The Veil

Chapter Nine

I managed to avoid my housemates after that night for three days. 

Jade had come in my room that first night just as I was thinking about getting into bed, rather than pacing up and down my room. 

She sat down on the end of the bed, watching me as I stood still in the middle of my room. 

"So, Tom finally told you he likes you." She smiled at me. 

"Liked." I pointed out distractedly. 

I'd been thinking about that part for a while before she'd come in. He said liked. So it was all in the past.

Even if my feelings surfaced again more than I'd liked, that didn't mean that anything could come from it. Fucking Liked. 

"Oh honey, no. Part of me wishes it was liked, but everyone can tell that boy likes you. He has for years. And you like him." She smiled at me, it was a small smile and it held a hint of sadness.  

I didn't deny it, she'd already know now. Jade knew things, she always had.

I'd always wondered if she'd somehow known about my parents, and that's why nobody seemed to ever mention parents.

She always seemed to know things about me that I didn't even notice about myself. 

She was younger than me, but she always seemed so much wiser. 

She was so perceptive and intuitive it was frightening sometimes, and hard to hide anything from her. 

"Jade, I'd buried those feelings. I was fine being his friend. I was happy with it. Seeing him with other girls had stopped bothering me as much. I didn't need to go out and fuck Ronan and get drunk. I could sit in my room watching a film with him like last night without thinking about him touching me. And now all these feelings are coming back. I don't know what I'm supposed to do?" I looked at her, eyes wide expecting Jade to hold all the answers. 

"So that's why you kept having sex with Ronan." She said, like things clicked into place for her. 

I tried to casually shrug at her, it probably didn't work. "Why didn't you tell me? Talk about it?" She asked me with sad eyes.

"I didn't want to admit it to myself Jade, I never thought he could like me, he never seemed to see me, I didn't want you to know I didn't want me to know." I shook my head, I couldn't get my thoughts straight. "Everything I think about him seems dramatic and pathetic Jade, the more I spent time with him the more I wanted to, the more my thoughts got out of control. The thought of telling you that I had feelings for someone that didn't feel the same way actually hurt." I started to pace again. 

"Oh lily." She sighed sadly.

"I came in here to explain myself. You didn't realise when you first moved in how much I saw you. How hurt you really were. You'd zone out for minutes at a time, and when you came back I could see your heart breaking. The circles under your eyes after you'd been screaming all night. You'd hardly eat anything, but you thought you were doing a good job of pretending to eat. And yes Andrew and Tom couldn't tell. But I could sweetie. Now I still don't know why, and I'm not about to ask you to go back there to tell me now." She took a deep breath, picking at her nails, a nervous habit of hers. 

"I love you, you know that. I knew straight away I was going to love you. And seeing you like you were wasn't fun for me. So when Tom came to me and told me he liked you, he sat for ages in my room, explaining how much he liked your eyes, and the way you said certain words. I panicked, all I could see was you moving out, fighting, losing you, Tom losing you, you losing Tom. And I know I shouldn't have looked at it like that." She sighed and I could see she was holding back tears. "I have Andrew and I believe in soulmates and I believe there is someone out there for everyone. So why I did something so selfish here I can't explain my actions away now. I couldn't even tell back then if you even liked him all I could see was the hurt. But I just wanted to warn him, explain to him that you weren't as okay as you seemed." Her voice had stayed calm and soothing throughout even if she did seem on the verge of tears.