COMPLEMENTARY [GxG]

Chapter 27 | Symphony of the Moon-Eater

a/n: so as this chapter was already getting absurdly long, i decided to move one of the scenes to the end of the last chapter. if you haven't already, please go back to the end of chapter 26 to read the interview! if nothing new shows up, try deleting and re-adding the book to your library and restarting the wattpad app.

After the interview, Montoya lets us go with another lecture, culminating in: "I expect you two to resolve your differences. You have one day to ice your wounds, take some Tylenol, and get over it. Tomorrow, you are to meet me here."

Last time, when we exited Montoya's office, Eris and I hugged tightly against the lockers. Now, we're fuming as if we're sophomores after our first fight when she pulled a knife on me, my face thrumming, my ribs sore.

Today, we have nothing to say. I wonder if she's found another girl to take up her time. Another distraction. I wonder if she'll break her vows of chastity after all. Why I ruminate so much on this, I don't know. Maybe I'm the one acting like the obsessive girlfriend now. Maybe I should be her girlfriend so we can preserve our rivalry without anyone else getting in the way.

"You need a ride?" Eris asks.

I look up. "What?"

She pauses to stare at me, from my face to the ripped hem of my dress. "Don't make me have to ask your stubborn ass twice."

My stomach does a flip. Logically, I should want to be as far away from her as possible in this moment.

"Okay," I say.

I don't expect that one, uncharacteristically agreeable word to set her off. But she tenses her jaw, teeming with hate.

"Really?" she asks. "Now you agree? Now you're fine with me taking you home instead of insisting on walking ten miles? Why?"

Her confession the night she showed me her forgery: Because I missed you, you stupid bitch.

Those same words would sum it up perfectly if I repeated it now.

It's absurd. It makes me into a pathetic, sorry excuse for a human. It's a fault in my wiring, because her betrayal should bring us back to normal. Our fight is obviously proof of that, but I'm balancing on the edge, the all-or-nothing mentality I'm used to failing me. I never thought it was possible to feel so many opposing things at once.

I hate her so much it makes my stomach flutter. I hate how she ignores me, and I can't stand feeling that way, craving her presence even if she hurts me.

"I don't have the energy to fight with you at the moment," I say.

"So that's the secret?" she asks, her intense gaze laser-focused on me. "Wear you down until you're too tired to argue?"

I start walking with her toward her car. "That's very toxic, Eris. But I wouldn't expect anything else from the likes of you."

She rolls her eyes but doesn't say anything because she knows I'm right. She's a walking biohazard, and I'm already feeling the radiation poisoning.

And I missed it. I missed it, I missed it, I missed it.

Though I doubt she feels the same. The girl has zero self-restraint, so if she really suffers from a tendency to miss me, she wouldn't have disappeared two weeks. Unless the Axel thing really cut her deep. Or maybe she's simply over me. That could've been the final straw, preventing her from ever being able to see me as anything but her enemy.

I don't even miss her that much. All this frustration, all this anxiety—it's only because we have a lot of things to resolve. Things that will take a lot more than our fists.