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The phone goes to voicemail again.
The life of an adventurer is busy. The life of a fashion designer even more so. The life of a queen most of all.
The life of a senior in high school… not so much.
Not for Carlos, at least.
Other than the robotics team and Dude, he lives an empty life. Ever since his break-up with Jane, his world seemed to narrow to graduation. If he could just get out of here and join his friends out in life, everything will be fine again and he won’t feel so old and lost anymore.
Isn’t it crazy to think like that? He has to grow up to feel young?
But each passing day immersed in the humdrum of the school that once excited him, he watches his ex-best girl consume herself with every extracurricular under the sun while he idles his hours away half as busy and just as miserable.
That’s probably why when he finds the girl that dumped him crying in the chem lab, he can’t even find it in himself to enjoy it.
“Jane?”
She only lifts her face from her arms enough to show him her wide blue eyes, tinged red and watery by the weight of her sobs. The black veil of her glossy hair cinches the tragic look together. So fucking beautiful even in the depths of her despair, it isn’t even fair.
“Hey,” she croaks.
Carlos doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing as he inches further into the room towards the woman who tore his heart in two. All he knows is that she looks twice as awful as he feels and no one has called him back today.
“Wanna… what’s wrong?” he asks, clearing his throat awkwardly as he sits on the stool beside hers.
She rolls her cheek along her arm to look up at him with the most heart-wrenching face, pink lips twisted in a rueful smile. He quickly looks away from the strip of skin between her sweater vest and her pleated skirt.
Her hipbone looks like it still might be the shape of his palm.
“God, Carlos, I wish I could tell you.”
He wishes he could walk out of here, away from her.
“If not me, then who?” he says instead, because he knows they’re in the same boat: the youngest in their friend group, left behind after graduation and then left behind by each other. Besides her spacecase roommate Ally, Jane’s closest friend is her planner.
And Carlos’s closest friend is a dog.
She bites her lip, contemplating his question while he is suddenly contemplating her lip. He used to love kissing her, would still probably love kissing her, or listening to her talk a mile a minute, or watching her mouth vocabulary words to herself while she crams for a test.
“I- oh, this is going to be terrible… I-“
She sucks in a heavy breath, letting it out in a great huff as she sits up straight on her stool.
“Do you… do you ever feel like you’re missing out on life?”
Mal tutors her in magic once a month and, although Jane’s focus and specialty is glamour and transformation, Carlos wonders for a moment if she’s recently learned to read minds in the year they’ve been apart.
“Is that what’s got you all, y'know, weepy?” he asks, shoving his hands in his pockets to stop himself from reaching for her.
Jane turns towards the massive classroom windows, pouring light over her and all the glistening lab equipment until she bears an uncanny resemblance to an angel.
“It’s stupid,” she says, still-wet cheeks suddenly turning red.
Carlos can’t help his grin.
“Well, now I’ve gotta know.”
Jane rolls her eyes, big and blue and still-wet too. She wipes her cheek and says, “You can’t tell anyone.”
He echoes his own sentiment from earlier. “If not you, then who?”
It’s a lonely thing to say and she must recognize that, because she speaks quickly, not letting the admission linger between them like he’d kind of hoped that it would.
“Mia and Ariana were talking in the locker room about how far they’ve gone before and even Ally chimed in and I just felt so- so- so embarrassed, I guess, that I saidwestillhavesex.”
She buries her face in her hands, shielding herself from the surely cartoonish expression plastered across his face. Carlos can feel his own jaw dropping.
“It was so shitty for me to say,” she goes on babbling, dropping back into her stool as her face gets pinker and pinker, “but I’m just so sick of not measuring up and being left out and- and- and…”
She sucks in a heavy breath and lets her body sag with the weight of its release.
“And I’m sorry.”
“It’s cool,” he says even though it’s not cool, obviously. He should probably correct himself, but the next words out of his mouth are correcting her instead. “We’ve never had sex though.”
Jane makes a pathetic sound, dropping her hands to look at him incredulously.
“I know that, Carlos.”
“Don’t act like I’m the one not making sense.”
“It’s just so stupid! Why should I care whether or not people are passing me up?” Jane huffs, crossing her arms and glaring at the blackboard. “Who’s business is it how far I’ve gone?”
“Jane-“
“What if I’m not ready? Huh? What if I don’t want to?”
She’s standing now, working herself into a tizzy as she jams a finger into his sternum. She used to do this all the time, compare herself to everyone and everything and make herself miserable.
“Jane-“
“It’s not even that weird. I only just turned eighteen. What—were we supposed to be doing, y’know, that at just sixteen?”
“Jane!”
“I mean, yeah, now I… I’m ready, but it’s not…” She trails off and there’s a sickeningly hopeful look in her eyes when she looks at him again, eyelashes batting as she bites her lip. “Not unless… you want-“
It’s almost like he’s frozen in place, eyes consuming the display and the longing and the intoxicating possibility of somebody wanting him in a loud feedback loop of eyes lips eyes hips eyes waist lips eyes eyes hips hipshipships.
Those pretty lips part, chin tilted up to him like a soft pink offering. And, fuck, does he want to accept.
“It…” she murmurs, blue eyes fixed somewhere below his eyes, “it doesn’t have to… mean anything.”
It’s like a slap in the face.
She winces as soon as she says it. Carlos bites the inside of his cheek to catch his truly cruel laugh before it bursts from his throat.
“Are you serious?” he has to ask with the least vitriol he can manage. “Jane, we broke up because you-“
“I know, I know,” she says, deflating in an instant, blue eyes losing all their suggestion. “But you know I didn’t want to.”
“It was your idea!” he throws in her face before he can stop himself from rehashing the past. It was junior year. They’re seniors now. It might as well have been ancient history. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t-“
She shrinks, lips quivering and chin puckering as her eyes water.
“No, Jane, don’t-“
It’s too late, of course, and the tears spill over and he feels like shit for making her feel like shit.
As much as the Isle sucked, it was never this complicated.
His only instinct left is to hug her. He used to sleep in a pile of limbs and people every night of his life. But he hasn’t hugged anyone since Evie came to visit over winter break. The result is probably the most awkward hug of his life, but Jane rises from her stool to stand right between his legs and melt into him regardless, like not a single day has passed since he last wrapped her in his letterman with him.
“I’m sorry,” he says into the otherwise empty classroom, chin resting on the crown of her head. “I just- I miss Jay and Mal and Evie. And I miss…”
Her arms squeeze him tightly, pressing her up against him more closely than anyone has been in so long. She practically molds to him, cushioning every hard plane of him with the soft curves of her, even as she soaks his shoulder with her tears.
“I’m sorry, too,” she hiccups into his shirt, “that I did this to us.”
Carlos brings his brain back to the conversation at hand. “Nah. It had to happen. You knew you weren’t ready for a relationship and I’m proud of you for knowing that.”
He isn’t, he hates it, and a childish part of him hates her for it, but it’s the words he tells himself whenever that ugly feeling rises in him. The words must work on her self-hatred too, because the hiccups wind down to sniffles.
“I’m really glad you found me in here,” she says. “I kind of thought you hated me all this time.”
“I kind of thought I did too,” he admits.
She squeezes him one last time before stepping back. It takes everything in him to let her go.
“I’m sorry for… I don’t know, dropping this all on you, I guess. But, y’know, if not you, then who else?”
It’s really validating to hear out of her mouth and it affirms his worst fantasies, the codependent daydreams he only indulges in his darkest night. And, suddenly, that look is back in her red eyes. Carlos does a cost benefit analysis in half a heartbeat.
He’d rather lose her twice than only love her once.
Later, he’ll claim not to know who grabbed who first, but that’s a lie. It was him. It is always him.