Who Are You? - A Matthew Espinosa Fanfiction

Chapter 17

CLAIRE'S POV:
Leave it to me to run into Shawn when I was an emotional mess. I didn't want to fight with him for a few reasons. 1. We were in public and that would end up with tons of posts on social media. 2. I was too exhausted from the events from yesterday and today to be able to come up with good enough comebacks. And 3. I honestly didn't know if I had any fight in me left to stand up for myself. I finally willed myself to look up at Shawn and immediately saw the concern in his eyes. I didn't think he really cared though and I didn't want to burden anyone else with my problems. I quickly moved over to one side of the hallway, leaning against the wall before sliding down into a sitting position. I was still crying, but I didn't care. I just needed to be away from Nash. I made sure to allow Shawn enough room to pass through and ignore me like he had for the past week, but instead of doing that, he came down and sat next to me, a semi-comfortable and only a slightly awkward silence falling over us.

"Look," I started, breaking the silence after a minute or so. "I'm fine, so you can leave if you want. I won't blame you if you do."

I continued to wipe away the tears still relentlessly falling down my face. I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself down and pull myself together. While the deep breaths may have stopped the tears, I was still sadly unsuccessful in pulling myself together.

"Hey, I'm sitting here because I want to be here," Shawn said. I could sense the sincerity in his voice. He looked into my eyes the entire time he spoke. "I guess things just got out of hand really quickly and no one knew how to react."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Out of hand is an understatement. Everything's just a mess. I thought that Magcon was supposed to be fun."

"Well if it helps, I'm sorry. Sorry that I upset you. It was rude, what I said, and you had every right to be upset with me for insulting your best friend."

I smiled. "That sounded extremely rehearsed," I said, giggling.

"That's because it was," Shawn answered, chuckling. "I've been wanting to apologize for the past four days, but I wanted my apology to be perfect."

"Well you're forgiven," I say, meaning it. "and while we're apologizing, I'm sorry for blowing up at you. I could have handled the situation a lot better than I did."

"Same here. But you're forgiven as well," Shawn paused for a moment. "Now if you don't mind me asking, why were you so upset right before you ran into me?"

I sighed. "Well...let's just say the Claire bomb may have exploded again. But it was completely necessary this time, I swear."

Shawn laughed. "Well what caused you to explode and who ended up being your poor unassuming victim?"

"Well you know what happened to Allison yesterday, right?"

Shawn nodded.

"Well before she was attacked, we kind of had misunderstanding. I was FaceTiming her, and Nash said some really bad things to her. I was shocked by what he said and so I didn't say anything, which caused Als to believe everything he said and cry. She cried because she thought I agreed with everything that Nash said about her. I made my best friend CRY, Shawn! Now, Matt's all overprotective of her and says that I just need to give her space. But I was texting her this morning and while I was sitting, staring at my phone, hoping she would answer, Nash called her an attention-seeking bitch. So, I blew up and left."

"Wow," Shawn said. "That's...a lot of problems. Your life sucks, not going to lie."

I couldn't help but laugh at this. "You have absolutely no idea."

Shawn stood up before turning to face me again. He held out his hand and I grabbed it, allowing him to easily pull me to my feet.

"Well now that we're on good terms again," Shawn began while scratching the back of his neck nervously. "I was wondering if you'd maybe like to get some breakfast together? I mean, it might help you take your mind off of things."