The City | GirlxGirl

twenty five ➳

Of course, it hurt Blair too. Going through a repeat of the night that Logan died was enough to make her want to run for the woods, alone, screaming, and never come back. When the nurse from the hospital called, notifying Blair that Jude had been injured in a single-car accident, but was alive, Blair was honoured, for a moment, as she was informed that she had been saved as the emergency contact on Jude's phone. But then her memories kicked in; heart rate escalating, palms sweating, stomach twisting. She knew that Jude was alive, that she would be alive once she reached the hospital, which she ran at full speed to, despite her discomfort due to how late at night it was. She couldn't help re-living all the same anxieties and fears that she had experienced the night Logan died. It went like this:

One moment, she had been sitting on Clinton Lindsay's lap, sipping beer out of a blue solo cup because they'd run out of red ones. The next, she had slipped off of Clinton's lap, and was running out the door of his house, and into her mother's beat up sedan, and speeding towards the hospital. The morning after, Blair called Clinton. She didn't have to tell him what had happened-he already knew. She dumped him, because even though he was sympathetic, and apologetic, and gave her nothing but kindness, her best friend just died, and she couldn't think of being close to anyone. The only person she wanted to be close with was Logan. And she couldn't do that anymore.

So of course Blair shared Skylar's anger towards Jude's stupid, stupid mistake. And then she wondered, could you even call that a mistake? Jude knew it was wrong. Everyone knew it was wrong, for God's sake! Blair shook her head, an attempt to silence all of those anxieties and fears that were returning, but were now centred around Jude's stupidity rather than her safety. It was dumb. What Jude did was dumb. What Mack did was dumb. But fortunately, Jude didn't kill anyone. She was banged up, but she'd be okay. That automatically made her crime more forgivable than Mack's. She could never forgive Mack for killing Logan.

Blair couldn't lie to the police. Jude couldn't lie to anyone. She was charged with a DUI, which didn't matter much because it wasn't like she drove a lot, anyways, but her plans to drive back to Kenora to see her parents were now shut down, and maybe it was better that way. Blair told her that perhaps that was a sign, that she wasn't supposed to go see them, that if she did, it wouldn't end well. Jude just nodded, silent, because she was so disappointed and ashamed of what she'd done, and embarrassed because Blair was such a better person than she was, because 1. Blair would never drive drunk. And 2. Despite Jude doing the worst possible thing that she could do (or at least it was to Skylar and Blair), Blair was still sitting at her bedside, because she reasoned that she couldn't be alone right now.

"So I'm really, really pissed at you, Jude. But I'm not the type of person who will let you sit here, all bruised-" Jude winced, and Blair paused, but then continued, "By yourself. Like, I'm pissed at you. But I also love you, so I'm going to stay here until you're good to go, and then we're going to take a cab home, and I'm going to take care of you but also be really, really mad at you."

"You have every right to be," said Jude. "And so does Skylar."

Blair sighed. "You know that I'll get over this. But Skylar, that's a different story."

"Why, though?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you more willing to forgive me than she is?"

Blair closed her eyes, and turned her head to the side. She shrugged, asking herself if she really wanted to get into this, right now. Instead, she decided to backtrack, and try to move the subject towards something else that was bothering her. "When I said 'bruised' you flinched."

Jude squinted. She was trying her best to look confused, like she had no clue what Blair was talking about. But the blonde girl knew that this was fake, that it was a cover-up for the fear she was feeling as a result of this statement. And then Blair felt bad, briefly, for prying into Jude's life, which she already assumed, but couldn't confirm, and really it wasn't any of her business, but if she was going to get into the Logan story, she wanted to hear the ex-boyfriend-of-Jude story.