Song: The Light Behind Your Eyes - My Chemical Romance
AN; The first set of Italics in Victoria's PoV are a flashback to the previous night in the pool, an extension of the events in the last chapter.
Victoria's PoV
I could still feel his lips moulded perfectly against my own. The sparks danced against my tongue as the sweet taste of Roger Taylor entered my mouth, his body fitting perfectly against mine. His arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me so tightly I thought he would never let go. Not that I wanted to. In my dream, I didn't push him away; my hands knotted in his shaggy, damp hair, pulling him closer, creating that beautiful friction we both craved as the pool water lapped around our connected bodies.
In real life, I had pulled away. The kiss had lasted mere seconds, if not a shorter period, a drunken mistake, nothing more. I'd had the sense to pull away, back slowly out of the pool, and dash to the safety of my room, bolting the door behind me. I hadn't seen anymore of Roger that night, he didn't chase after me as he would have done if we were in one of those romance movies; he had probably stayed in the pool, alone, angrily brooding over his rejection and the sharp words I had spoken.
"Roger, we can't do this" I had whispered softly, my heart breaking, because the one thing I wanted was the one thing I could never have.
It hurt that I had rejected him. I wanted nothing more than for us to be those loving, carefree teenagers we once were, before all that rockstar bullshit had kicked in. But we weren't anymore. In that moment, I was so aware that those lips, the ones I had been dreaming of for so many years, were the same lips that had kissed another girl when they were supposed to be mine.
And that made me realise, how little we knew each other anymore, how little either of us had healed from the wounds of the past. We had never talked about that stuff, we had never gotten closure. He had never even properly apologised for that. We weren't in that place anymore. It would take so much longer if we ever did.
Even as I scrambled out of the pool, almost tripping on the steel steps in my haste, I regretted my decision, to pull away. I wanted nothing more than to be in his arms, for things to be as they had once been. I wanted nothing more than to naively believe that this time, everything would be okay, everything would work out, that we would work out, that we had matured enough in our years apart to be around each other and not harm the other. But the incident in the pool had proven the opposite; neither of us could be trusted to control our complex passions and emotions around the other. The first time we had been alone, truly alone, without arguing, and one of us had made a move. We weren't taking things slow, we weren't thinking about things rationally, such as how we would navigate our relationship around Lola, we were both thinking about what we had wanted in that moment, with no regard for the future.
And it terrified me. I had promised myself that I would never fall for him again, that I would never let myself be vulnerable around him. He had been in my life again for less than a week, and already, we had grown so close, laughing and joking in the pool as though no time had passed at all. After we had finished splashing at each other childishly, we had spent hours on end talking, about everything and nothing all at once. I felt so comfortable around him; I told him stuff I had never told another living soul, not even John, and in that moment, I hadn't even felt nervous about doing so because he made me feel so comfortable. I told him about the stretch marks, the dysmorphia I had developed over the tiny scar on my lower abdomen caused by my c-section. An innocent conversation, yet it had lead to the dreaded kiss.
"Show it to me" Roger whispered softly, the previously mischievous twinkle in his eyes replaced by sincerity, and sorrow over the self-hatred I had just described. My eyes had teared over, as they often did when I thought about the way my body used to look in comparison to how it did now, but I didn't let them fall in front of him.
