It's the next day, after the incident. You walk through the school halls, then you see Robbie. You don't know if you should go up to him or not. There was still that weird tension between the two of you. But before you know it you're walking towards him. You can see his big black and blue eye look up at you.
"Look, Robbie, I-I'm sorry. I overreacted and I wasn't thinking straight when I yelled at you. It was stupid. You were just looking out for me."
"No, I'm the one who should be sorry. I should know that you are able to stand up for yourself. Fighting him only makes it worse for all of us."
You stand there in silence, leaning against the lockers.
"I wonder where Jared is. I'm surprised he hasn't butted in yet," Robbie says. Then someone walking past us stops.
"You didn't hear? He got suspended."
"What?" You say, shocked.
"Yeah, he got caught with drugs. What a fool! Practically led the teachers straight to them!" The boy leaves chuckling, and you and Robbie stare at each other.
"Guess that gets him out of your hair, huh?" Robbie says, rubbing the back of his neck.
"I can't believe this! Jared? Doing drugs? I mean I guess I'm not too surprised, but I never expected it." You say, shook up from the moment.
"Yeah.."
The bell rings and you nod at Robbie and head off to class. After school ends you call him. You want to look at his eye again and see if it's healed any more. He meets you at your house and you bring him up to the bathroom again.
"Does it look any better?" He asks, looking at it in the mirror.
"No, I don't think the cream helped."
"Well it feels better."
"Here, we'll try this instead."
You take a different medicine and start applying it to Robbie's eye. He's sitting on a chair by the mirror. You can feel him staring straight at you, and then you make eye contact. You stare at each other, locked in the moment. After a couple of seconds you quickly pull down your hand and turn away.
"That should be enough." You say awkwardly, turning on the cap to the bottle. He gets up and turns to the door.
"I'll let myself out," he says, his accent cracking. You nod, but you don't want him to go. You felt stupid for ruining the moment. You wanted it to last forever.
You hear the door shut downstairs as Robbie leaves. You sit down on the chair and take a deep breath. What was going on with you? You were just friends with Robbie, and that's how you wanted it to stay. If things went any further, this situation was going to get much more complicated. You didn't want to know what would happen with Jared. You didn't want to see Robbie get more hurt.