sehnsucht ✓

chapter 15

Although I wanted to pour all my attention into focusing on Mark, whose reaction to the scene he had caught me in placed him in a horrifying grief, I looked behind him, while he yelled, cursing that sounded muffled. I turned to Noelle, chipping away with her thumbs on her phone.

"What are you doing?" I yell in fear at Noelle, who makes a few glances to me, though her thumbs continued to pick away at her phone.

I stared in suspense but catching on to the fact that I was onto her, she runs out of the doorway.

I turn back to Grant who was directly in front of me. He ran a hand through his hair, a face of regret plastered on his face.

He closed his eyes and sighed, then muttered,

"I'm sorry."

Immediately after his worthless apology, he faces the ground and finds himself out.

Mark makes quick glances between the two of us, grumbling in anger.

It's quiet in the dance studio, the only two bodies to fill the room consisting of Mark and I.

He stared at me in disbelief. There was disappointment on his expression.

"What the fuck!" Mark curses again, unable to comprehend this picture. His eyes darted around the room, shaken and turbulent, before returning to settle on me.

I'm quiet, refraining from making a response.

"I thought you and me were on the same page," he started.

I only give him a look in dismay. It's all I could give him. I had messed things up.

There was so much time for me to push away, but I didn't do anything about it.

Mark saw it all happen.

I repeat these things to myself as I start to realize the pull of gravity this had on me, what had just happened.

I ruined it.

"I just wanted to wait and give you a ride home," Mark continues.

"So we could talk," his voice is laced with hurt, though remaining confused and angry.

"But this is what I came to see you doing after practice? With another boy?"

When Mark had asked earlier if I was free after school, I probably should've had a hunch he would show up unexpected like this.

My fault.

"You saw me and kissed him right in front of my face!" the look he had on his face was a distraught, triggered expression, one I knew exactly the source of.

It made sense why he was so bothered by this image.

He had a right to be mad, so I didn't feel the audacity to guilt him over exerting this dominance over me.

It was humane I leave him to express his hurt.

"You saw me," I let out a tear.

I feel like a mess again, like I had been since coming home from Virginia Beach.

"Not here," I add quickly, mumbling softly.

"I didn't kiss him, you have to listen to me," but Mark isn't paying attention to me. My words aren't cutting through to him.

Grant kissed me before I kissed Mark.

Of course, my first kiss was with Vincent, unfortunately.

Stupid 14-year-old me rushed into kissing him, when the relationship only lasted a week.

It was the race to grow up that sometimes plagued youth, which I still succumbed to then.