The First to Fall ⚢

𝐭𝐞𝐧 • 𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐧

After Cara leaves to talk to her mom, the room starts to feel a little too big. Ambrose is eating his tacos silently, fully focused on not spilling too much of the taco's insides into his paper plate. Theo is carefully putting together a new taco, dolloping sour cream on top so gently as if the entire thing would shatter if he dropped it a single centimeter too far to the left. The boys talked among themselves about things like high school, asking me questions every so often to include me, but then ten minutes pass by and Cara still isn't back from taking her phone call.

I tell the guys I'm going to go check on Cara and they nod with their mouths full of tacos and old high school gossip. I step outside the door and have to search for a moment before I find Cara leaning up against another wall with her phone against her ear and a blank expression on her face.

"I already told you, classes hadn't even started when that picture was taken," Cara says with hardly any emotion other than irritation, which I can truly understand when talking to my mother. I can hear her mom scream at her even more through the speaker, spouting some nonsense about how Cara needs to focus on her classes unless she wants to end up on the streets with no job and no family. I have to admit—her mom is pretty harsh. And that's coming from me.

But Cara doesn't even flinch. There's not an ounce of anger or sadness or even fear in her eyes; the only hint of an emotion that I can spot from here is maybe the most subtle touch of disappointment. I can understand that.

There's something she wants to say—the one thing she's probably wanted to tell her mom for years, I can bet—but she blinks away the idea and shakes her head. Her mother keeps going on about how selfish Cara is acting and how irresponsible it is to go out partying when she's spending thousands of dollars for her daughter to live in Colorado. But last time I checked, their family isn't exactly struggling for money, so how is that the biggest issue right now?

I step out a bit further, trying to be some kind of distraction for Cara, but it only seems to piss her off even more. She rolls her eyes and turns in the other direction, mumbling to her mother for a second before she hangs up the phone and shoves it in her back pocket. She turns to face me again but doesn't speak a single word as she pushes past me. But before she gets to the door, I grab her wrist as gently as possible to stop her from disregarding me completely.

"What do you want?" Cara asks sharply, her eyes tinted red and glossed over just the slightest. "Came out here to make fun of me for getting lectured by my mom?"

"God, how childish do you think I am?" I ask her with furrowed brows. "I came out here to make sure you were okay."

Silence brews between us for a small moment until Cara scoffs, ripping her wrist out of my hand. "Do you even care?"

"Why would I say that if I didn't care?" I ask, but her mind is already made up. For some reason, she seems to think I am completely incapable of feeling any human emotions when it comes to her, despite the fact that I, too, am a human being. "Do you wanna walk about it?" I ask her, though I know getting her to talk to me about her personal life has never been an easy task. "I know how much it must hurt to hear your mom talk like—"