Extra Ordinary (Riddle Era)

Chapter 33

Lucy felt sick when she left the library. She felt tired. She felt... wrong. And, perhaps most strangely of all, she felt uncertain. She wouldn't have classified herself as exactly a confident person, but she also wouldn't have called herself meek. She simply... was. And that was that. Uncertainty happened, but infrequently. After all, she knew herself. She knew people in general. And, even when she wasn't certain if she'd gotten something right, it usually didn't bother her. Because she knew that if she'd already done it, then there wasn't much she could do to change it. So there was no sense worrying about it. No sense being uncertain.

Tonight, however, she felt... well she felt stuck. She felt caught. She felt like a piece of her had snagged in the library with Tom and hadn't managed to come with her back down to the kitchens. She felt like perhaps she shouldn't have gone looking. Perhaps she shouldn't have told him. Perhaps she should have set the book down and hurried away before he had the chance to ask any questions.

Because she shouldn't have said those words, no matter how true they were.

He didn't want me.

It was true. Painfully so. Horribly, hurtfully, inevitably so.

It was true. And it had been since long before Lucy had realized it.

It was true. And even if it still stung sometimes, at least it didn't eat her alive anymore.

It was true. And it was about the worst thing to say to someone still looking. Someone still hoping. Someone who still had a chance. Someone for whom it might prove to be false.

Especially if that someone was someone like Tom.

It wasn't something Lucy thought he would ever admit to, of course, but she had noticed the way Tom spent seemingly all his time looking for something. Looking for somewhere to belong. Someone to want him.

It was a subtle thing, visible in the way he always chose the right words. The way his smile was always brightest when people were watching him. Smiling at him. Caring what he thought and said and felt. It was in the way his breath always hitched, just the tiniest little bit, the way he always paused, had to think, had to consider, when she offered him the kind of kindnesses that said she cared. It was in the thank you he had given her tonight. That had been just a little too meaningful. A little too heavy. A little too hopeful.

It reminded her of her father. The way he had always wanted everyone to want him. But he had never wanted to want them back. Of course, Lucy hoped Tom could do more than that. Be more than that. Be better than that. Because what her father had always failed to realize was that wanting was useless when it wasn't reciprocated. That wanting slipped sideways towards resentment and anger and pain when it didn't feel wanted back. That wanting would never amount to anything unless it was given something more to feed on. Unless it saw itself in the mirror. Unless it was allowed to turn into something else.

It was why Lucy was always careful to make sure every person she spoke to, every life she touched, felt as wanted as she could make them. Just on the off chance that it might matter to them. Because she shouldn't have said it to Tom, but it was still true. So terribly, horrible true: Lucy knew how it felt to want someone. To want someone so desperately it had felt like her world was caving with the weight of it. And she knew how it felt to have them not want her back.

It shouldn't have bothered her anymore. Really, most of the time, it didn't. Her father had made his choice. And he hadn't chosen Lucy. That was that. An ending. A closed curtain. A slammed door. She was better off, she knew, with him out of her life. Because anyone who could so easily, so callously, leave her behind, wasn't really worth keeping around anyway.