Smolder

By Kukaburry

Chapter 2 - Welcome Reality

"Please, please, please tell me this is a nightmare," Arie told herself for the umpteenth time. She had trapped herself in the loo to avoid crying in public. "What is wrong with me? I should be happy for them," she hiccuped between sobs. "Stupid Fred. Why is he such an idiot?"

"Arie?" She heard Angelina's voice echo in the room. "Are you okay?"

For several moments Arie stopped breathing, attempting to compose her voice. "Yeah, I think I ate something weird."

"Alright, people are looking for you. I just wanted to make sure you didn't fall in." Arie gave a weak giggle before Angie left.

She sat on the toilet for several more minutes composing herself and drying stray tears. She knew that it was her own fault for getting her expectations up, but she couldn't help feeling completely thrown under the bus. Why did Fred not tell her about George's upcoming proposal? When did he plan on proposing to her? What was in their future?

After ridding herself of her final sobs, she recommenced her celebration and pretended that nothing had happened to her. Even when the couple came up to chat with her, she smiled brightly and gave them warm hugs. "Wow that was some proposal!" She said in an almost-too-cheerful voice.

"I know!" Becky gushed, staring at her finger admiringly. "Just like George, so unexpected," she teased with a small smirk.

"Yeah, fancy that," Arie replied stonily.

"I bet you knew that was going to happen. Fred probably told you everything," Becky hinted with a sage wink.

"Well, not exactly," she replied falteringly. "I'm so happy for you. Oh, sorry I think my mom is looking for me. See you two later," she quickly lied.

Ten minutes later Arie could feel her anger bubbling over so she made her excuses and apparated home. The corners of the house seemed darker than usual so she dug out her take-home work from the previous day and sat down at the table and decoded runes. It took her twenty minutes to decode the first two paragraphs, but the third one proved to be a bit of a pain.

"Damnit! I fucking hate these Runes. Why don't they use the same symbols!" Arie roared and pounded her fist against the table.

"Did I come at a bad time?"

Arie whipped around and yelped. "Merlin, Fred, you nearly scared my knickers off."

A wolfish grin spread across his face. "There's still time for that."

"Har har," she growled in response. "What are you doing here? You're not going to stay over are you? Your parents would kill you."

"I just wanted to see if you were okay. You left without saying goodbye to anyone."

Guilt crept into her stomach as she watched Fred's concerned eyes. "I'm okay. It was just a lot of stress I guess."

One of his eyebrows kicked up in surprise. "Stress? About what?" His innocent question caused turmoil to boil in Arie's head.

"Fred, when do you feel like settling down?" The question erupted from her mouth before she could think about the consequences.

A slow whistle escaped his lips. "That's what this is about?" His resounding sigh seemed to fill the whole kitchen. "Arie, you know I love you." He stopped for a second, looking at her for an answer he couldn't give.

"But?"

"But I don't know when I'll be ready. There's a lot of things I want to get done before I settle down. I was thinking about doing graduate school in wizarding law. You know that'll take me four or five years."

Arie's jaw opened. "What the hell? You never told me this." Fred cast his eyes down and stared at the table. "So you're saying that I have to wait for you for five years?"

Fred shrugged. "That's the plan."

"Have you even thought about what I might feel about this?"

"No. Why would I have? I think about you when I plan things that involve you. This doesn't."

Fresh, angry tears stung Arie's eyes. "So you're saying that my opinion doesn't matter for anything else you do?" Her burning gaze caused Fred to turn a light shade of red. "You're saying that you haven't even thought about what a future with me might be like? You didn't think about how I would feel having to wait five more years to get married?"

"I don't understand why this is a big deal for you. You're not the thing my life revolves around."

Now it was Arie's turn to blush. She knew she had become dependent on Fred over the past three years when it came to planning her future. "Well, can we move in together in the meantime?"

"I don't think that would be a good idea, Arie. You distract me a lot and I'd have to have a lot of study time. Plus, I'd probably go across the continent anyways and it's doesn't make sense for you to go all the way with me."

"I can't believe this," Arie spat, staring at Fred in disbelief. Did he even realize how mean he sounded right then? "So you really mean this? I'm going to be living with my parents for five more years while you gallop across the world?"

Fred shrugged again and Arie wanted to throw a chair at his head. "Look, I really don't know what my future looks like. Sometimes your temper freaks me out and I wonder whether you'd be the same with kids."

"Fred, why the fuck are you bringing this up now? Why are you still dating me, then?"

"We've talked about it before, Arie," he replied with a steady glare.

"Yeah, but I didn't think it was a big deal!"

"So you don't listen to anything I say unless it's a big deal?"

"Damnitl, you know what I meant." Trying to not prove that Fred was correct about her hot-headedness, Arie took several steadying breaths. They stared at each other quietly for a moment. "Are you sure you love me?"

Arie couldn't believe she had asked it, and according to the look on Fred's face, neither could he. "I, well...", he sat there and kneaded his brow for a moment. "I love you most of the time." He said very nonchalantly then, after a thoughtful pause, added. "Sometimes I think you love me more than I love you."

"What?" She stared at him in wide-eyed shock.

"You asked me, didn't you? That's how I feel."

Arie felt close to exploding into a thousand fire crackers right then. "Let's sleep on this and see how we feel in the morning. Maybe our emotions are getting the better of us."

"Okay," Fred replied slowly, watching Arie's every move from across the table. "We'll talk about it tomorrow." He reached forward then quickly pulled his hand back. He stood up, grim smile etched into his face, and walked out of the kitchen door without another word.

Every nerve in Arie's body was on fire. How could this have happened? One minute she was happy and the next her life was falling apart around her. Was that it? Did her life really involve work and Fred? She stared at herself in the mirror and the person staring at back at her looked ten years older. "How did you let this happen? Why did you have to get so fucking clingy? It's your fault you idiot."

She checked herself quickly, realizing her temper was rearing its ugly head yet again. "Maybe Fred is right about my temper," she mused. "There's plenty wrong with him, the idiot bastard. He never has time for me for one thing." A black hole of complete and utter nothingness popped into her mind. Was this the end? "Are we breaking up?" The whisper nearly shattered the frail silence.

Tears of self-pity poured down her cheeks as she dragged herself into her room and locked the door. She couldn't remember the last time she had cried herself to sleep and she dreaded experiencing it again. An exhausted slumber overtook her at last.

Dawn startled Arie awake and she realized she had fallen asleep in her bridesmaid dress. "Shit, mom is going to kill me." She stumbled into the bathroom and hurriedly unzipped the dress and took a long, relaxing shower. "I wonder if Fred's coming over...," she stopped mid-thought and remembered their fight last night. "Oh Merlin, it wasn't a dream." A fresh wave of sadness heaved from her stomach and she leaned against the wall for support. Her mind spun over the conversation again like a bad merry-go-round until her heart ached. All of the fun she and Fred used to have seemed a millennia ago.

Every fiber of her being knew there was something wrong. Something had to change or else everything they had fought for would be lost. It was a hard truth to face, but she knew it was an inevitable conversation. All Arie felt in that moment was that she would die if she had to give up Fred; her heart would crumble into a thousand pieces and sink away into oblivion.

She wanted to talk to someone about it, but she knew they would judge her. How could she lose someone as great as Fred? She knew they would think she had done something wrong, so she kept it to herself and began thinking about her temper instead. Where had it come from and why was it so rash? It was difficult for her to think about it for too long because she kept circling back to the fight with Fred. That singular thought consumed her for the entire day. She refused to go downstairs for lunch in case she broke down crying like a ninny. As she sat against her bed, she thought about the first words Fred would say 'We need to talk'. She ran it through her mind over and over, thinking about what she would say when those words came out.

After an hour of laying in her bed, she heard her mother yell upstairs several times, but the sound was muffled. "What?" She bellowed, not lifting her head from the pillow. Again the sound was too muffled for her to make out what her mother was yelling. She wearily dragged herself to the door and cracked it open far enough to wedge her forehead through. "What?" She yelled once again.

She heard Diane click her tongue and sigh. "I said Fred is here!"

Hey guys, I'm back. I'm sure you can tell from this story how my life is going. Luckily this is my last year at university and life is looking up. I'm going to get my own place next year and get a full-time job. Woohoo! I've been spending the past couple of months losing unnecessary weight and it's been so liberating. I know I sound droll right now, but I promise my chipperness is slowly coming back. I was not born to be unhappy. :D