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xii. So It Goes
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It was seven minutes 'til one in the afternoon; Blair Cameron had a pistachio-green tortoiseshell-clip tangled in her damp hair, mounted up at the top of her head, and her sister's borrowed purple bralette was sticking to her skin, along with the hem of her pristine-white tennis skirt.
Her bathroom smelled like intense weed and she sprayed a raspberry-citrus body mist that clung to the tiles and somehow managed to hide the dead-giveaway scent. She placed the bottle besides the sink and reached for a packet of gum she kept next to a first aid kit in the cabinet. There was a copy of Call Me by Your Name tucked under her arm; gloss smudged over her lips.
She placed her book on the kitchen counter and reached in the back pocket of her shorts for a tube of softly piña colada-scented lip-gloss, padding it against her lips. "That was one hell of a stunt you pulled at Midsummers." She placed it over her book and sighed, shaking her head slightly. Her father reached into the fridge and pulled out a transparent bottle jam-packed to the brim with translucent pink liquid. "Do you wanna talk about it?"
Ward Cameron handed her a glass of rose lemonade (which was undoubtedly her favorite, especially in crystal glasses with patterned-brims that reflected the light peering through the wide, open windows) and she propped herself up on the wooden stool as she ran the tip of her index over for glass' brim. She was chewing mango gum but easily tucked it between her pearly teeth and cheek in order to take a sip. The sweetness rubbed off both ways until her words were sugar and the air in her lungs crystallized.
Did she want to talk about it? John B fell from an old and unsteady platform─God only knows how many stories high, really─but the doctors assured them that he was going to be fine. It was just a hairline fracture; he ignored her when she told him how lethal it could be, especially concerning his long-term wrist-strength. He didn't care, he hugged Sarah like she had his heart in her hand and Blair watched from the corner of the room with a sigh because maybe she did. Ward felt kind that night, he bailed John B out of the prison DCS had him trapped in, becoming his legal guardian on paper and bringing him back home alongside his two daughters. Him and Sarah sat in the backseat, last night, holding hands on silence, and Ward couldn't help but throw confused glances at the daughter sitting shotgun. If it wasn't John B that was pulling her towards the Pogues . . . who?
Back to the question now: did she want to talk about it? The answer was an easy no. It wasn't enough that she had to sit through Rafe's millions "are you out of your fucking mind?!" at four in the morning, when he was pacing endless circles in her room while she was tucked under the covers trying to disappear, but she also had to erase all of Topper's voicemails one by one. Apparently, he cared more about making sure that Blair didn't perceive him as a monster than actually checking on the boy he injured. "It was an accident," he breathed heavily into the first and last voicemail she erased, and all those in between. "It was an accident, Bee. I swear I didn't mean to push him off!"
