They Could Care Less

35: The Moon and the Stars

"What do you have in here? Bricks?" Jackson questioned as he weighed her bag in his hand and closed the door.

"A camera and books," Thea answered and smiled.

"What books? An entire seven books long fantasy collection in Italian and English?" Jackson joked and kicked his shoes off by the door.

"In English and French," Thea answered seriously and he turned around with raised eyebrows.

"Okay," he answered, clearly unsure what else to say, and Thea opened the cat travel bag to let Amelia out. She jumped out before Thea could react and ran off to discover.

"She seems comfortable," she concluded which was followed by the sound of something shattering against the floor. "Oh no," Thea shortly let out as a pit of anxiety grew inside of her. She ran to where the sound came from.

"Amelia!" Thea exclaimed and bent down by the cat and what used to be a porcelain vase. "I'm so sorry, I'll pay you back! I promise..." Thea trailed off and looked up.

"Oh you're still here, I thought you left," Jackson bitterly said with a stern voice.

"Still here," Ethan repeated and looked down at Thea. Ethan had come rushing from his room to see what had caused the sound and he held a few t-shirts in his hand which gave Thea a vague idea of what was happening.

"I'll get something to clean it up with," Jackson said quietly, mostly to himself, before he left. Thea looked down and picked Amelia off the floor. She put her on the couch and started to examine her for injuries.

"You're a drama queen, do you know that? The first thing you do is knock over a vase probably worth than my life," Thea whispered when she found no injuries and scratched her along the side of her face.

"It actually only cost ten dollars," Ethan corrected Thea and Thea looked up, but avoided eye contact. "We found it on a flea market, bought it from a nice elderly couple." he explained shortly before Jackson came back with a broom and a dustpan. "I'm gonna continue packing," Ethan excused himself out of the room.

"All clean again, but be careful, there might still be some small pieces," Jackson said and stood up.

"Thanks, and again, I'm sorry about the vase," Thea apologized, but Jackson only shook his head with a smile that told Thea it was okay.

"Anything else you need?" he asked when he came back from throwing the shattered porcelain pieces away.

"Can you do me a favor?" Thea asked, relieved that she no longer had to sit quietly by herself after Amelia had once again run off to play Indiana Jones.

"Does it involve the cat?"

"No, I still have my laptop and other books in my dorm. Can you go and get them for me?" Thea kindly asked and fished out her keys from her pocket.

"I'll do it, but why aren't you doing it?" he asked and looked at Thea's keys in his hand with much interest.

"I gave Christina a key to my dorm," Thea confessed in a quiet mumble and Jackson slowly looked up.

"Isn't that illegal or at least against campus policy?" he asked and Thea felt worried for a second that he would tell someone.

"Not if they don't know..." Thea tried to wriggle herself out of the situation.

"You're a bloody smooth criminal, Smith," he smirked before he turned around and left, clearly forgetting about Ethan. Thea waited until she heard the door open and close before she slowly walked to Ethan's room. The door was open, but she didn't just want to barge into his room. She had been there at least a hundred times before, and there were times where she would be more at-home than Ethan. Yet she felt like a stranger as she stood the door.  She concluded that to knock on the open door was the best option. Ethan looked up from his suitcase and saw Thea by the door.