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„What was my mad heart dreaming of?" - Sappho |from „Come Close"
•••
"Lara is looking good today." Scott Reed said, earning a few hums of approval from his friends and bringing Monty back from his earlier thoughts. He blinked a few times and nodded softly - his attention to the girl. Heat rose to his cheeks as her eyes met his.
Noticing him starring, she gave him a cold look and he lowered his gaze to the floor. The boy sighed loudly, turned around and opened his locker, only to slam it shut again shortly afterwards with full force. He earned a few confused stares from his friends but decided to ignore them, forget everything.
Montgomery then stormed past the crowd of students and towards the exit of the school, his fists and jaw clenched. Taking a last look back, his eyes met Lara's brown ones for a second before he entered the school building.
But the sudden sound of Tony's voice caught Lara's attention. „Not here, Montgomery de la Cruz! Come on."
„Did you touch her? I swear if -„
Tony's voice sounded directly after. „I didn't touch her, I was there for her - we talked. Nothing more!"
„So this is called talking now?" Montgomery questioned gruffly, unable to hide the furious glint in his eyes nor the unmistakable flaring of his nostrils. He didn't know himself what made him so angry - he didn't know this feeling. And he was afraid of it. „I thought you were a fag."
„Cut it out, Montgomery." Lara was curious when she heard Montgomery and Tony talking, so she followed them outside. But she couldn't let Montgomery insult Tony as a fag - she had to defend her friend Tony. Lara has always had a great sense of justice.
He turned around and his once hard and angry look softened, but not for long. „What are you doing out here?" Montgomery growled, and Lara was struck by just how gruff and gravelly his voice sounded. „I-I want to talk to you. You looked s-sad", she murmured and when he reacted with a bitter snort, she blanched, cheeks blushing a glowing bubblegum pink whilst her eyes flickered down to her feet as she shuffled them bashfully. Every bone in her body ached in sudden shame, thoughts racing through her mind a mile a minute as they yelled at her how foolish she was. „You looked sad?!" The voice in the back of her head shouted incredulously.
"I'll leave you two alone," Tony nodded to Lara and his eyes told her, "if you need help, I'm around." She mouthed a „thank you" to him.
„I'm not sad", Montgomery grunted after a few awkward minutes had passed. Out of the corner of his eyes, he'd seen the way she reacted to his rude dismissal. He had watched as she blushed, as she recoiled back on her heels, as she flinched, and then she wrapped her her arms around her midsection like they were the only thing still holding her together. It hurt him to hurt her, he realized. But rather than giving in to his anger like usual, he allowed his sorrow to rule him instead.
Lara hesitantly lifted her eyes from the ground. „W-Why," she whispered slowly. „Why did you follow him outside?"
„I didn't follow him," he sighed lowly, staring down at her for just a moment. A heavy hand ran down the side of his face and he sighed again, shoulders slumping as he seemed to accept the inevitable conversation soon to befall them.
„What were you guys talking about?" Her soft voice inquired cautiously. „Nothing important," he clenched his jaw and fisted his hands, shaking his head as if adamantly trying to agree with the words spewing past his lips. „Nothing important at all."
„I'm..," she started after a few more minutes of awkward silence had passed. „I'm sorry for ignoring your calls and messages."
Montgomery shrugged, busying his gaze with trying to identify all of the different colors visible directly ahead of him. Dark green, olive green. Indigo, ultramarine. Vermillion brown, brown ochre, chocolate brown.
Beautiful chocolate brown - the exact same shade as as Lara's eyes. His heart accelerated in his chest and he shook his head rapidly, attempting to liken the color to something ugly, something not so beautiful. „Already forgotten," he answered passively, uninterestedly, as if he had grown so bored of the conversation that any inflection in tone proved far more effort than he felt was worth it.
„Y-yeah but," Lara stuttered timidly, feeling as if he wanted her anywhere else but there. „I'm really sorry," she admitted.
„Look," he rounded on her suddenly, nostrils flaring and eyes narrowed as he drew himself to full heigh to tower over her small frame menacingly. Lara shrunk back, curled into herself, and stared up at him with wide eyes. „IT was not my intention," he spat, pointing a harsh finger in her direction. „I was not asked to lose myself in your beautiful brown eyes, to think of you every day, when I wake up you are the first thing I think of and when I fall asleep you are the last." He laughed then, but it wasn't the carefree, boyish chuckle. Rather, it was an angry, hopeless sort of sound that made Lara's heart stutter in her chest.
„I'm scared as hell to want you - you know?," he scoffed, rolling his eyes in heavenward as if the mere notion of the word equates to nothing short of utter ridiculousness. „But here I am, wanting you anyway." His eyes flashed at her with a menacing glint.
There he stood, right before her eyes, her twin flame in flesh, crossing each other's paths at the wrong time, neither was ready for the other.
