The Association

TWENTY FIVE: Quiet

A/N: Hi, friends. This chapter is over a year late, but I had a lot happening in that time. I graduated from college (!) and started a new part of my life after a lot of trial and mishap. I'm glad to say that I finally have the room to breathe and write. Thank you so much for all of the encouragement and the love you've shown for this small piece of writing on the Internet. It means a lot. 

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Sato pushed himself away from me as suddenly as he had kissed me. If I was shocked, he looked terrified. His eyes were wide, his hand frozen in mid-air.

"I — I'm so sorry —"

I took a step back from him. "What the hell, Sato?" My shock was slowly starting to turn into anger. "That was way out of line."

Sato, to his credit, looked completely struck with guilt. His face was turning scarlet. "I really didn't mean —"

I shook my head. "No, you did. You knew exactly what you were doing. It might have been really impulsive and uncharacteristically stupid of you, but you still knew."

"Janet, I'm so sorry."

I looked at the ground, my hands shaking. I wanted to run away. I couldn't look at Sato in the eye anymore. Something had broken.

"I know. But you knew, you know what happened to me. I told you first. But you still...I can't believe this."

I swallowed hard and pushed past him, even as Sato pleaded. "Janet, please! I—"

The door slammed behind me.

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"Are you alright?"

Tom peered at me, his eyes concerned. We were sitting in the garden at the estate, in the alcove. Tom had been talking about the new Stephen Hawking book he'd read in the past few days; I would have normally responded with some teasing, but Stephen Hawking was the last thing I wanted to talk about.

Even with Tom right next to me, I couldn't stop thinking about Sato. He had kissed me. He had kissed me.

It felt wrong to hide it.

"I...I don't know."

Tom turned to face me with his whole body. "What's wrong? What happened?"

I sighed and buried my face in my hands. "It's Sato. He did something."

Tom was silent but I could picture the look on his face. Still, he waited for me to speak.

"I...I think he likes me. Romantically. Not just as a friend."

Thomas's voice was low and dangerously quiet. "And what did he do to show you that?"

"He...he kissed me. Just for a brief moment." I looked up and placed a hand on his arm. "I know. It sounds bad, but he apologized. I don't think he even realized what he was doing."

Tom didn't say anything for a moment; he just looked away at the roses blooming outside the alcove. I felt nervous; I didn't think he was the type to be possessive, but he still had a right to be angry. As the silence stretched on, I could feel my thoughts begin to spiral.

I shouldn't have defended him. I shouldn't have even talked about this in the first place —

"Thank you for telling me." Tom looked at me gently, his hand taking mine and holding it between us. "I'm sorry this happened."

"Don't be angry." The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Tom sighed. "I'm not angry at you. I'm pissed at Sato. And it's not because you're my girlfriend and I think no one else has the right to be interested in you, but because he did something without asking you. You didn't want that, but he did it anyways. I know you said that it's because he lost control, but that's not a proper excuse. He knew what he was doing."

He shook his head. "I know Sato's not a bad person, but he screwed up. So I'm angry at him, but if you don't want me to confront him, I won't."

I felt something lift off my chest. It was something I hadn't realized had been there, but now that it was gone, I realized it had been there since I was a freshman. Since James.

In the quiet of my life, in the solitude I had surrounded myself with since James, I had told myself over and over that I was not to blame. I had believed it and become stronger for it. But I hadn't realized that having someone else be there to agree with me, to support me, was also a strength. It filled me with light.

"Thank you." I tightened my grip on Tom's hand. "I think I'll talk to him first. But not now, not right now. I need some time."

Tom nodded and he shifted to rest his head on my shoulder. I felt something in me swell.

"I...I love you."

The corners of his lips went up. He didn't need to respond; I could feel him through my hands, through my heart.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

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I didn't talk to Sato for almost a month after the incident in the courtyard. I kept telling myself that I would confront him, but every time I saw him in the hallways, my heart would drop and I would make every excuse to avoid him.

Something had broken. It was hard for me to trust him, and I knew that it was hard for him to confront me with our kiss hanging in the air between us. He stopped trying to come up to me during our breaks between classes, during our lunch period. I sometimes caught him glancing in my direction, something shifting under his expressionless face.

I had never been interested in him, but he had been my first friend at this miserable school. He had been so kind. It was the first time I felt like I was losing someone because of my own volition. It didn't make it any less devastating.

Tom sometimes caught me looking away at nothing, my mind still on Sato. He never complained, only grasped my hand and squeezed to distract me. I looked at him apologetically.

"Sorry. I just...I got distracted. What were you saying?"

Tom smiled. "Well, I was saying that I got into a Twitter fight about whether or not Pluto should be classified as a planet. What do you think?"

Tom never failed to make me laugh, and besides my thoughts about Sato, the weeks that followed were my happiest days at Triwood. Tom would wait by the door of my small cottage each morning, having asked his chauffeur to let him drive to school with me. At school, we tried to be discreet, but we still snuck away to talk and eat our lunches in the courtyard, away from the prying eyes that still dominated the halls. Thankfully, Tom's glower was fierce enough that people stopped confronting me in the middle of class, demanding answers about our relationship. Rumors still spread like wildfire, but I no longer cared. I had Tom.

Jacqueline had stopped bothering me as well, in a way that made me both suspicious and relieved. Tom and I talked about it, but we both agreed that she had decided it was a losing fight. Tom had simply never been interested in her, and he had done everything in his power to convince her of this fact. In order to save her own dignity, it was best for Jacqueline to reciprocate this disinterest. She strode by us haughtily whenever she saw us, never deigning to even look at us.

I asked Tom, once, if he was okay becoming a social pariah because of me. It had been nagging at me for days, after seeing the school's former golden boy shoved past by a group of freshmen rugby players.

Tom grinned at me. "Janey, I've never been happier."

After school, Tom accompanied me to the bookstore. We would sit in the stacks for hours, reading side by side, or doing our homework, or just goofing off as Simon looked on with a half exasperated, half amused smile. When my shift ended, Tom and I would stroll to a nearby park, or walk as slowly as possible back to the estate, where we would part so Tom could eat dinner with his parents. Mr. and Dr. Hawthorne presumably had no idea about our relationship, and I imagined they would be less than pleased that Tom was actually, legitimately fraternizing with their less-than-ideal ward.

Still, I was happy. I was so happy, happier than I imagined I could be. I hugged Tom tightly everyday, breathing in his scent, his collarbone, his chest, and I would try to convince myself that he was real, that everything was real. I didn't know how someone could feel so solid and so fragile at the same time.

I never told him, but he sometimes felt like gossamer, as if he could disintegrate into thin air and I would be left grasping at the fog.