The Arrangement

Chapter Five

As it turns out I am a massive hypocrite, I thought that when Hugo came to me after the training on the weekend, that I would be open and honest with my thoughts and feelings on the situation even if the whole thing made me wildly nervous. Since before I can remember, nervousness and anxiety has never been something I experienced, and yet this situation with Hugo has begun to fill me with that very thing.

Now, this prolonged stretch of silence doesn't just come from the constant and totally coincidental distance that has pressed between us, one that comes from this pattern of missing each other in times we would normally draw together. He never came over on the weekend, whether him and the other guys wanted to keep having fun together or he wasn't ready to face me I'll never know.

Or maybe I will, if I was the one brave enough in this situation to go and find him, confront him about what's happening between us. I can't tell you when the last time we have spent this long away from each other was, possibly not since Freshman year. It's not just hanging out, but our text thread has dried out too.

I keep staring at it, willing a message to pop up and but me out of this limbo of misery that I'm not helping, but every time I type out a message it feels insignificant. Like it might ruin us instead of pulling us back together and I don't know if I can sit and smile in a world that doesn't contain Hugo in every degree.

"This is why you don't kiss your friends Claude!" Bentley teases over the phone, the clanging of dinner echoes in the background. "Because then things get weird and lines blur, the two of you aren't just normal best friends either, you practically live inside each other's skin"

"And that's what makes me feel like I should have seen it coming" I groan, stretched out across my bed, I fight to pull the tights Rosie gave me into a comfortable spot. "I won't deny that I've thought about what would happen if I kissed him before, but it was never a- can't wait to kind of thing. I was just curious and now I know what it's like and I can't decide if I have been blind for months now or if we were both too intoxicated to have a good recollection"

My phone slides out of my hand, Rosie presses it against her ear and smiles at me. Deviousness glows in blue eyes, dark lips stretch across her cheeks, and she abandons my boots pressed against her stomach with laces undone.

"Bent, I just have to inform you that she has been swinging between never speaking about it again and that maybe the kiss was fate, multiple times a day over the course of the last week" Rosie's nodding at whatever he responds with, I push up onto one elbow and reach for my phone in the other which becomes remarkably difficult with my legs stretched across her thighs.

"-Totally agree, the two of them have probably dreamed about it for years and now are running scared like little chickens, I've contemplated locking them in a room together"

"Give me back the phone!" I hiss, cheeks burning red at her assessment. I might not have seen Hugo, because I have been busy and but it's not because I'm avoiding him. "Rosie!"

"Claudie is demanding the phone back" Rosie sighs, "But hopefully I will see you over the new year and we can figure out the winner of our bet"

My eyes narrow in her direction as the phone slides back into my grip, Rosie's red hair curtains around her face as she focuses her attention back onto my shoes. "The two of you are evil!" I groan into the phone, focused on Rosie's blue eyes.

"You are the most decisive person I have ever met in every part of your life and yet, one kiss with Hugo and you have been entirely unravelled. Why don't you just speak to him? Considering what he did to you that night, he probably thinks he's the one who's screwed it up and is waiting for you to come back"