Currents

Fourteen ~ Regret

Fourteen ~ Regret

Usually I woke from the sun streaming through the curtains or the sound of Mum pottering around in the kitchen. Sometimes a notification stirred me when I'd forgotten to turn my phone onto silent. However, I wasn't normally jostled awake by someone climbing into bed with me.

"What are you doing here?" I mumbled at Mia. "What time is it?"

"Eight. Go back to sleep."

The confusion at her joining me in bed only caused me to gain more consciousness. Mia shifted her head to find a comfy position on the pillow and pulled the duvet further around her body.

"How did you get in? Where's Austin?"

"Your mom let me in," she replied, her eyes closed. "And I don't know where Austin is."

Sitting up, I abandoned the prospect of sleep and reached across to the bedside table for my hair tie.

"Talk to me," I said after I'd scraped my hair out of my face. "What's wrong? Didn't you go home with Austin?"

She rolled onto her back, drawing the duvet right up to her neck, but didn't open her eyes. Something had happened—or hadn't happened. It was difficult to tell, but Mia was undeniably troubled.

"Yeah," she said. "That was the idea."

"So, what happened?"

She sighed, finally opening her eyes but only to stare upwards at the ceiling. "I don't know. It got very weird, very quick. Maybe we weren't drunk enough... Or maybe I completely misread the situation."

"Did anything happen?"

She shook her head. "No. It's probably never going to happen, either. I guess we'll always have that kind of friendship, but we'll never cross the line."

Nothing happened? They'd been all over each other and Mia's house wasn't that far away—not far enough that they'd sober up en route, anyway.

"Okay... He walked you back, right?"

She nodded and shuffled to sit up, pulling the covers with her. "Yeah. When we were walking back, everything was normal. We were laughing and joking, and he was making suggestive comments. Then we got to my house, and he suddenly toned it all down. I was waiting for him to suggest I invite him in—by making a joke out of it or something—but he never did."

"So why didn't you?" I asked. "Why didn't you invite him in?"

"Because he's usually the suggestive one. I always push him away and he always persists. That's our dynamic. When he stopped being flirty, it really freaked me out."

"Perhaps he was nervous. Or worried you'd say no."

She sighed again and scraped a hand through her hair, the poker straight strands from the previous night now returning to their usual waves.

"I think..." she said, pausing to take a deep breath, "I think if I had invited him in, that would've been it. I wouldn't have asked him in for a chat. Things would have definitely happened, and maybe I'm still nervous about crossing that line."

"Can you talk to him about it?"

I assumed that was a sensible idea. Despite his light-hearted nature, Austin had demonstrated his ability to hold a mature conversation on more than one occasion. Mia looked horrified at my suggestion, though.

"No way. If it ever happens, it'll happen when we're drunk. That way, we'll have an excuse if it's awkward. If you do it sober, it actually means something, you know, rather than just drunken hormones; it suggests feelings."