Maybe I Was Wrong (Teen Wolf: Stiles Stilinski)

Chapter 31

Her arms are around his neck, both of them swaying slowly to the music. His eyes close as she rests her head against his shoulder, and my eyes flicker back to the floor, dark and occasionally lit by strobe lights. It's quite strange to watch him like this. He's way calmer than I expected him to be, for instance. Maybe Lydia has that effect on him.

Maybe she's good for him.

Some weird masochistic part of me wishes Stiles would take a gentle hand to her face, pull it closer and kiss her. Some part of me hopes that I would finally get the message then - that I'd sooner win the lottery than his heart.

And that shouldn't matter to me as much as it does.

But it does. It does fucking matter. Because suddenly I can't see Stiles as anything but the person I want to date, and frankly - suddenly I can't see anything but Stiles.

His eyes are on me when I look up, both our bodies and gazes locked in place. There's no words to describe the way he looks at me, but he just does. I'm flushing all over for no fucking reason, but I can't look away until he does, when Lydia's head rises in confusion. It's too much and the heat in here is unreal, so I do what I have to do. What I've always learned not to do. I run away.

***

There are the stars again, tiny and flickering in the dark night sky, reminding us all that we're still on this ball of earth that's orbiting the sun, that we're still nothing in the massive everythingness, or everything in the nothingness, depending on how we choose to look at it. And there's the moon, round and bright and a little tempting even for an ordinary mortal like me, reminding us, or those of us who know, that there's plenty of things that are out of this world, even on earth.

I've been sitting here for a long time, on a bench in the darkness outside of the school, when Lydia exits the building too and I see her walking off towards the lacrosse field. She probably needs a break from all the Stiles. I sigh. I fucked up really badly with him, didn't I? Now it seems like Lydia has stopped rejecting him and no matter how hard I try to feel happy for Stiles, I just can't stand the thought of them being together.

I get pulled out of my thoughts by Stiles himself, sitting down next to me on the bench at a reasonable distance. This is the closest we've been since our fight earlier today.

"So, uh. How's Lydia?" I ask quietly, not looking at him, keeping my gaze on the girl herself in the distance.

"She's great! Yeah, she's- she's perfect, but- I..."

He sounds oddly unsure, and I didn't expect this.

"But what?" I ask.

"I... I don't know," he sighs.

There's something about the chilly night air and the deadly silence that makes me feel all the more hopeless. And we sit there, engulfed in that poisonous feeling for a long time before he continues.

"I don't know. It's just different lately. It's like I've been forcing myself to keep crushing on her, because I've had a crush on her for years and it's become a part of me, you know? And I want to stay true to myself, but...I'm... I'm just not sure anymore."

I turn to look at him, but he's still staring ahead.

"About what?" I ask him, quietly.

"About what I feel," he mutters, and first he glances at me, but then he looks again, keeps looking until we're just staring at each other.

"And who I feel it for."

I can't think right now. I can't think about what that means, even though a part of me kind of knows. He's still looking at me, his expression unreadable, but I'm distracted by his lips, opened ever so slightly, and just as inviting as they've always been, and I just need to.