CASUAL AFFAIR; brendon urie

Chapter Fifty-Nine

I slipped my hands into the cold water of the sink I'd filled up, and cupped them.

"Florrie. It's Brendon. I mean, you probably guessed as much..."

I bent my head low, and closed my eyes.

"She told me to call you ... Now, and ... God things got messed up, didn't they?"

I raised my hands and splashed the water onto my face.

"And I'm sorry for that. I am so sorry. I ... I don't blame you if you don't accept my apology or if you'll even listen to my message because you have every right not to. But..."

I rubbed my hands over my face, scrubbing furiously, gasping.

"I am so selfish, because I want ... I want you so much."

I scooped up another handful.

A laugh. "God, what a stupid bastard I am."

I opened my eyes, and straightened, pulling out the plug and watching the water swirl away as droplets ran down my cheeks, the tip of my nose, clung to my eyelashes.

"I'll be at the ridge, tomorrow evening, at six." a pause, the sound of a hand rubbing across a jaw, a soft sigh. "Whatever you decide ... You're the best thing that ever happened to me. I just wanted you to know that."

Click.

I blinked, my eyes big and dark as I looked in the mirror. I looked tired. Really tired. Dark rings threatened the skin around my eyes and my blinks were long and heavy.

I'd listened to Brendon's message at least five or six times, before dragging myself into the bathroom, stripping to my underwear and doing my best to get rid of the past twenty four hours from my face by scrubbing it clean. Particularly the past seven or eight.

With a soft huff, I turned my back on my reflection and shuffled into my bedroom, taking off my bra, and finding an old, baggy t-shirt Jessa had brought me back from a date she went on a couple of years back to a Planetarium (a cute cartoon of all the planets wearing party hats and smiling with the words 'how do you throw a party in space? You planet!'). I didn't figure I was going to get much sleep, but it was worth a shot, so I crawled under the covers and curled into a ball.

I was so confused and conflicted about Brendon and ... The call had, and hadn't, helped any.

I screwed my eyes shut tightly and hugged the sheets to my chest as my mind flitted fitfully. I thought of Brendon, linking hands with me in the woods, smiling ruefully. Of him writing his name across my collarbone with his finger, after the fourth time we'd slept together. Of him laughing at a lame joke I told him when we were eating Thai after an intense Mario Kart and Wii Sports session. Of the morning after his birthday. And the night before that. Of the way he'd held me after Dallon had punched him, and I'd lost Jessa's trust.

And I thought of the way he'd sat with Sarah, holding her hand when she told me they were back together and whatever we'd had was over. The way he'd let her body curl into him at the party, and he'd smiled at her. Even if it had all been a facade.

I closed my eyes tighter, until colorful shapes danced across my eyelids, and willed my mind to stop.

The sunlight coming through my blinds the next day wasn't the soft, gold rays of a morning, but harsher, brighter - midday sun.

I groaned, my eyes fluttering open, stretching my tightly-coiled, stiff limbs - clearly I hadn't budged much from the foetal position during my sleep - and twisting to look at my alarm clock.

2:16? I'd slept away for under ten hours? That was unexpected, to say the least. But a relatively pleasant surprise.

Two o'clock ... Oh shit.

In four hours' time, Brendon would be out on the ridge. Waiting for a girl he wasn't sure would show.

Would I show? I sat up and pressed my face into my hands. The best way to describe my mind right then would be like the practice of pulling off daisy petals with the chime of 'he loves me, he loves me not' - 'I'll show up and see him, I'll not'. But the more petals I yanked off to reach a decision, more and more appeared to replace them.

No matter how long I tried to drag it out for, getting ready only took my just over half an hour - dragging a brush through my hair and pining it up in a French twist, before sighing, and taking it back out, getting into a black vest, an old ripped up pair of skinny jeans and my slouchy lilac cardigan patterned with cartoonish bones in the places of where the real ones were, putting on lip gloss, which I rubbed off again, and then applied again.

I leant my butt against my kitchen counter, and folded my arms, staying like that, before my stomach groaned and I contemplated the hunt for something to eat, before my eyes fell on a tin-foil wrapped rectangle a few centimetres away from me. It was the last brownie, left from a plate of them Breezy brought over a couple of days ago, toting Amelie with her - which I knew she'd done to cheer me up and distract me, and which had worked, as my niece soon had all my attention for a couple of hours with her new guise as a mermaid - and I chewed my lip. It was a sticky chocolate one, and I'd already brushed my teeth, but my stomach growled impatiently. What the hey, teeth can always be rebrushed.

And it was all still only 3:09 when I was done with all that.

So I tidied. I tidied places that I usually just thought 'nah ... It'll be alright' on a normal clean. I reorganised all the drawers in my studio, and re-read the last e-mail Gerard had sent me about the next set of panels. I thought about sitting down and attempting them, but ... My mind was restless enough to clean, but far too scatty to produce anything decent on paper.

4:01.

I got rid of all the old polish on my nails and applied a basic shimmery green-y blue.

I made my toenails match.

Of course 5:49 rolled around eventually. And of course it's pretty obvious that I'd scoop up my keys, and leave my apartment, get in the car and set off to the ridge.

Of course.

But as a girl that trash talked the great work that is Romeo and Juliet, who poked fun at the awful clichéd romance plotlines and inevitable endings of Rom-Com movies and Nicholas Sparks novels ... I really, really wanted my cliché Rom-Com ending.

ooh. ooh. flo gonna get her man. ooh.

-Beth