Sip by Sip

Chapter Fifty-Two: In Silence

    Gemma didn't think he'd show.

    But he did.

    And she wasn't prepared. He tilted his head in amusement as she went bug-eyed and spit her coffee back into her cup.

    "Sorry," She apologized, "Not appealing, I know."

    He laughed, "That's fine."

    "So . . . " Her voice trailed off. "How badly did I screw things up?"

    "Pretty bad." He admitted.

    She sighed, her eyes traveling to the table. "I'm-"

    "Don't apologize. Please."

    "And why the hell not? What aspect of this isn't my fault?" She stood quickly, running a hand through her mane of hair. "I told you not to tell her, I gave you the lollipop, I started all of this! God I'm such an idiot . . . "

    He couldn't deny any of that, as much as he wanted to. So he said what he knew would at least help her smile. "It could be worse."

    She took a seat again, and forced her smile away. "Nope. It really couldn't."

    "Gemma . . . It wasn't all your fault."

    She laughed a cold, hard, laugh. "How so?"

    "You didn't ruin everything, Gemma. You just gave it the final push. We were . . . done, for a while. What we once had was long gone by the time you came around." And as he said it, he finally believed it. God, how had he been so oblivious? That night, the night when he realized that she stayed, he should've figured out that she had stayed to grab at the last of what they had. He should have known it was her last attempt to save them.

    She stared at him, frozen, her eyes watery, trying to figure out if he was speaking the truth. "Are you . . . "

    "Lying? No. We just, kinda avoided it, you know? We kept up the act." His shoulders slumped, "We tried to make it last. But it couldn't."

    They left it at that, she didn't press further, he didn't elaborate. They spent the rest of their morning in silence, they spent the rest of the morning suffocating under the complications in silence.