his brown eyes ➵ thomgelica

viii.

She turns seventeen. He's still twenty-one.

He's been gone eight days.

He missed her birthday and the party and the six hour Monopoly game at McDonald's with Eliza and Peggy and Alexander and Madison and Laf and his girlfriend, and she -- she's not even that mad.

Angelica's not.

It's not like she expected a phone call. No, definitely not when they talked most everyday. She wasn't disappointed not just for her but for his mom because she wasn't the only one he didn't bother contacting.

It didn't matter anyway. He was probably with his friends or a stupid girl on her dumb birthday, getting drunk or high or angry or less and less worth all the time she spent thinking the world in his brown eyes.

He knocks on her bedroom window tonight, though, just shows back up like he'd never left, and she considers leaving him to freeze out there until he looks really pale and really sorry and she has no choice. She lets him in.

He's awkward at first like he always is, looking like he doesn't belong in here with old stuffed animals and VHS tapes she never got around to returning since DVDs were taking over the world. Maybe he doesn't fit here, and she's ready for a half-decent apology or anything he could say to make it better, so she crosses her arms over her chest as she stands up straighter to look more.. grown. Womanly. All a woman's wrath with a child's temper.

His chest rumbles with the husk of a low laugh that cuts through the air, slices through her, just has her covering her face and wanting to feel properly pathetic away from him, how mean he is since he never even knew, but her hands are fists shoving at his chest angrily, caught like nothing and held by him.

"Stop that," she warns, trying to tug her hands away.

His smirks tells her he probably knows she doesn't mean it, that he hasn't been clueless all these years she thought he was, and she can't even look at him. "I'm sorry I missed it."

"You can't just leave like that."

"Can't I?" he smiles. Really gentle, and he lets her shove at his chest again. "I didn't know it'd make you this upset."

"Of course you didn't."

"I wasn't gone that long."

"Your parents don't think so."

"My parents are used to me being gone." His smile isn't really a smile, but then he outright grins so big he's dopey and fifteen again and kicking his purple Converse next to a complicated looking pair of her shoes.

"You should be used to me being gone."

"But you're never -- no," she tells herself, tells him, presses both her hands to her eyes tiredly. "What are you even doing here, Thomas?"

"I wanted to say sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

His eyes are harsh and annoyed when she finally looks up, always up, but she sighs because it's half-three AM and his right hand's knuckles are bruised, and God, what did the world ever do to make him so insufferable. He makes a step towards her like it's a precise, calculated accident, says it through his teeth where she feels it under her ribs. "I'm sorry I'm late."

"It could have waited until morning," she just has to point out, her eyes still looking at her purple rug.

"Will you just shut up," he laughs too warm to be too annoyed. He doesn't stop her from trying to smack his chest again; he just cups her face with his hands, tilts her chin up to kiss her soft and light and a breath that's stolen everything she wants to twist into forever, and he's kissing her.

And he kisses her.

His fingers are rough against her cheeks, but his lips are so soft, and she -- she's staring at him wide-eyed and gasping when he pulls away, straightens up, drops his hands to her shoulders.

"That wasn't nice," she finally whispers, not if he's going to disappear again or be a jerk about it.

"It wasn't? I mean, I know there wasn't any tongue, but.."

"Go home," she smiles. Her cheeks are aching, and her skin feels so warm under the way he's looking at her.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he promises, and she's burning red, leaning towards him when he brushes his thumb over her cheek.

"Will I?"

"Not through a window," he admits or swears, a flustered hand through his dark hair before he's climbing out and into the darker sky.