Last Names | Tyrus/Muffy

Part 17

TJ's POV

I spring onto my feet the instant I see the tears start coming down. I've never once seen Buffy cry—ever. I always thought she was invincible, like the equivalent of a cement barricade, but I guess even those can crack if hit hard enough. But Buffy isn't just cracked; she's crumbling like sand, and all I can do is catch her as she falls forward, throwing her arms around me, and hope no pieces break off. Her sobbing is paired with heaves for breath, which are loud in my ear as she hugs me like I'm the only thing holding her upright, which, honestly, I might be. It feels like my arms are lifting all of her weight, plus some extra emotional stuff. I've never hugged Buffy before, and I didn't expect we'd be close enough as to ever exceed a friendly high five, but it appears we've passed the uncomfortable new sibling line and dropped right into the kind of siblings who carry each others burdens to ease the load, and I don't mind it at all.

"It's okay," I say, not sure what else to do. "Colton's a jerk who doesn't deserve you."

She lets me go, regaining her own balance. Her eye makeup smudges as she wipes the tears from her eyes.

"This isn't about Colton," she huffs.

I assumed this must be about him. She just got home from a date he never showed up to. The only other person she would've talked to before me was— Oh.

"It's Marty?" I ask.

Rather than replying, she trudges past me and plummets down on the couch, curling up in a ball with her head on the pillow. Since she's taking up the whole sofa, I sit on the chair across from her.

"TJ, how did everything get so complicated?" she whines.

"Well, what did you do?" I question.

"I told him to stop caring about me!" she wails. "I'm a fucking idiot!"

"Why did you tell him to do that?"

"Didn't you hear me? Because I'm a fucking idiot."

"Okay, yeah, but what were the circumstances?"

She takes a moment of silence, and when she speaks again, her voice is much quieter. "I like him."

"So you told him to stop caring about you," I restate. "That makes sense."

Buffy sits up to look at me straight, crying, "Why are you not taking me seriously?"

"I am," I tell her. "I'm just not worried. Buffy, Marty's liked you since he met you. You yelling at him once isn't going to make those feelings disappear."

"You didn't hear the way I spoke to him—"

"You didn't hear the way he spoke to me," I interrupt, "about you. He really likes you."

She lets that sink in. I know when it has, because her frown lifts into a tiny smile, but then it fades again almost instantaneously.

"I really like him," she mutters. "I screwed everything up. I didn't want him to see me lookig weak, so I pushed him away, and now he's probably mad at me. I don't know how he could forgive me."

I stand up and go over to sit down next to her. I stretch out my arm to rub her shoulder, and she lets her head fall on me, accepting my gesture to comfort her. It's curious how we went from enemies to friends in just over a day. To think, if we hadn't found out we were related, we'd probably still be hating each other indefinitely.

She finishes her sniffling and straightens up, out from my arm.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I never even asked you how your date went."

"Don't worry about it, I reply. "It was good."

I debate whether or not to tell her about the guys from our school and what they said about Cyrus and I, but I decide now is not the time for her to have more things to think about. 

"But you seem like you need to vent right now more than I need to talk," I say.

Buffy smiles and lifts her knees up to her chest, resting her feet so that her toes hang off the edge of the chesterfield. 

"TJ, are you just pretending to care about me, or are you being genuine?" she asks. "Because before yesterday, I would've loved if you were upset. The only difference now is that we're related, but even that is hardly true. I mean, we don't even have the same last name."

I don't really need to think it over, but, for her sake, I act as though I don't have my reason planned out perfectly in my head.

"Sure, we have different last names, but you're still my sister."

"Half-sister," Buffy corrects me.

She's not one to be sappy, nor is she one to let people in easily, so I'm not offended by her quick redirection of my words.

"Close enough," I say with a shrug.

A/N: Another really short one, just because I have bigger plans for the rest of the story, and I felt like this needed to be its own part. Anyway, I love y'all. Thanks for reading. Question of the day: what's something you're really passionate about, belief-wise?