false god

chapter 15

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Travis pulled his hand away as though she'd burned him. He looked ready to argue, ready to scream, ready to snarl. Instead, he just licked his lips, eyes narrowed.

"Fine."

Taylor motioned for the couch. He sat, obediently. Staring at her.

At that moment, she could see every emotion in his expression. She could see herself through his eyes and what he must have thought the entire past month and a half. She felt his pain when he'd spoken to her so clearly, so precisely that she wondered if she was a certifiable fool for not seeing it. Every time he looked at her, he thought she was dating someone else. The same sorry feelings that had been bubbling inside of her was exactly what he'd been feeling this entire time.

It was awful.

She had so many things to say. She wished she'd thought this out more. She wished that she'd taken the time to write a plan, a list of points to begin with.

She could have attacked this as though a research paper. She could have had points to her big arguments that backed it up so that it all made sense. She could examine it like she did with any big journal lead.

'Just in, two college kids complete idiots? Proof in the text.'

As she stood there, mouth agape and Travis just waiting, his expression tightly shuttered, she had nothing to say. Or, more accurately, her entire body was fighting to say everything at once, so her throat was clogged with nothing at all.

"I'm not dating Joe."

That seemed like a good place to begin.

"I know."

"I mean, I don't know where you got the idea, but I'm not-," Whatever Travis had just said was not what she'd been expecting. Which was the cause of her rambling, because she'd been expecting a shocked 'what' or a 'but I thought-'. Instead...huh?

"What?"

"I said that I know."

Taylor licked her lips, scrutinizing him, "Back up a second."

"There isn't much to back up to. We've barely begun," Travis replied in a low, near angry voice.

"I'm just...but didn't you-,"

"No."

"Oh."

Taylor sat on the barstool. She crossed her arms, unsure where to go next.

"I mean, I guess I did think that," Travis said after a long second, when it seemed clear that Taylor wasn't going to let him leave yet, "Back...when you two were in here. I saw you two hug. Heard you say something like you'll always care for him. So yeah, I guess I did think so, for a bit."

"The door." The moment when Joe thought he'd heard something flashed back with painful clarity, "That was you."

"And, cool, you know, whatever," Travis waved a hand, "This was always just an in-between thing, I guess. Us. I was your...experiment."

The words sounded bitter when he said it. Taylor couldn't breathe properly.

"But you said you don't anymore?"

"I didn't want to hate Joe. I went out to hang out with him. Let it go. Saw him kissing another girl in an Instagram post the day that we went to the hot tub and pool room. Called him up, furious. I mean, how dare he do that to you?"