rearranging hearts

chapter five

". . . hope we meet again someday, smiling like before . . ."

—Time,
The Rose

»»————-　♡　————-««

"One and two and—Jesus fucking Christ, Kayla. Are you an elephant?"

"No?"

"Then stop landing like one." Jade bites. "Let's run through it again."

Cool metal cuts into the skin of Sang's thighs. She's sitting in the front row of the stands in her cheer uniform—God knows why, because she won't be going anywhere near the field for another two weeks—and the early October chill is starting to creep up her spine.

The football team are running through their warm-up drills, and another group is across from them, a sea of blue and white. It's one of the prep schools from South Charleston, she thinks. Students are just starting to filter into the arena. Below where she sits on the bleachers, North and Silas are running laps.

She's been trying her hardest not to look at them, but when Silas grins up at her, she's smiling back before she even realizes it.

(It's funny, almost—all of these walls, all of these invisible boundaries that only she can see, they're starting to crumble from just the weight of a lopsided smile and the way that he says her name.)

Her knees knock together as the wind picks up. Rocky had given her his varsity jacket again and it smells, distantly, of dried sweat and too much cologne and the memory of a floral perfume. He'd draped it over her shoulders in the parking lot where his friends could see. They didn't talk for the entire ride.

There was this rhyme that people used to say in primary school—cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater. She wonders, briefly, if Rocky's mouth is stained orange beneath the skin.

"Sang!" Metal clangs as people climb the stairs. The crowds are thicker now, and she sits up a little straighter as she scans their faces. None stand out. A blur of brown, of blond, and the gradient of skin that spills across it.

On her left, a body falls onto the bench. The smell of sandalwood and amber hangs in the air between them.

"New cologne?"

Gabriel laughs. "God, you're like a fucking bloodhound."

"You really know how to sweet talk a girl."

His arm comes up to wrap around her shoulders, denim-clad and warm. He's got on a jean jacket and a ribbed orange tank top, cut low enough that she can make out the tattoo that spills across his collar. Black ink runs lengthwise along the bone, in the shape of a wing.

She stiffens at the touch, works the tip of her tongue between her teeth to keep from pulling away.

(Sometimes it still scares her: that kindness, and all of the ways it can be wielded.)

"It was a compliment," he says, grinning.

Sang hums. On the field, the cheerleaders are done practicing. They're starting up their first routine, and a Gwen Stefani song is playing from the speakers. It's one that she had helped choreograph. Sang holds no particular love towards cheerleading, but a part of her wishes that she was there, even still.

"I didn't take you for the school spirit type."

Gabriel scoffs. "Of course I am. Go Panthers!"

"Tigers," she corrects.