friends (rick riley and scott holland)(INDEFINITE HIATUS)

chapter eight

He's in her gym class. Or, at least, she thinks he is.

She was going to have to see him again, and she was going to have to look him in the eye. How was she supposed to do that without seeing that crushed look on his face?

(And how was she supposed to do that without hearing an echo of her drunken father's voice telling her that she was a bottomless pit—— a black hole when it came to love.)

Gwen is alone with her spiraling thoughts, not even awake enough to enjoy the endless stream of water on her body, until someone knocks.

"Gwen?" Scott's voice, hoarse from sleep, drifts through the door. It's so muffled that she can barely hear him. "You in there?"

"Yeah." She calls back, doing her best not to be too loud.

"Oh, okay... Let me know when you're done."

Gwen takes a deep breath, shakes her head as if it will shake the thoughts out (because she's Gwen Fucking Banks and there isn't a problem in the world that she can't get herself out of), and she turns the water off. She gives Scott the okay to come in when she's wrapped up in a towel and steps forward, hips pressed against the counter, so he can walk past her. Her mind was still fuzzy enough to not be bothered that he peed while she was brushing her teeth.

He clears his throat as he washes his hands in the sink next to her. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah." She shrugs and spits suds in the sink. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Scott stares intently at the side of her face until she looks at him. "'I don't know. What we talked about last night... I've never seen you so messed up about it, that's all."

Gwen sighs and rinses the toothbrush in the sink.

"I'm alright, Scott. Honestly. I slept with a guy I shouldn't have, he may have thought it was going to end differently, and I think I hurt him when I let him know I didn't enjoy it. He wasn't the first, he won't be the last. It's nothing."

He nods but it's so slow that she's not sure he's believing what she's saying. She smiles and then tried to slip away, but he grabs her by the bicep. His hand is warm despite the water.

"Just—— do I need to kick this guy's ass?" Scott's words seem to carry an ulterior message and his eyes burrow into hers.

"No. I wasn't that drunk, and he was perfectly nice to me. I'm the asshole here, okay?"

He nods again, hesitantly, and squeezes her arm once before letting her go.

"Okay." Scott concedes. "I think I've got some clothes you can wear in the leftmost dresser. Fourth drawer from the bottom."

She tilts her head. "What about Rick?"

"He's still out cold, but if he's not you can kick him out of the room."

Scott opens the medicine cabinet as quietly as possible and rifles through the objects before plucking a bottle from the shelf inside.

"Aspirin. Take it, then force him to take it if he's being a child. I refuse to deal with the two of you this early."

Gwen narrows her eyes in a withering glare but takes the bottle from him anyway.