The City | GirlxGirl

seventeen ➳

Although Skylar had made it seem like she didn't care about Jude working at the bar, she was irritated. Why, she wasn't entirely sure. Why was she now annoyed by the girl she had made a massive effort towards making comfortable? Maybe it was because Jude applying-and getting hired-at the bar was Blair's idea. Because now Jude was under Blair's wings, which had been Skylar's home for so long.

All night, Skylar hadn't been able to mitigate her anger. A volcano rising and rising, lava coating her veins. She knew she was close to erupting.

It didn't help that Jude had pulled her hair up and worn a low cut t-shirt. It didn't help that her skin was tan, and the back of her neck freckled like constellations. And on the front of her neck, a single freckle just below her jaw. Like a lost star. Skylar felt a strong-and alien-urge to trace the freckles with her fingertips, to connect the lone one with he rest. She wanted to connect the dots with invisible lines drawn on visible skin; she wanted to paint Jude like a picture.

Skylar squeezed her eyes shut momentarily each time these thoughts surfaced. She didn't want Jude. She didn't even like Jude.

Should have left her on the curb to pick up herself, Skylar thought.

Watching Jude out of the corner of her eye, Skylar was jealous. Jude was a natural. She smiled at everyone, chatted, blushed at the pick-up lines, and deflected the catcalls. Confident and bright. She didn't look like she was heartbroken at all.

So much for a damsel in distress. Not that Skylar wanted to be her knight in shining armour, or anything like that.

-

Skylar heard the staff door open and close in the fraction of a single second. She wished the light steps that skipped down the concrete stairs belonged to Ben, but she knew that the door had only been open long enough for a tiny figure to slide out of it.

"I don't really feel like talking," Skylar said, smoke escaping the corners of her mouth.

She only felt bad when she turned and saw Jude, who had sank down onto the bottom step, her arms wrapped around her knees; the same self-hug that Skylar had seen her do the night they first spoke.

"Sorry," Skylar said, but it was so quiet, she didn't think Jude heard it. The wind carried her voice like it swept away the smoke.

Skylar turned back around, her back sore as she leant against the metal handrail that teetered on the edge of the concrete staircase. She finished off her cigarette in silence.

"You haven't spoken to me at all," said Jude, cutting through the quiet that had fallen between them like a physical barrier: a wall as tough as the concrete that threatened to freeze Jude's skin beneath her denim jeans.

"Sorry." Skylar shrugged, hair moving across her covered shoulders. The snow was gone, but the cold wasn't. She realized that she had said this word twice now, and wasn't sure she had truly meant it either times. "I've been focusing. On my job."

"I don't mean that. I mean in general. Since the night you brought me to Blair's-"

Skylar scoffed. "When you say it like that, it sounds like we hooked up or something."

Jude's expression hardened. She was the type of person who always looked worried; her eyebrows were permanently raised, and often yearned together, as if they were stitched together by a string. All night, Skylar had watched them. When Jude messed up on an order, or spilled a drink, or in some way wasn't perfect-as she usually was-the string seemed to tighten, to pull her eyebrows closer and closer together. Now, it appeared the string that held them together had been cut. They were low, pointing downwards rather than their usual position of halfway up her forehead. She looked angry.