STUFFED

Pas De Deux

Courtney makes brief eye contact with Bradyn before he looks away.

That was odd.

Throwing the pillow aside, Bradyn gets up from the couch and walks briskly out of the room. Only a couple of the guys call after him passively but no one really notices or tries to stop him. Courtney wants to get up and go after him but that would just look really weird to everyone else.

Bradyn stands in the foyer at the front door just staring down at his phone trying to process this. Obviously he was in. It might be a little weird having another guy in the room but honestly he'd probably forget Griffin was there and just focus on Courtney.

Courtney. Did she agree to this? Did she put her boyfriend up to this?

Eventually Bradyn leaves the house and Courtney is the only one who hears the door open and close. She really wants to go after him. Maybe she should text him? No, she'd rather talk to him in person. Maybe if she sat here for a while before getting up to leave then it wouldn't be weird.

Courtney sits there twiddling her thumbs and letting her pants dig into her torso. She's so uncomfortable. She just wants to leave.

Luckily, Holdyn gets up before her. He says that he has to start heading home. After he leaves, it triggers a chain reaction and shortly everyone is deciding to call it a night.

Courtney follows suit and leaves the house. She gets into her vehicle and drives straight to Bradyn's house. When she knocks on the door his mom answers.

"Courtney! How are you?"

"Hi! I'm good thanks."

"Are you looking for Bradyn?"

"Uh, yeah. Is he here?"

"Yeah, come in! He's just in his room. You can go downstairs."

Courtney slides past Mrs. Fisher on her way inside the door. It's always confused her why people stand in the middle of the door frame when inviting you in. Then you have to do that awkward shimmy thing when trying not to hit them. And now that she's twice as wide it makes it even harder.

She leaves her shoes on the mat and opens the door to downstairs. It's kind of dark and gloomy down here but she didn't really expect anything else. It kind of matches his energy.

She turns a corner and approaches the only door with light flooding through the bottom.

Courtney knocks on the door lightly.

Bradyn is sitting on his bed in his partially dark room.

When he hears the knock on the door he groans, assuming that it's one of his parents. Bradyn zips his jeans up and walks over to the door.

He's not pleasantly surprised upon opening it.

"Why are you here?" Are the first words that leave his mouth.

His greeting is cold and off-putting. Bradyn is annoyed that Courtney, whether it's physically or mentally, keeps following him around. He can't seem to get away from her. He just wants a second alone so he can release the tension himself but the universe doesn't seem to want to give him a break.

Courtney feels as if she's made a mistake and doesn't want to be here anymore.

Bradyn notices her shift in energy and quickly corrects himself, "Sorry," He shakes his head, "What's up Courtney?"

He says in a more mellow tone.

"... um. I don't know, I just wanted to come see you." Her reasoning for being here doesn't even make sense to her anymore but she tries to justify it, "You left in kind of a rush, so I just wanted to see if you were okay."