Chapter 40: We Both Were Just Stupid
•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•✾•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•
But refused to believe that. The hell he doesn’t...I laughed, an involuntary burst of noise that echoed. "Okay, sure."
"I don’t."
"Damien."
"You clearly think I do."
"I don’t just think it, I have proof! You made a list! A printed, formatted, laminated list! Rules that state no unnecessary interaction, that’s not a feeling! That’s a document!"
"That wasn’t—"
"You looked at me on move-in day like I was something stuck to the bottom of an expensive shoe!"
His jaw shifted slightly. "T...that’s not what that was."
"And the first time we met...you and your friends were rude to me cause I made a mistake. You stared at me like I was the most boring problem you’d encountered all week after I apologized four times for spilling coffee on you! And you made fun of me for not being able to afford a replacement, like I was some goddamn peasant!"
"You spilled coffee on a thousand dollar shirt, though."
"THAT IS NOT THE POINT!"
My voice rang out with enough force to fill the room, and for a moment, everything went quiet. Outside, the city continued on, but inside, the apartment was still.
For the first time, I saw Damien caught off guard...genuinely not composed, just a guy in a room, looking at me, unprepared for what I was saying.
His eyes didn’t leave mine as I let weeks of bottled feelings spill out without a filter.
"You have a problem with literally everything I do," I said, softer now but still sure of myself. "The food I cook, the music I play, even the way I exist in the space. You act like I’m some inconvenience assigned to your address because the universe messed up the waiting list. Like I’m the scholarship kid in the wrong building and you’re just waiting for someone to pick me up. Just admit it, you don’t want someone like me near you. You want me gone."
Something flashed across Damien’s face, quick and complex, gone before I could fully catch it. Something that wasn’t cold or composed or any of his usual defenses.
"You think I want you to move out?" he asked quietly.
"Yes," I said. "That was the impression I got from the laminated list and the one-word commands."
"I thought you hated me."
His straightforward admission knocked the breath out of me, and I stared at him, struck dumb.
"What?"
𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂
"At the café," he elaborated carefully, like he was walking over a delicate topic he’d been mulling over for a while. "You avoided me after that coffee incident. Every time I showed up, you handed my order off to someone else before I could even get to the counter."
"I was just being professional! You looked at me like I was some bug on the sidewalk! I only did that so I wouldn’t smack you and lose my job."
There was a beat it silence after that.
"When you moved in," he continued, "You seemed uncomfortable around me from the start. I thought the rules would give you space and clarity, make things less complicated."
I processed this with my mouth slightly agape. "You thought handing me a laminated list of prohibitions, including ’no attempts at friendship’ would make me feel comfortable?"
For a moment, he looked like he was hearing his own plan echoed back to him and reconsidering it.
"It made sense at the time," he offered.
"Your brain is broken," I told him, honestly concerned. "Something isn’t connecting properly in there."
"I...I’m not very good with people."
I stared at him, really seeing him. And suddenly, I almost believed him. All the stares I’d thought were icy judgments, the corrections I’d perceived as disdain—maybe they were something else entirely.
The silence, the rules, the odd, twisted care disguised as irritation because he had no other way to express it.
"You thought you were helping," I said slowly.
"Yes."
"By ignoring me every day."
His jaw tightened. "That wasn’t my intention."
"What was your intention?"
He paused for a moment. "To not make things worse."
I rubbed my hands down my face and hid them for a second, trying to gather myself. "I genuinely can’t tell if you’re incredibly smart or uniquely, profoundly bad at this."
"That’s fair."
"It’s not a compliment, by the way."
"I know."
"The protein shake thing," I said suddenly as it hit me. "When you said there was food in the fridge, that was you trying to be—"
"Yes."
"That was you trying to be—"
"Yes."
I dropped my hands. "You couldn’t just say that?"
"I wasn’t sure how."
The silence between us changed. It wasn’t heavy or tense; it was softer and uncertain, not hostile.
I narrowed my eyes at him, but the anger I felt was softer now. I still felt it, but it had changed shape under this new understanding.
I was still reeling from the fact that he wasn’t trying to be rude to me or anything, he was actually just trying to make me who he thought hated him... comfortable? In his own weird way?
I was a psychology major and even I was confused as to his thought process.
I looked away first, glancing at the window where the city lights were twinkling against the darkening sky, trying to find something to say about everything that had just spilled out between us.
"You still kissed me," I finally said, quietly, not as an accusation but just acknowledging the fact that was out there now.
The silence that followed was heavy with meaning.
Then he replied simply, "Yes."
One word. Clear and straightforward, and beneath it was something raw and honest that I hadn’t seen from him in this way before.
My heart raced, and I focused on the window, swallowing hard.
"Why?" I asked before I could think better of it.
The apartment held that question, heavy in the air between us.
When I glanced back, Damien was looking at me. Not with the cold assessment I’d come to expect, not with an unreadable expression. Just looking, steady and sincere, like he was weighing something.
Like whatever was waiting behind those blue eyes had been there for a while and was considering whether now was the time to let it out.
And that look, somehow, impossibly...was more unsettling than every glare he’d ever given me combined.