Forget Her Not

14 | forgive and forget

It is deadly quiet. The air is packed with tension, running on a brittle charge that only strains louder the longer the silence goes on. Right on the verge of snapping.

"Arden, what?"

Splintering.

"You forgave Liam? You agreed to being friends?"

Sheila's normally placid features are edged with raw emotion. She raises a brow and tenses her jaw when I take too long to reply. I look down into my lap.

"I thought it was the right thing to do." I say, mouth dry.

It had been. It had to have been, because everyone is imperfect. Mistake prone. Everyone is deserving of a second chance, deserving of forgiveness, and who am I to decide otherwise?

"The right thing to do," Sheila says back, voice bordering on a hiss. "Would have been to deck him in the face for even suggesting that."

I startle at this. Sheila is being so uncharacteristically angry, eyes frigid and body stone still in her crisp, striped pyjamas. I twist my fingers against the mattress of her bed, folding my hands together under the covers. This is not how I had pictured her spontaneously suggested sleepover to go.

"Sheila, it's okay."

I shuffle closer and reach over to put a hand on her knee. Sheila pulls back so sharply that she almost knocks over the bowl of caramelised popcorn in her lap.

"No, Arden. It's not okay." she replies when she turns back, still angry. "You can't just be friends with him. He's going to hurt you again."

I frown, feeling agitation stirring in my gut. It is unexpected that she is acting so difficult.

"Hey, you don't know that. You're being unfair."

Sheila only bristles at this like an angry cat, hackles raised and back stiff. Her glare grows even more heated.

"I'm not being unfair, Arden. I'm being logical. You know what he's like, what that whole crowd is like. They don't consider us important enough to really care about."

I am shaking my head at this before she has even finished talking.

"Just because they're popular, that doesn't automatically make them bad people, Sheila."

"Why can't you just trust me on this?" she snaps back. "You play with fire and you get burnt. What do you like so much about pain?"

I sit back, leaning my back against the wall and averting my eyes away from her. My heart trembles, heavy and bothered.

"They care too much about everything." she continues, words still blunt and raised. "They do whatever they want when it comes to us. We don't mean anything to them."

"That doesn't even make sense. Liam's different now."

There is a moment of thick quiet where Sheila seems to falter. I look back up to see that her mouth has popped open, before she blinks and appears to regain her composure.

"Oh, I forgot that this was just about Liam." she says coolly. "It's always just about Liam for you, isn't it?"

Her voice is clipped with disdain, her face hard and withdrawn. My spine stiffens, gripped with something baring too much teeth to only be hurt.

"Isn't that what we're talking about right now?" I ask.

My voice comes out softer than I had hoped it to. Sheila's expression is unreadable. She releases a breath, sitting back stiff and tense. The short distance between us feels as long as a mile.

"You never even asked what happened at the party, after you left with him. Left me alone. They were playing spin the bottle, Arden."

Some of the fire has left Sheila's eyes, mellowing out the shadows of her features. I expect her to continue, but it seems that she is waiting for a response, waiting for me to piece together the pieces of a puzzle that I cannot even see.

"So?"

"Delilah was playing spin the bottle."

"What are you trying to say?"

Sheila makes an aggravated noise from the back of her throat. She picks up the bowl of popcorn in her lap, and places it down by her bedside table.

"Maybe you should leave."

"What? Sheila-"

"Come find me when you remember how to use your head."

It takes me a moment to realise that she is serious. She keeps her face stubbornly downcast, refusing to meet my eyes. I swallow and push myself off from her bed in one careful, deliberate movement. I put my rolled-up socks back on and grab my bag, shrugging my coat on. These small actions punctuate the bleak silence in her room. Staggering it, accentuating it into something more prominent and tense than it is.

As I pad over to her bedroom door, I allow myself one last look back at Sheila. She looks small on her bed, huddled under her blankets with her knees brought up to her chin. She stares at her kneecaps and says nothing. I close the door behind me on my way out.

The streets are mostly clear of traffic, but the bus ride home seems to last an eternity. The house is empty and dark when I slot in the front key. Mum must not be coming home tonight. My steps are heavy and weighted when I make my way into my room. I slump down onto my bed, concentrating on letting my shoulders go lax and on breathing in nice and deep.

My phone pings quietly with a notification. I check it instantly. Maybe Sheila still cares enough to check on whether I made it home safe.

Liam: what days do you work?

Something lonely and sad spreads itself out in my chest, yawning as it stretches and makes room for itself by shoving everything else into the corners. I sprawl my arm over to drop my phone down onto the carpet. I peek over the side. My phone does not land face down, so I have to reach down to flip it over. I go to sleep uneasy, thoughts cluttered and heart hurt, feelings smudged all over the place like bleeding watercolour.

I reply to Liam's text the next morning. 

☾☆♔

thank you for reading! I hav uni finals in three weeks, so updates won't be weekly until then. I promise I'll be a lot more active on wattpad, and try to wrap this story up during my break tho :")