Saturday night quickly became all Monica could think about. All night, all day, into the next day and into the next, she quickly realised what it was like to truly like someone and even more so, care for someone. Thinking about Robin made it difficult to focus on mundane things. She'd leave bread in the toaster too long; she'd get up to complete a task, think of Robin and end up sitting back down because she couldn't retrace the root of her thoughts. Whatever she was going through, it was all-encompassing.
Being with Reed Wilson junior year for three months didn't compare to this, neither did her month-long fling Billy Hargrove or even the childhood friend with nice hair and kind eyes that she barely spared a glance in the school hallway most days. This feeling warming her chest and pumping dopamine and endorphins through her body was a tonic.
Her legs still tingled from the touch of Robin's skin just above her odd socks when the plaid PJs rolled up at the bottom, and her hair still ached for Robin's fingers to run through it, braided or not. All her ears longed to hear from now on was the sound of Robin's voice nervously telling her she's beautiful whilst they caught their breaths for a while, intertwined underneath abandoned sheets that were no match for their rolling around and exploring one another's bodies.
They didn't do anything more than kissing, but their hands did more than grazing—they clawed and kneaded and massaged. Monica remembered how that felt too. It felt nice to be touched by someone that knew her body in the kind of way only another girl could. Maybe that's why biting Robin's neck and battling her tongue felt so natural.
There was no embarrassment, no awkwardness. They were just two teenagers falling in a natural, celestial way.
She had been smiling all day. When Tina asked why, she denied, denied and denied. She let her friends assume Billy was the reason, not that she entertained it. She just met them with silence or short, vague answers that answered nothing all.
Once her free period came around, she headed to her locker to rid herself of the textbooks she had carried around since AP chemistry. But when she opened it, she was met with a folded note with her name written on it in a handwriting she didn't recognise.
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Monica's eyebrows pushed together as she smiled bemusedly to herself. She wanted to hold onto it more than anything, but she knew the risk that would come with it. So, she slipped it into the textbook she had wedged under her arm and slipped it into her locker instead.
"Your ass looks good in those jeans."
To the left of her was Billy Hargrove, leaning against a neighbouring locker with his usual double-denim ensemble, a crooked smile and a silver lighter turning between his fingers.
"Good morning to you, too," Monica says flatly.
"What movie did you and your little friend end up picking?"
She took out a notebook and a textbook, "Karate Kid," and closed her locker.
"If you had me around, you might have made a better choice. Then again, we'd be too busy to watch it either way."
She wasn't sure how much longer of that smug expression she could take, so she decided to turn and face him there and then. "I've been meaning to find you actually."
"Here I am," he says, finally holding the lighter still.
"Right."
His flirtatiousness told her he couldn't hear the direction of the conversation in her perfunctory tone, so she opted to make it clear.
"This is over." That was enough to make his smirk fall, but she didn't stop. "This, us—"
"Us?" his eyebrows raise.
His scepticism made her feel so small in a matter of seconds. "Yeah."
"Do you wanna try filling me in on when there has ever been an us? Because I'm thinking back and there's not a bell in sight being rung."
"I just needed to set the record straight between u— well, you and me."
He observed her for a long moment, his stare unwavering as his pointer finger tapped the side of the lighter-head. But she was as unfaltering as he was, entirely unbothered by the couple inches of height he had to thank her sneakers for or even the sudden darkness within the pools of his blue eyes.
"Is this about your parents?" he asks.
"It isn't about anything. I just don't think it's smart to do whatever this is or isn't anymore."
The corner of his lip pulls up. "Are you sure? Because finals are just around the corner and that's a lot of pent up stress."
"Billy."
"Beautiful?"
Neither of them break eye contact. It felt like a long and silent game of daring one another to do so, and the longer he smirked, the longer he had the upper hand on her grinding teeth behind her cold, hard frown. He knew that. So, he took the liberty of inching close until his mouth was right by her ear. "If you need a release, you know where to find me."
He let the words hang in the air before pulling back and walking away. But he didn't get many steps forward before he was peering over his shoulder, "I meant what I said about those jeans. You should wear 'em more often."
His smirk told her he was only trying to work a rise out of her, but she couldn't manage entertaining him with so much as a tight-lipped smile. And she didn't. She let him disappear down another corridor along the right of the hallway and gently sighed as she recited to herself two small details.
