The Fragile Ordinary(31)

I flushed at the way she smirked as she said it, as though she enjoyed the fact that I had less experience with boys than she did. She probably did enjoy that fact. For Steph, life was one big competition. Even with her friends. “Actually I don’t,” I said, pleased when her eyes rounded in shock.

“What? Since when?”

“Since you were too drunk at Jordan’s party to see me kissing his friend Ethan.”

“No way!”

“Yes way.” Vicki nodded, surprising me. She shrugged as I gave her a questioning look. “Ethan told us that night. He said you two had been snogging and then you just disappeared. At the time I was...well... I was a bit drunk and into Jordan Ass Hall. Then you never mentioned it so...” Irritation shone in my best friend’s eyes.

I could only assume she was mad at me for not confiding in her.

Again.

Any other day I’d stew over it and try to think of ways to make it up to her. However, I had bigger problems today.

“It wasn’t a big deal.” I started to walk away, the corridor emptying as everyone else hurried to get home or to extracurricular activities.

“It was your first kiss, Comet. How is that not a big deal?” Steph frowned.

“Because it wasn’t.” And sadly, it really hadn’t been.

As we strode outside I glanced around, preparing myself for Tobias and his friends to jump out and start mocking me. Instead there were just pupils strolling with friends like I was.

No one paid attention to me.

The tightness in my chest, however, didn’t ease.

“Comet, you’re not even listening. Earth to Comet!”

I threw Steph an exasperated look, surprising both of them when I said, “I have to go, okay. Talk later.”

For once I didn’t care if my behavior would have them talking about me behind my back. All I cared about was getting home in one piece.

Yet, when I did cross the threshold of my home, my anxiety didn’t lessen.

Instead I thought of the personal social media pages I used infrequently. What if Tobias had posted something on there?

I threw my bag on the floor of my bedroom and dived for my laptop. Heart pounding in my chest, I started scouring every social media site I could think of. Finally, after discovering Tobias hadn’t even been on his own social media pages for months, despite being tagged on Instagram and Facebook by a lot of my classmates in photos from parties, I relaxed marginally.

But only marginally.

Because even if Tobias didn’t share my poetry with anyone else, he had still seen it. This boy I’d spent some time with but knew little of had seen deep into my soul. And he didn’t seem to care or understand how big of a deal that was.

Tears pricked my eyes at the injustice of it. I rummaged through my backpack for the offending notebook, then flopped down on my bed and cracked it open, preparing myself for the torment of rereading words I’d written, now knowing someone else had read them, too.

As I read poems that ranged from silly, inconsequential meanderings to ones of longing and loneliness, the tears began to spill over. These were my thoughts. Mine. No one else’s.

How dare he steal into my thoughts and take them from me!

And what an idiot I was for giving him the opportunity! I was so mad at myself for not realizing my notebook was missing, for leaving it for him to find. I was probably angrier at me than at him!

Frustration burned through my tears, and as the wet blur cleared from my vision I was stopped in my ragey inner protests at the sight of a Post-it note on one of the poems. Scrawled in messy, boyish writing were the words, “This is my favorite. TK.”

It deflated me entirely.

Confused me.

Bewildered me.

And worse...softened me.

I peeled the Post-it note off the poem and reread it.

For the longest, loneliest time,

I thought it was me, not you.

So I tried to see it in rhyme,

Work out what was real and true.

For years there have been secrets,

Hidden in those distant eyes.

Truths that are your weakness

Because you want to keep them lies.

It doesn’t make me feel better,

Knowing you’re so messed up.

I thought it would free me of your fetters,

But here I am still locked up.

Some would say I need empathy,

For the pain you’ve had to endure.

But for you I’ve run out of sympathy,

You’re my villain...and there is no cure.

If Tobias was telling the truth, and this poem really did speak to him in some way, I was curious. Curiouser than curious. This was one of my most revealing poems about the state of my relationship with my mum. Did he understand that? It was possible, considering his less than warm interaction with his mum the other night at Stevie’s. Or did he relate to the poem because of his mysterious, apparently-not-in-the-picture dad? Or did the idea of the poem have relevance to another aspect of his life?

Just knowing my words had touched him changed my perspective of Tobias and made me wish I’d had the courage to ask him all my nosy questions, after all.

That was, if he was being honest with me.

But why was he being honest with me?

He’d admitted himself that he didn’t know me.

Had my poetry, plus our short time together, made him feel like he could trust me?