Shameless, Reckless Love (GirlxGirl)

Part 3: Chapter 10

A full week went by.

Eden wanders the halls of her school, waiting for her first class to begin, but when the sound of the heavy entrance doors loudly burst open, Eden is snatched from her tranquil moment. She looks in the direction of the ruckus and sees a boy running toward her. As he approaches closer, Eden notices that it's Mitchell but he doesn't seem to notice her and almost runs straight past her.

"Mitch?" Eden yells to him. Mitchell abruptly stops dead in his tracks at the sound of her voice. He turns around and walks back in Eden's direction. His breathing is unevenly paced and his face is flushed with a bright rose color. "What the hell is wrong with you this morning?" Eden asks him.

Then out of nowhere, a girl begins storming in through the same entrance Mitchell came in from. Eden squints her eyes and sees that it's Lib who is angrily walking toward them. Or more specifically, walking toward Mitchell. Eden turns to look at Mitchell's guilty covered face.

"What the hell did you do?" Eden asks him suspiciously. Mitchell just presses his lips together tightly. Eden could sense the trouble as Lib inched closer and closer to where they stood.

"Mitchell!" Lib bellows, and students begin to stop and stare. Within no time at all, Lib is practically in Mitchell's face. "University of Chicago? Atwood? MIT? Northwestern! Knox! They're all blowin' up in my fucking inbox!" Lib begins to shout. Eden can barely understand what's going on, but all she can make out is that Lib was listing out every college/university she ever talked about. Eden looks toward Mitchell again. The guilt in his face did not subside. What was going on? What did Mitchell get himself into? "You wanna explain yourself?" Lib then continues.

Mitchell taps his loose hands on his sides. He looked at Eden, then at the floor, and then back at Lib. It was obvious he screwed up. Regret began to build the frame of his face.

"I –" he slowly begins. "I thought I was helping you out. I thought I could be your push into actually doing something about your future." Mitchell explains patiently.

"You thought, you thought, you thought!" Lib mocks. "That's bullshit! You weren't thinking at all!"

"I was thinking of you." Mitchell passionately defends. Then, unexpectedly, Lib makes a breathy chuckle. It definitely was a stab at Mitchell. He was being sincere, and here Lib was taking it as a joke.

"Wow... You are so..." Lib says, but can't finish her sentence. She paces around herself a bit, trying to figure out which words to put together, but Mitchell was getting impatient.

"What?" he asks, aggressively. "Go ahead, say it! I'm so what?"

"You really just don't understand, do you?" Lib complains. "You are not my fucking father!" Mitchell's anger retreats after this. "You're not in charge of my future! You're not in charge of the decisions I make, and you're sure as shit not in charge of if I go to college!" she finishes.

Sweat beads had formed on Lib's forehead as she turned to walk away from Mitchell and the crowd of bored bystanders. As she left, a trail of flames could have followed her. Mitchell was left confused but also disappointed.

After witnessing the scene, Eden steps closer to Mitchell.

"Mitch, please tell me you didn't actually..." But Eden's words trail off. She knew that everything she heard wasn't a daydream. She couldn't succeed in being in denial about it either.

"Of course I did." Mitchell answers anyway. Eden shakes her head in despair. She knew Mitchell wanted to help encourage Lib into applying for colleges in any way he could, but Eden never wanted to believe he'd go so far and literally apply for her.