@healselfs: “ boys are reckless creatures. ”
// from rose @ gemma.
Gemma can feel her eyes stinging, the build up to tears. She hates crying, especially over a boy but she cannot find it within herself to hold it back any longer. She felt as though she was made the fool, for ever holding a candle to someone who did not want her in the way she wanted him. The feel of his lips, their kiss - it had meant not nearly close to half of what it had meant to her. She can only be mad at herself, the tears falling forth from her lashes in tremulous rage. Her hands ball tightly into the sleeves of her robes, lifted to wipe away the burning rivers down her cheeks.
❛ I hate him. ❜ She doesn’t, and she had thought the words would make her feel better but they don’t. Instead they incite more tears, more crying, a sob choked on caught somewhere in her throat. Gemma is a mess, always five when she cries, and her only comfort is knowing that it is only Rose to see her this way. Beneath the usually carefully poised mask she wears is still a girl very much in the process of growing. Her voice quivers, daring to try and find the proper words to displace her pain. ❛ They’re crueler creatures than - than I’ve ever read about. ❜
She knows Rose understands this pain, knows that she can rely on her to ease it. It was, after all, how they had become friends in the first place. Gemma is were Rose was then, alone and perhaps mostly feeling angry at herself more than anything. She rubs at her cheeks until they feel raw beneath the material of her uniform, until that hurts almost as much as the painful thudding in her chest. It’s a distraction at the very least and not much more than the girl can ask for as she cries all of her tears to emptiness.
For a long while neither of them speak, Rose sitting quietly at her side as she breathes in deep. In through her nose, out through her mouth as her mother had taught her to help calm herself. Gemma leans against Rose, seeking out the warm comfort, ignoring the threat of a headache that begins to build. She thinks of Kartik, bottom lip trembling. She does not understand him, no matter how hard she tries. It’s as though he pushes and pulls her like the moon does the tides, and she can only ever comply.
❛ … Why does it hurt so much? ❜ Gemma whispers, though perhaps more to the silence than wanting Rose to answer because she already knows why. In a deep and buried place in her heart. Her head rests upon her friends shoulder, arms wrapped around knees and brought to her chest to hug herself as she ponders. Boys were truly reckless creatures and with the tender hearts of girls most of all.