love like fools ➙ glee

fifty-two ; we are young.

Alicia was quiet for a long time.

She heard familiar tense breathing on the other end of the line. If she closed her eyes tightly enough, she could pretend this was like any of their innocent phone calls from last year. After all, her habit of ringing him up whenever she was forced to confront the slightest inconvenience had been unstoppable. And the same for him, whenever faced with a particularly arduous English assignment. 

But it wasn't last year. This wasn't anything like last year. And there was a reason for that.

Time passed. Seconds, minutes, hours. It didn't matter. "Hastings," he repeated, sounding slightly more desperate. Even now, she couldn't think his name.

Alicia shut her eyes tightly, shaking her head to herself. Lyrics came to mind as her stomach twisted into painful knots. It really hurt you so bad hurting me, you really came to me for sympathy. "What do you want?" she asked. Her voice was hardly audible.

She heard a deep inhale. "I suppose I . . . needed to hear your voice. It's been months."

"I wonder why," Alicia said flatly.

She could practically envision his wincing. He'd grown ridiculously familiar to her, during the summer months last year and ever since his dramatic return on Valentine's Day. She'd memorized the sound of his voice, his crooked smile, and the way he'd whisper her first name during particularly soft moments. No amount of nicotine had made her forget, apparently.

"I know you're angry with me," he said slowly. Alicia huffed in disbelief. "I realize that was clearly not one of my more breathtaking moments. Really, I played the part of traitorous almost lover remarkably well, but I couldn't quite convince myself of the performance. You, though. You were effortless to convince."

Alicia set her jaw. She stood from her chair, unable to breathe in the comfort of Finn's usual scent and associate it with this conversation. "Are you seriously asking me for sympathy right now?"

A pause. "I . . . suppose that's what it seems like, yes."

She wanted to throw something. Shout. Break glass. Something, anything, to get rid of this burning sensation in her chest. "Do you have-- God, do you have any idea what you did to me? You were my-- my-- you mattered to me." It took effort to keep her voice low, but she didn't wish to alert Arabella and Mariana.

She needed to endure this on her own. 

"While this may come as a surprise to you, that wasn't one-sided. But you have to consider where I was coming from. You have to think about how I saw the situation. I needed an escape, and you-- you wouldn't let me go that easily." 

"Are you calling me clingy now? That's cute. There wasn't much of you to cling onto, though."

"No." His voice was colder than she'd expected. So unlike his perpetually arrogant drawl. The same drawl that she associated with catlike posture, denim jackets that reeked of Prada cologne, and designer boots that cost more than her house. "I knew you cared about me. But I knew you cared about Finn more. I was doing you a favor."

Alicia inhaled sharply. Disbelief was surely rippling across her features as she stopped mid-pace through her room, latching onto the frame of her bed to steady herself. "You genuinely believe that you were helping?"

There was another pause. It almost gave her long enough to recollect herself before he responded. "I wanted to believe that. But upon several months of reflection and increasingly horrible life choices, it occurred to me that perhaps my act was . . . selfish."

"Perhaps?" Alicia hissed.

He sighed. So dramatic, so self-obsessed, so blind. "It wasn't fair, what I did to you, Hastings. You were . . . important."