"Severa, why do you keep doing that?" Kjelle asks for the umpteenth time. We're wandering the mall again, holding our valued Bath and Body Works scents in the cute blue and white bags. You could say I'm walking way too close to Kjelle, but I requested that she wear the Cucumber Melon for me, and I just wanna bask in the new scent flowing from Kjelle's neck.
That's not the reason Kjelle is asking me that, though. It's because I'm giving her these come-hither eyes. Wait, that's not the right word...what do I really mean? I blush at Kjelle's words and shake my head in hopes of clearing that look from my red eyes. "You just smell so good," I reply. It doesn't answer her question at all, but I don't know what else to say. Whatever is going on, I'm not going to stop it, my wildly beating heart be damned. "Perfect summer scent."
Kjelle's cheeks flush at my compliment and she moves to grab my hand, but the words, "Hey, Kjelle," stop her. We both look up at the source of those words, me ready to insult the person who dares to interrupt us and our day together, but Kjelle sputters nonsense when we see that it's Laurent, her admirer.
"Laurent?!" I screech. I want to scream. He occasionally hung around Kjelle and me in high school in hopes that she'd look at him as more than a study partner. I hated him for that. Hated him even more when I found out that he got into Boston University with Kjelle too. I also hated the fact that he has the same tell-tale red hair as me and my mom. No, we're not related. God, I'd die if we were.
I keep using the word hate in the past tense. Scratch that, I still hate him. Sometimes when Kjelle and I are talking on the phone over the school year, her in her luxurious dorm room while my roommate sexiled me so I had to talk in the stairwell, she told me how they've grown closer together. I clenched my phone and gritted my teeth as she regaled me with his "adorable" attempts to win her over with flowers and dumb bath bombs. I always kept the bitterness out of my voice though. I mean, I practically asked for it—I refused to talk about myself in any significant manner and pressed Kjelle about her life instead. How could I talk about myself? I was spending our first year apart struggling with classes and homesickness. I didn't have too many friends, except for this boy named Inigo, who tried to charm me but failed. It wasn't his charms that got to me anyway—it was his profound honesty and affection. We found solace in each other, mostly because we were both dealing with pains that ran deeper than we wanted to think. He was still grieving over his mother's death, and I couldn't deal with the distance I've made with mine.
But my mom wasn't the focal point of my homesickness.
It was Kjelle.
Obviously, I didn't want her to know just how much I was missing her, so I let her talk about dumb-as-shit Laurent and her blossoming social life while I was left with mascara-streaked tears running down my face. I was glad when things with Laurent didn't pan out.
Yet here we are, watching the way his eyes glitter for her. Will hers ever glitter for me?
"W...what?" Sumia's gray eyes look at me in confusion, her face cast in shadow. Her hand has left my cheek. I hate myself immediately. I need her radiance back. How could I do this to her?
I wring my hands together, my fingers prunes. Shouldn't we get out of this hot spring? The effects have long expired. I stutter, trying to find a way to tell her gently. But there's no way. Instead, I just reach for her hand, knowing that I don't deserve to feel her hand in mine. She pulls it away. I sigh. "I just…" I begin.
"Why…?" Sumia is slowly receding into herself. She gets like that sometimes, mostly when we were on the equestrian team and Sumia was having a hard time getting the hang of things. Seeing a fifteen-year-old girl crumble then broke my heart.
But I'm breaking hers now. "Why did you love him?" Sumia finishes, surprising me.
I furrow my eyebrows. "For the exact same reason you do. He's kind, compassionate, funny, supportive…" I trail off, scared to continue. I fold my arms, trying to keep myself from falling apart.
"But Cordelia...you didn't say anything."
"Sumia, how could I? He loved you, and I...well, loved your happiness more than mine."
Tears spring in her eyes as Sumia cups my face. "I would've backed off."
I hang my head, my hair making a red iron curtain between us. "I know," I mumble, "I didn't want you to."
"But," my best friend protests, "you knew him longer." Not that much longer. Chrom and I met when I did that science camp the summer before seventh grade. I was the youngest there, because I was branded a "genius," and Chrom was doing research with his mom in the History department. I was crying in the university courtyard when Chrom found me and offered to play a game of Dominoes with me. Since then, I'd clung to him.
I realized quickly during our time together that he was way out of my league. Even for a thirteen-year-old, he was hounded by the pretty fifteen-year-old girls in the science camp. His numerous dates that summer often meant leaving me alone at night, wondering where he was.
Don't get me wrong, Chrom isn't that kind of person to leave someone hanging. It just felt that way, because whenever I asked him to hang out, he'd already be taken, off to get ice cream or whatever rich girls offered him.
It was during one of those times that I realized that he'd never look at me. It was impossible for the summer crown boy of the University of Chicago to look at me like that. So, I stuck with what I knew: protecting him from the girls who didn't really love him either, and keeping my feelings buried. Chrom was—and is still—too sweet for his own good, and let himself be swept away. I needed to keep him grounded. It was my only use.
I tried comforting myself that summer by thinking that this was only temporary, that I'd never see him again anyway. It didn't work. I only fell deeper, so I was relieved when camp ended and I came back home to Newark, New Jersey.
I thought I was free, but just when the pain in my heart had come to a dull ache, I found him in my Geometry class freshman year. I played the cat-and-mouse game with him, until halfway through we found out we had the same lunch period. He hung out with his crew of Frederick, Stahl, and Vaike, whereas I sat alone because Sumia had her lunch later than mine, and I didn't want to sit with anyone else. Chrom invited me to sit with them, to rekindle our friendship.
All it did was rekindle my love and fierce protection of him.
"Cordelia," Sumia says softly, bringing me out of my reverie. Only then do I notice the tears on my cheeks. "I'm so sorry." Hearing the sadness in her voice, sadness for me, unleashes the years of my pent-up self-infliction. I break down in sobs and fall into Sumia's arms.
