kent

tony stark

“So uhh… why have you been hanging out with Clark so much lately?” Rebecca asks, examining her fingernails. Her fingers are long and delicate, painted in an intricate floral design. Rebecca has always been one for perfection, and who knows how long she has labored to get the polish to fit to her imagination. She looks up at Carly, eyes precise and wide, examining her for the answer.

Carly frowns. She doesn’t feel like she has spent an excessive amount of time with Clark, and she vaguely feels accused of something. “Have I been spending a lot of time with him?”

Rebecca shrugs. “It used to be just you and me. Remember that?”

Carly nods. She doesn’t feel that they have been drifting apart. She still considers Rebecca her best friend, even when Taylor hovers around her. She could answer any question about Rebecca in a heartbeat without a sliver of doubt. She could tell you exactly why she hated the color of her eyes or why her favorite Beatles’s song is “Ain’t She Sweet?” Carly could tell you that Rebecca wishes she could write with her left hand in order to get that true ambidexterity that all dancers strive for. She could tell you when Rebecca’s birthday is, down to the exact minute.

So maybe it isn’t the two of them, but Carly feels that they have breathed together a thousand unbreakable oaths, so many that the bond could persist with a divide of a million galaxies. Still, the question plays at her thoughts, had she been somehow blind to the drift? Had she been slipping away from Rebecca and towards Clark? She worries further, is the same gravitational pull acting on her, dragging her towards the night, towards Dynamo and Genesis?

“It is still you and me,” Carly insists. “I couldn’t mimic this friendship with anyone. I swear it.” Because there is no one else like Rebecca and no one else like Carly, and so how could the relationship be replicated? And if it’s unique, it warrants speciality. “I’m not replacing you, consciously or subconsciously. I promise.”

Her dark eyes, lined with eyelashes like loose threads, focus on Carly’s face. “I know. You don’t need to tell me. I know.” She looks away for a little bit, letting her fingers run over the smoothness of her nails. “I just miss you, that’s all. I mean, I shouldn’t miss you. I see you all the time, but I feel like… I don’t know.”

Maybe her best friend sense are tingling, and Rebecca realizes that Carly is harboring some secret from her. Maybe she’s aware that she is confiding in someone else. Carly wishes that she has a good reason for her actions, but the truth is she hadn’t the intention to reveal herself to anyone. It had just happened, and there was nothing she could do to take it back. At the time she felt that she had to buddy up with Clark now, or else he might expose her to the rest of the world. Now, she realizes that as far as company goes, Clark isn’t a bad option. In fact, not bad at all.

Carly opens her mouth, ready to spill everything. Apologize. Tell her the tales of the night and the city. Beg for their friendship to continue without a rut, because now isn’t it too late to be socially acceptable? Carly isn’t quite ready to be torn from her best friend just yet. It is one thing to lose someone to death, another entirely to lose someone because of oneself. Carly grimaces, the memory of Daniel’s anguish and loss seared into the back of her eyelids, and she doesn’t think she can bear even a fraction of that pain. Rebecca is hers; she can’t leave.

“Sit with Clark and I,” she blurts, like Rebecca doesn’t have a social status to maintain. It is bad enough that she is weighed down by Carly; can she afford to tag along with Clark as well?

She quirks her head for a split second, and Carly feels bad for judging her. Most people aren’t as shallow as she perceives them to be. But it’s easy to make that mistake when the surface is the only thing that is visible, but Carly learns that the human construction of depth is nearly infinite.