Acting Out [Student/Teacher, GxG]

Christmas Eve

When the conversation was brought back to Claire and I and our new movie, Caleb had put in his two cents, sharing his disbelief that I'd ended up in the profession I'd once claimed to find soul-crushingly boring, and Claire had smirked, joking that I tended to hate most things until I gave them a chance. By the time everyone had retired to their respective rooms, it was nearly midnight.

Claire walked into the room, looking back at me, "Are you coming in or not?" It wasn't the invitation I'd hoped for, but she wasn't telling me to leave, so I followed her in, sitting down next to her on on the edge of her bed.

"The curiosity is killing me. What did Nina say to you in the kitchen?"

"She told me to fuck off because I was going to ruin the food — to go back to my 'darling' ", She rolled her eyes, "And I told her to stop speaking Croatian. She was so young when she left, she had to take courses in University to become fluent again. I did the opposite, evidently, getting my accent drilled out of me until I spoke like a born-and-bred product of California. The studio execs on Soft as Steel made me do it before they'd even consider casting me." There was a resentment in her words that confused me.

 At my expression, she continued, "My language — my culture — was stripped from me. I know I shouldn't be angry with Nina for embracing it, but after five years in America, I started thinking in English. When I try to speak Croatian now, it sounds wrong in my mouth. When Mama last visited, I wasn't able to understand some of the things she was saying. I'd never even had to think about it before, you know? It was the language we spoke at home. My first language. I started to realize that I was losing words, and as my English got stronger, my understanding of grammar started to restructure itself along the lines of the language I was now speaking every day. I started to phrase things strangely in Croatian — I'd always been so well-spoken, but my sentences sounded simple and unrefined. I don't know if I could ever explain how it feels. It was like I'd lost a part of myself. I'm Croatian-American. Croatian first. Now I just feel like an American who happened to be born overseas. I don't know if I'll ever get it back."

It was something I'd never considered before — how it would feel to be thrown into an entirely new culture and expected to assimilate. I'd always assumed your native tongue would stay with you forever, but the sort of decay she was talking about made sense. It wasn't like there were many people in Los Angeles that Claire would interact with on a daily basis who spoke Croatian, and, furthermore, she'd been actively hiding the fact that she was an immigrant entirely for all of her adult life. If anyone found out where she came from, there was a possibility that they could tie her to the crime that had forced her to leave in the first place.

"Have you ever told anyone you feel that way, Claire?"

"I can't. You know why."

"I mean, maybe Nina would understand," I offered, feeling absolutely useless in this conversation.

She shut that idea down immediately, "Nina doesn't need any more sadness in her life. She's had enough of that to last her a lifetime."

We sat in silence for a few minutes, and I was beginning to think I should just leave her alone and go to bed. I was just about to stand up when she began to cry, wrapping her arms around me and burying her face in my neck. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to comfort her through something like this.

"I'm sure you'll be able to get it back, Claire. I'm sure —"

She lifted her head, looking me dead in the eyes with a vulnerability I'd never seen from her, "That's not why I'm crying," She whispered, tears still dripping down her cheeks. "I think you're the only person in the whole world who's ever understood me," She started, taking a deep breath, "And even when you don't — even when I know you couldn't possibly comprehend how I feel — you're still here. You still try. Sometimes I feel like I've been waiting my whole life to find you, and I just need," She closed her eyes, as if afraid to look at me, "I need to know that you feel the same way I do. I need to know that you recognize what you're getting yourself into. I need you to understand that I have never felt this way about anyone in my entire life, and that I'm terrified, because if someday you realize that I'm not what you want, I don't know if I'll ever be able to feel anything like this again for as long as I live."

"Claire," I wiped the tears from her face and held her close, "I don't know what to say —"

"Just say something, Rowan," She begged, "Please say something."

"I used to think that nothing mattered," I looked down, the thought of being so honest with her sending a rush of terror through my body, "I'd sit up for hours thinking about how I was going to die someday leaving nothing behind — no one would ever even know that I'd lived. Just another spec in the Universe, and I wanted to be so much more than that. You've changed me so much, and I don't know how, but I know that you have. You're the only perfect thing in my life that I haven't ruined, and it's not true that nothing matters, because you matter to me. Nothing's ever enough for me, but this is enough, Claire. You're enough. You matter to me so much —"

She kissed me, cutting me off, and I could taste the salt of her tears on her soft lips. There was no battle for dominance — no frantic tearing of clothes — just two people lost in a perfect moment that had been months in the making. It felt like fireworks going off behind my eyelids, and I knew then, like something once just out of reach but now in plain sight, that I loved her. I didn't think I could ever stop loving her.

The clock on the wall struck twelve, and she pulled away, "Merry Christmas, Rowan," She whispered, smiling at me with that soft, nervous quirk of the lips that made my heart race.

She climbed under the covers in the dress she'd worn to dinner and pulled the blankets up to her neck. "Do you want to sleep here tonight?" She asked, already cuddled into her pillow. I nodded, joining her under the thick duvet and snuggling in beside her, circling my arms around her waist and nuzzling my face into her hair. 

They say that when it comes to love, there's no hesitation. When you know, you know. When I'd dreamed of a confession from her, I always had the perfect response. The perfect words to convey everything I'd ever felt for her. In reality, the only thing on my mind was that Claire had finally opened up to me, finally shown herself to me in a way that was so much more intimate than anything I'd ever experienced, and the thought of it had me stumbling through my sentences, fumbling and uncertain. Dream Rowan would end the conversation by ripping her dress off in some grand display of passion, but right now, falling asleep to the sound of her breathing was the most perfect thing in the world. If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that she would always be worth the wait. She tangled our fingers where my hand rested on her stomach, and I closed my eyes, feeling a rush of warmth spread through my entire body. This is it, I thought, this is what happiness feels like.

——

Author's Note:

So there it is! Short chapter, but I hope it was worth all of the buildup. Your guys' comments have been making me so happy and inspiring me to keep pushing through even though I have the worst writer's block ever lol. The song in this chapter is 'Someone to Stay' by Vancouver Sleep Clinic, and I think it's the perfect song for their relationship, especially at the end of this chapter! 

Thank you so much for your votes, comments, and support. I never thought this story would end up being this long, but it's not the end yet. 115,548 words and counting!