I wish I had missed the first time that we kissed

'Cause you broke all of your promises

"Hey." It wasn't until a shadow appeared that Clare glanced up. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

Thickly, she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, embarrassed that Eli was seeing her like this. No doubt, he had overheard Owen and friends. Clare got the feeling a lot of people overheard.

She bit her lip as she watched him slide down next to her.

Hoarse and cracked from obvious reasons, she murmured a half hearted, "What are you doing here?"

"Thought you could use a friend." Eli only shrugged. "I'm here… to talk."

His offer was greeted by silence. There were so many things that could have been said, but Clare felt too ashamed to admit them.

Finally, she spoke. "When I was in junior high, my sister was raped."

Eyes closed tight, Clare heard Eli's breath seem to hitch in his chest for a short moment. She too had no idea how those words had come out of her mouth. And yet, they kept coming. "She tried to kill herself afterward."

With her eyes still clamped shut, she heard a pained, "Clare…" But no other words followed. Even Eli didn't know what to say.

Unsteadily, Clare let out a sigh "She was so young and a stranger just came and took… took it all away from her. But me?" She looked up to the ceiling, wondering if there was indeed a God up there after all, and speculating if He'd understand. "I don't know what I was thinking… he…" She needn't say who, both of them knew. "He just kept saying things and… pressuring… and I'm not sure it was exactly…" she staggered over the words awkwardly and discomfited, "consensual, but it's not like it was rape, either." Her mind pictured Darcy all those years ago. This was not the same thing.

Eli's eyes found hers, his voice uncharacteristically tentative. "Can I ask you a sort of personal question?"

Perversely, Clare almost felt the desire to laugh. No one had ever asked that question to her before. If anything, they thought what they wanted, or simply butted in and asked anyway. But Clare kept her laugh inward. It didn't feel like the right kind of funny.

"Shoot," she murmured, giving him the go ahead, faintly anxious of what he might say.

Eli looked her square in the eye. His tone wasn't accusing, but genuinely wondering. "Why are you with him?"

Clare blinked, not expecting that. Though as of late, a lot of things happened that she hadn't expected. Dropping her head slightly, Clare focused her eyes on the patterns of the tiled floor. Both wistful and melancholy, she thought back to the day she and Mark first met. How the two seemed to see past the high school labels and stereotyped rumors surrounding each.

Something about him thrilled her to the core.

When she first tutored him, she loved the way his eyebrows would crease in deep, pensive thought and the way, after weeks of longing to do so, she finally got up the nerve to reach out and smooth the wrinkles of his forehead with a gentle touch.

She loved the way his eyes sparkled when he grinned sheepishly, as if he were still little. Or even the way he would skip class to buy her flowers on their sixth month anniversary.

But then.

Then there were other complications. The pressures he put on her. His history of drugs. His track record of lying.

Clare bit her lip, not answering the question. "Did you hear about him and Bianca?"

Eli said nothing in response. Clare knew he had. She continued on anyways. "He thought—still thinks that I don't know. How he and Bianca… hooked up in the boiler room a few months back." Clare stared at the wall. "I told him I had to leave school for a doctor's appointment…and I did. But I had to come back later for a yearbook meeting. And I saw them all… giggly and rumpled clothes, coming up from the stairs that lead to the basement." Clare hugged her knees tighter to her chest. "I'm not stupid." Hearing her words in her own ears, she paused. "Though now, that fact seems open for debate."

Shaking his head, Eli tried to lock eyes but Clare remained transfixed with the some spot on the opposite wall. "Clare, you're not stupid. He is."

Scoffing, she didn't dare look at him. "I trusted him. I thought he could change." Intensely her voice seemed to raise an octave. How could she have been so stupid?

She still hugged her knees tight. "I loved him, Eli. I still do. Even after everything that's happened, even now when I practically just got harassed by his friends, I still love him. How can you think I'm not the stupid one?"

Carefully, Eli unraveled an arm that clutched her knees to her chest. He brought her hand into his. "Because," he stated simply, not explaining, though his eyes seemed to convey reason enough. "I just know." He gave her hand a gentle squeeze before placing it back on her knee. "You're not stupid."

Quiet enveloped the empty hallway by the time Clare finally got around to answering Eli's original question.

"I don't know why I'm with him." Never had she felt so open and vulnerable and exposed. "I don't know."

Who do you think you are

Running round leaving scars?

Collecting your jar of hearts

Tearing love apart?