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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN depth of despair
———CONNOR! ( CAMP HALF BLOOD, EARLY JUNE )
CONNOR WAS AN IDIOT.
No, not just any type of idiot. A supreme idiot. An absolute cockroach, the scum of Earth. Only that big of an idiot could pull whatever he had just had. The type of idiots that were just really, really dumb, the type of idiots that people hated. He was sure he had zero brain cells to have just done what he did, and even more brain cells to have not pulled the slightest amount of regret in his chest even at the thought of his actions. All he felt was burning and light, like a cloud, and he was pretty sure if he closed his eyes he could taste vanilla on his lips still. His face had been red since the second he had gotten out of that forest, and it had stayed red when they had found Percy and Annabeth, who had looked suspiciously worried. His face had still been red when he arrived at Cabin Eleven, to the point where Levi, a recent arrival to Camp Half Blood who hadn't been claimed yet, had compared the colour of Connor's face to a giant tomato — it had died down after that, but it was still red enough that Travis had wondered if his younger brother was catching some sort of fever, but Connor had assured him the weather was just really hot today.
He had to have caught some fever, he was certain, to have actually kissed her.
He had kissed her and now he couldn't even look at her. Connor genuinely believed the gods were all conspiring against him at this point — Aphrodite, Morpheus, whoever the hell the god or goddess of bad decisions was...even his father. They all had to be. He was certain of it. It was okay however, because she wouldn't look at him either. Like at all. He was pretty sure the entire time they had been searching for Percy and Annabeth, and even after Chiron had sent them to bed when the pair had been found, she had been a complete brick. Like a wall of ice. Walking up to her cabin even she had been complete ice, and totally out of it. Connor had waited across the U of the area where the cabins was, on the porch of the Hermes cabin watching her from far away until she went in, making sure a harpie didn't eat her as it was past curfew.
If a harpie did eat her, it might have solved some of Connor's problems.
(Or created more for him, possibly).
His lips felt cold now. Like ice, now that she was gone. Freezing ice, completely empty, void of any feeling. He was sure once he came down from whatever idiotic high he was on, the regret with this particular bad decision would be large. Connor made bad decisions often, and it was a perk of being the son of Hermes that he didn't regret his decisions very often, but this one was probably going to stick with him for long. This was different, it wasn't picking the camp store lock, or hot wiring the camp SUV, or even throwing the golden mango into Cabin Ten — this was an Aphrodite style decision, one had committed to quite poorly.
