Summer of Like // Farleigh Start x OC

11: I'm Sorry the Way My Moods Flicker On and Off like an Old Porch Light

On screen, the girl slowly crawls out of the television, her long black hair dripping wet and obscuring her face.

    Above me on the couch, Venetia watches in horror, her mouth hanging open as she turns her head away from the screen. "Oh my god!"

    The library is dark - the sun having long disappeared behind the maze and no one having bothered to turn on the lights. It adds to the ambiance, I think, the how the long shadows cast by the bookshelves seem to make the corners of the room into deep recesses where monsters might hide. All of us are gathered here - the sectional sofa not big enough to hold the eight of us.

On the end of the couch, James watches with his head propped up against his hand. To his right, Elspeth and Pamela gossip in whispers, barely paying attention to the movie. Squished together at the other end, Venetia is all but sitting in her brother's lap, and Felix is hiding his face in her hair - anything to not have to watch the horror on screen.

Three of us sit on the floor. Oliver is tucked between Felix's legs. I lean against Venetia's knees next to him, and Farleigh has his head leaned back in the space between Venetia and Pamela, his gaze unflinching as he takes in the atrocity.

"Why is she wet?" Elspeth asks aloud as the girl mercilessly kills the journalist's boyfriend.

"Because she's been down the well Mum, geez." Felix says, barely moving from the safety of hiding behind his sister.

My attention moves from the screen and I tip my head backwards, looking up at Venetia. Catching my look, she grins, and winds one of her hands into my hair, stroking like a cat, her fingernails gently scratching against my scalp. I close my eyes as she sifts through my curls, and savor her touch. I swear, I would do anything for her if she only asked.

Her hand retreats from my head, and I let my eyes flutter open. Farleigh is looking at me, amused, his big brown eyes reflecting the light of the TV screen. I quirk an eyebrow, a silent question.

"You really are her dog." He says, low under his breath as he turns back to the movie.

I roll my eyes, and go to hit him in the thigh, but he grabs my hand in the air, and brings it down gently against his leg instead of the blow that was coming. He keeps his hand there, on top of mine, sandwiching my palm against his thigh.

I turn my eyes back to the screen to pretend that he didn't just win whatever that was. I can't wrap my head around him. At all. One minute, he's perfectly friendly - we joke, we share cigarettes, we talk in the way that people that have mutual friends do. But then, like a change in the wind, it's that night on the steps all over again - he's teasing with narrowed eyes with the word 'dog' on his lips. And now, he's holding my hand on his thigh like we're-

A loud screech from the TV startles me out of my thoughts, and I jump, hands clenching from the jolt of adrenaline that shoots through me. Next to me, Farleigh swears as my nails dig into the meat of his leg. I pull my hand back to see blood on the very tips of my fingers. "Oh- shit, fuck, sorry, Farleigh are you-?"

Farleigh stands up. "I'm fine." He says, sounding pissed off and not fine at all as he scoots past me towards the bathroom.

Venetia leans forward. "What'd you do?"

"I accidentally clawed him in the leg," I say, getting up to go after him. "I'll be right back, I just want to make sure he's good."

Venetia nods, and leans back against her brother as I step over Oliver's outstretched legs and follow Farleigh's path out of the library. The house is just as dark - darker, even, without the light of the TV from the library - but the light streaming into the hall from the little cabinet bathroom makes it easy to find him.

Farleigh's got his leg propped up on the toilet, dutifully wiping the beads of blood away from his thigh with a tissue. He doesn't look up when I come to a stop in the doorway, but says, "I said I was fine."

"Well you don't sound fine." I say. "You sound like you're going to cut my leg off while I'm asleep tonight to get revenge."

He snorts, and looks up at me. "It's basically a cat scratch, Eves, I'm good."

"Okay." I say, but I still linger in the doorway, watching as he places a band-aid over his leg at an angle. There's a million things I want to say dancing on the tip of my tongue - to apologize again, to ask him what his problem is, to ask why he was basically holding my hand - but what comes out of my mouth is none and all of it at once. "I'm sorry. Do you like me?"

The grin on his face falls as he stands up. For a moment, we just look at each other - him, bathed in the warm light of the bathroom, a halo through his curls like the sun, me, half in the darkness of the hallway, looking up at him. "What?"

"You-," I start, and then pause, gathering my thoughts. "You keep doing this thing, where you act like we're almost friends, and then you'll call me Venetia's dog, and then you'll pretend nothing happened, and you were just holding my hand-"

"I like you." He cuts me off.

I expect him to elaborate, to say something else, but he doesn't. Instead, we just look at each other for a moment, before I break the stare. "Okay." I say. "Sorry."

"It's okay." He says, looking back down at his leg, and then grinning at me. "Hardly the worst thing a girl's done to me."

I roll my eyes, but smile.