1: heartbreaker
Sophie broke up with Nicholas last week, and with Tarquin the week before that, and so on, and so forth: an endless stream of boys. There’ve been more notable ones, Nicola supposes. Tedros, early on, who had never much liked Sophie anyway. Rhian, who had actually seemed quite serious about it until he ran back to Kei. Hort, who had definitely been serious about it, poor thing.
There was Rafal, but no one really likes to talk about Rafal, least of all Sophie. Nicola hadn’t known her, then; she only knows about Rafal through Agatha, and even then only through fragmented pieces of the story, Agatha’s hesitance to reveal anything of Sophie’s that she didn’t already flaunt.
She knows that Rafal turned Sophie against everyone else she’d ever loved. She knows that Rafal had made Sophie feel special.
And, from being Sophie’s proclaimed best friend, she knows this, too: that Rafal was the one who started Sophie down her path. Sophie speaks of it lightly, like it’s all one big joke, but sometimes her eyes grow distant when she says: I’m grateful for him, really, darling. He made me more me.
Nicola still doesn’t know what that ‘me’ is, to Sophie. She doesn’t quite get how Sophie sees herself, or wants to see herself. Untouchable. That’s her best guess.
Nicola has never known her to be anything else.
It still surprises her, to this day, when Sophie takes her hand. It surprises her that Sophie, with her alabaster skin and glittering emerald eyes and golden hair, with her smile that’s never left a line on her face, is real. Is a tangible thing. A person who would hold Nicola’s hand as they traipse through the empty streets, stars twinkling above them. The world is so empty sometimes.
It doesn’t matter, because Sophie fills the space.
Her fingers slip through and out of Nicola’s, and she twirls as they make their way down the street, laughing brightly at the vast, dark sky. Her voice echoes. There’s lipstick smeared down her mouth. Today Nicola picked her up from a bar, found her halfway in some random boy’s lap, dragged her out. For a second she had a handle of it. But Sophie is fleeting, free, always just out of reach.
Well. Nicola has put up with it for this long. Longer than anyone, really, except Agatha, and Sophie is practically her sister. She doesn’t mind going on.
God, she really is doomed, isn’t she?
“This is how to be a heartbreaker,” Sophie sings, “boys they like a little danger…” She doesn’t finish the lyric, doesn’t follow through, just throws her head back and laughs, and for all that it’s worth Nicola knows she’s going to be the next one. If not the next, then it’ll still be her eventually, after however long it takes Sophie to get bored of her, too. It’s been a good run. It’s been longer than she expected.
But Sophie is so beautiful, has never been more beautiful, Nicola thinks that every time she sees her. No wonder the world falls at her feet. No wonder she gets away with it.
She’s never going to notice Nicola, waiting patiently for her to stay still. She’s never going to notice how it’s always Nicola picking her up, dragging her out, getting her through the messes she makes. Maybe it’s a good thing. Can’t get her heart broken if Sophie never gets her hands on it in the first place.
Still, she thinks wistfully, as Sophie whirls in the midst of her laughter— it would be nice to be seen.
“We’ll get him falling for a stranger, a player,” Sophie goes on, with all too much conviction. “Singing I lo-lo-love you—”
She turns back to Nicola, then, and there’s something strange and sad in her eyes. It’s at odds with the sickeningly upbeat way she cheers the last line. “At least I think I do!”
With Sophie, there is always a way out. That is, for her. Not for anyone who might believe her. And certainly not for Nicola, who knows her well enough to not believe her— and wants this, wants her, anyway.
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hopefully writing one SGE drabble a day for november, using nosebleedclub's november prompts!
