Live and Breathe Words ~ Wessa

Part 6- No Man on Earth

“I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me”

The Next Day...

Tessa was fairly certain the whole of London could hear her erratic heartbeat, which quickened with every step closer to the looming library in front of her. She tentatively pushed open the double doors of the library, a nervous smile on her lips the only telltale sign of the mixture of excitement and anxiety coursing its way through her veins. Her eyes adjusted to the lighting and… 

Tessa stopped dead in her tracks. Her mouth hung open in a perfect o shape, and her lungs felt as if they were constricting, forcing all the oxygen out and leaving her gasping for breath. 

Will was leaning heavily against the front desk, a petite girl with wavy blonde hair pushed tightly against him and enveloped in his embrace. She was kissing him passionately, and his hands were on her back as she tangled her fingers in his messy black hair. 

The blood rose in Tessa’s cheeks and she began to hyperventilate, cursing herself endlessly in her head as she stood rooted to the spot, shocked into a state of paralysis. 

I told you, I told you that whatever you had on Friday night with him—whatever you thought you had—wasn’t real, at least not for him. Stupid, stupid…

Neither Will nor the blonde girl had noticed her; they were still wrapped up in each other, their kisses growing increasingly deeper and more passionate. 

Tessa thought she was going to be sick. She stumbled back a step and suddenly the world spun and she felt herself falling down, down, down. 

She crashed to the ground and—through foggy and disoriented lenses—saw Will’s head shoot up, his eyes finding her on the floor. He unceremoniously dumped the blonde girl off his lap—ignoring the high-pitched shriek she emitted—and rushed over to Tessa. She saw his hand extend in front of her, her vision swimming, and she tentatively grasped it, letting him pull her up. She was still reeling from seeing the girl tangled up in Will, the image burned into her memory. 

As she regained her wits—her hand still in Will’s—and was about to mutter a hasty thank you, she felt a sharp jerk as her hand was ripped out of Will’s warm, calloused one. The blonde girl was fiercely glaring at Tessa, her eyes shooting daggers that made Tessa shy away. She dragged Will away from Tessa to do gods-knows-what to him, but he gently gripped her by the shoulders and stopped her only partially out of earshot from Tessa. He whispered something to the girl that Tessa couldn’t quite make out but she caught Jessamine, sorry, mistake, and not anymore before the girl stalked out of the library, looking like she was holding back tears, and aggressively slammed the library doors shut, causing them to rattle long after she was gone. 

Tessa snapped out of her trance and brushed herself off as Will walked over to her hesitantly, a strange pleading look in his eyes that she couldn’t quite decipher or understand. Before he could feed her some lie or poorly-formulated excuse to tame the rage and humiliation boiling in her veins she stalked past him, pointedly ignoring him, and situated herself behind the front desk, purposefully fiddling with a stack of papers as to avoid his piercing gaze. 

Although it was abundantly clear she did not want to talk to Will, he approached the desk slowly anyhow and let out a soft sigh before speaking. 

“Look, Tess—”

 She abruptly cut him off before she could start feeling bad for him. Tessa could never really remain mad at anyone for long—her Aunt Harriet had always called it her fatal flaw. But in all honesty, she had already forgiven Will; she was enraged with herself though for still hoping—deep, deep down—that the connection and electricity she had felt with him Friday night had been felt by him in return. She really needed to stop reading crappy romance novels and having unrealistically high expectations of men. 

“Will, it’s fine. It’s none of my business and, frankly, I don’t really care. So if you don’t mind I have work to do.”

The pleading look in his eyes vanished, and a cold, indifferent mask seemed to snap across his features. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but thought better of it and abruptly stalked to the back of the library to do his job, not sparing Tessa another glance.