"Shit. Shit. Shit.Shit." Hope whispered frantically to herself. She'd been avoiding Josie for days, afraid that if she spoke to her she'd blurt out that she saw her and Jed, that she'd ask if they were together. She knew she couldn't avoid the siphon witch forever, but she thought she could manage for at least a week. Evidently, she was wrong because Josie was knocking at her door after three days.
"Hope are you in there?" Asked the brunette, who already knew Hope was in there due to her singing quite loudly just a few minutes before.
Hope fought the urge to yell no as Josie waited for a response. "Hope I heard you singing, I know you're in there," she said growing annoyed with the tribrid's silence.
Hope mentally scolded herself for singing so loudly, slowly getting up as she trudged towards her bedroom door. She opened the door slightly, enough for Josie to see her but not enough so that she'd take it as an invitation. "Hi, Jo! Sorry, I didn't hear you at first," she lied, smiling and earning a small scoff from the brunette.
"Whatever, where have you been?" She asked, a small look of concern flashing over her face.
"I've been busy, sorry. Turns out you miss a lot of assignments when you go to defeat Malivore!" she said, throwing her hands up in a 'who would've guessed' fashion.
Josie rolled her eyes, her annoyance growing. "Hope we have the same classes and missed the same amount of days, and you know as well as I do that they aren't making us do that shit. Are you avoiding me or something?" She asked, shifting her weight on her feet uncomfortably.
Hope wasn't expecting Josie to ask her so directly. So, naturally, she said the first thing that came to her mind. "Yes." She clenched her eyes shut as she dipped her face into her hands embarrassingly.
Josie's eyes widened in shock, not expecting the tribrid to actually admit to it. She knew she'd been avoiding her, it was obvious. Hope wasn't very good at ducking behind walls when she saw the other girl.
"Why? Did I do something?" she asked, wringing her hands together as she stared at Hope, whose face shot up at her question.
"No, no. You didn't do anything, promise," she said reassuringly.
Josie breathed a sigh of relief, but still curious as to why she was avoiding her. "So if I didn't do anything why are you avoiding me?"
Hope scrambled her brain for a reason, anything to tell Josie that wasn't the truth. Luckily, she had one hell of an excuse, "I'm still adjusting to, well, everything. To be around people whose hearts are still pumping blood. Especially you, I don't want to lose control around you." Hope tried to hide the panic from her face as she realized what she said. Josie noticed and, in turn, her cheeks began to turn a deep shade of pink.
"Especially me, huh?" She said, a smirk playing on the corner of her lips, baiting the shorter girl.
"Yeah. I mean, I don't want to hurt any of my friends," she said, her own heart sinking at the emphasis on friends. That's what they were, right? Just friends?
Josie's smirk quickly fell, how naive was she to think that was what Hope meant? "Right," she said nodding. "Well, I should-um-go. Wouldn't want to make you lose control in front of your friend," she said bitterly, not meeting Hope's eyes before she turned and began to walk away.
"Josie, wait," she called out. Josie didn't stop walking, she didn't turn around. She couldn't, the tears in her eyes would expose her feelings to Hope if her little outburst hadn't already. So she kept walking, though her pace had quickened so it was more similar to a jog until she got to the staircase. The staircase on the east end of the school, the staircase that rarely anyone went to except to make out or have a breakdown.
