literally everyone: can u for once if your miserable life stop with the sad ansty shit
me:
time: c. late 2016 riley can meet me in a mcdonalds parking lot and fight me on this later if she wants
characters mentioned: @ofcosima, @princetomas
There’s something special about all of the fancy formal and informal highly decorated parties and events taking place towards the end of the year.
There was a time in her teenage years when she had stopped feeling this way ( at that point in her life being surrounded by people only made her feel more alone ), but she was glad that wave of depressing isolating disenchantment seemed to have passed and be well behind her. Not even know did she feel tempted to circle back to it; while the last handful of years had had their downside moments, they been good to her, sometimes better than she felt deserving of.
It was nice to be able to catch up with those she didn’t get to see as often, even if only in a superficial manner, and comforting to realise that time and distance don’t matter when it comes to some friendships.
It was perhaps a little sad or even pathetic to admit it, even if only to herself and nobody else, but she had needed this - was thankful for it. All the mingling and socialising and re-connecting and helping out and offering support to other’s when needed ( because in these events, after glasses of Moët & Chandon, feelings often get the best of people ), it was all helping keeping her busy and distracted.
At the very least, she could thank Tommy’s parents ( whom, truly, she was still fond of ) for that. The holidays themselves were going to be painful, she had been bracing herself as best as she could for it, but until then she didn’t have much time to sit around dwelling on how her life had so suddenly been thrown upside down for there were too many events and parties to attend to or help plan. Not that the heartache she woke up with, carried with her all day, and said goodnight to every night ever let her forget it, anyway.
These days, she had been trying to think of the pain that made it seem like one of her limbs was missing as a friend - as a reminder that it only hurt was much as it did because it was had been something good and real.
( And my God, she misses it every day and it hurts so overwhelmingly much everywhere all the time - even when she happens to laugh the underlying pain is still present. And not having a best friend there with her any longer makes it all a thousand times more difficult to bear. )
She doesn’t believe that she’ll ever not what to share things with him ( even the smallest most mundane things at times ), but she hoped that one day thinking of the pain as something good would help make everything easier. That it would help her no longer feel like something had struck her in the chest leaving her forgetting for to breathe for a second when she remembered she no longer could just call or text or want to see him.
Because she still did.
And it was such an excruciating journey to go through time and time again; the innate knee-jerk reaction to want to tell him about something or simply ask him about his day, only for a second later to dawn on her that she couldn’t, or rather, shouldn’t. She still spoke to him when they happened to be thrown under the same roof, all quick and polite conversation, desperately attempting to maintain some sort of normalcy, as if it was possible to act the same way she did before they had been together.
But was easier for both of them to keep a distance, Carlota had easily and gladly respected that. It didn’t feel like it, not in the least, but it was.
He wasn’t here tonight however ( and she suspected Cosima wasn’t either ) but was going to have to face him again eventually and in a bittersweet way she didn’t mind it - seeing him would hurt, but she also missed being in his presence.
She could swear that even in the noisiest of rooms, the quietest voice could mention his name that her ears would somehow be able to hear it, and she always stops everything she’s doing and thinking about to try to listen. Even when she’s speaking to other people her attention always wonders to whatever voices are speaking his name - she can’t ever keep herself from paying attention to what’s being said about him.
Maybe she should, but he’s still a dear friend ( he’ll always be a dear friend, he’ll always have a part of her heart ), even if they haven’t talked in a while.
Nothing could prepare her to hear Cosima’s name in the same sentence as Tommy’s though.
“I swear. Cosima. From Andorra.”
It hits her like a mallet to the temple and suddenly it’s as though the air had been sucked out of the room, leaving her feeling slightly dizzy.
All at once she feels the pain of Cosima’s sudden and inexplicable ghosting, the pain of when Tomás told her they had to end things ---- and now the pain of hearing the two of them are together.
It’s heartbreak all over again only this time times three, and Carlota stands very still, not even daring to open her mouth, afraid that if she makes the slightest of movements she’ll disintegrate into a million pieces.
“She’s pretty.”
“Kinda crazy if you ask me.”
“You always think every woman is kind of crazy then wonder why they won’t date you.”
“I think she’s a mama’s girl.”
It’s an awful thing and she hates herself for it, but doubt and insecurity immediately begin to cloud her mind like they hadn’t in years, and she can’t help but wonder if Cosima and Tommy had been together before...
No. She admonishes herself.
Tomás wouldn’t have done that to her, he would never cheat on her or lie to her, and, despite all that happened ( and which she’s still struggling to wrap her head around ), she wants to believe Cosima wouldn’t have either.
“Wait, don’t you know her Car?”
All eyes turn to her and the world begins moving at a regular pace again.
Carlota reminds herself to breathe. Slowly.
She was like a sister to me, she thinks.
“We were friends.” She replies.
“Why would you have befriended her?”
“She befriends everyone. But it’s a gift Car, I don’t have it.”
“That’s because you’re chronically incapable of being nice.”
The voices and their playful bickering become background noise but the grin was still gracing her lips - or rather, now plastered on her lips, but the people around her didn’t seem to notice the slight change.
A part of her was thankful for it.
Another wanted to fall on the floor with her flowy Elie Saab dress pooling around her like a kind of protective shield, uncontrollably sobbing her heart out and to hell with whoever saw it and what they thought.
She can feel her chest collapsing in on itself.
Breathe, she reminds herself again. She had learned many things during her three years ( which felt more like a whole lifetime ) with Tommy and how to breathe when the world seems to be falling apart had been one of them.
Breathe.
“I should go check on my sister.”
It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. She repeats the worlds time and time again inside her brain as she walks away, her hands tightly holding the flute of champagne close to her chest. Not tonight, she concedes, but it’ll be fine it’ll be fine it’ll be fine .
Is not that i thought much about it but i confess that i have thought about Guardiola saying goodbye to messi because “he deserves a love of his age and he is too good for himself and he needs to leave the club because the thought of being around him but not with him is too much” more than 3 seconds
