing so bad as to merit his attack on the kitchenware.
The scrubbing gets louder, faster; his tone bitterer. "All this time, I thought you were actually interested in me."
She frowns. "What are you talking about?"
He chucks the scrubbing brush into the bottom of the pot, turns around and leans back against the side; his hands wrap over the edge, either bracing him or holding him back.
"I read your final paper."
She waits, gaze level on his gaze. When he doesn't elaborate, she widens her eyes. "And…?"
His nostrils flare; knuckles whiten. "They're my thoughts, Elizabeth!"
She fights the urge to shrink back, and with the key still folded in her fist, she crosses her arms. "So you're mad at me because I listened to you?"
"You used me to get an A!"
This time she does shrink back, the words like a blow to the chest leaving her body concave.
She's taken down her walls for him, rebuilt them brick by brick to include him, and he thinks it was all an act, a game she played to win a grade?
She swallows, her throat so tight it hurts.
"You know what?" she says. "I am sorry. … I'm sorry I was stupid enough to fall in love with someone who thinks so little of me."
The following day, when she tells her professor she wants to withdraw from the course or, failing that, take an incomplete, he will tell her it's too late.
She will receive the A she never wanted, in a course she only took because the boy she met at the library said he was a Religious Studies major and she wanted to impress him on their first date.