nevertheless~

part 33

HARDIN'S POV

"Will you sit with me?", I ask, my eyes searching for her, and I wish I had seen the energy I see in them all the time, but I am unlucky at this moment.

"You want me to sit with you?"

"Yes, fuck yes, I do.", I answer, taking her hands in mine.

"Right, Lemme tell Ichor, he can have my seat for the rest of the flight, I'll come back", she tells me and her hands, slip from mine as she goes back to her seat.

I take my own and that's when I see Tessa's laptop kept open, and my heart flies as I see on it, a picture of me and her, as her wallpaper.

What am I doing? What are you doing Hardin? You cannot let this be Sam and You. Tessa isn't Sam. Tessa is not Sam. She won't hurt me.

"Hey, I lost you?", her voice breaks my thoughts and I come back to life.

"No, no. I'm here. I just...you have us as your wallpaper on your laptop", I point at the flat screen of that MacBook.

"Yeah, I do.", she shuts the laptop.

"Why?"

"Why do you have your brothers and yours?"

"You don't have me for the same reasons as I have my brother, we don't even know each other that well. I don't even do anything for you?"

"You do more by not doing in anything, Hardin"

"I'm a fool", I whisper to myself.

"I know you are", she agrees to it.

"I'm sorry"

"You should be. I was just trying to hug you and you pulled back and made this a whole thing. If you only spoke to me about it normally, just have told me that Tessa, I feel a little intimidated by the promotion standing in the way of our relationship, I would've understood you. This is why I am with you?", she says.

"How are you like this? How do you understand everyone?", I ask her, completely consumed by her generosity.

"When you've spent your life being misunderstood by a mother, who took all my actions wrong, and thought that everything I did out of care, was me being a rebel child. That helps. It teaches you how to be there for the other person."

"But how long can you do that? What If you run out?", I ask her.

"You don't? Has the world run out of people, no it hasn't? So, as long as there are people, there will be screw up's they make, and for every screw up we should be kinder to the other person. Every fuck up should be either forgiven or forgotten. So as long as people are there, there will be kindness. It's not like a...limited inventory of something, that will deplete slowly. It's endless".

"Shit", I can't believe she thinks that way.

"You don't think that way?"

"I do, that's very surprising. You and I, think the same way", I look to her side and she just nods her head, still annoyed but agreeable.

"Are you gonna talk to me?".

"We're talking", she answers me.

"Not in that way. You're still...cold to me", she opens a word document

"Well, I am mad at you", she answers back, a little too fast for my heart.

"Ahh, even now?"

"Well, did this get solved?"

"Alright, my dear Tess, my lovely girlfriend, I am sorry. This was my fault. I was being a dick and I fucked up. I was insecure that we'd fuck up this promotion and our relationship, which I didn't want to happen but, in a way where I was trying to protect us, I put us in the fire and I am sorry. I should've considered everything and not just myself", I hold her hand and try to explain my side of the story.