LOG: Hudson/Detta FORMAT: Log WHO: Hudson and Detta WHEN: November 1976 WHERE: Quidditch Pitch WHAT: Sigh NOTES: Why do I do these things to myself.
There were moments in life, sometimes, where you knew you were making a terrible decision. Intelligent people were sometimes able to stop themselves in the middle of these moments and take the necessary time to carefully gauge whether or not they were making the right choice. Hudson Bones, however, had always been kind of an idiot.
It wasn't that he was unhappy with Detta. There were moments, sometimes, when she seemed so infinitely sad that he felt utterly unprepared to give her the things she seemed to need. Even in those moments he liked her, more than he liked pretty much any girl he'd been involved with. But that brought a different sort of terror, one that had been amplified with the latest owl from Amelia.
His sister, like every Bones, really had meant well when she told him that she wanted to meet this girl he'd been dating for so long. His parents, too, had hinted as much over the summer, and Edgar had even talked to her over the journals. It was when, however, that she suggested it would make a good one year anniversary to bring her to meet the full family that Hudson shit his emotional pants.
He'd had a girlfriend for a year.
A year was a long time.
And now his family wanted to meet her.
So, he did what any panicked teenage boy would do, upon realizing that his family was basically sizing up their potential daughter-in-law. He decided it was time to break up.
It was not lost on him, as he waited on the quidditch stands for her, that he was being kind of a dick.
Detta, for her part, was still regularly baffled at the fact that Hudson was her boyfriend. Normal people would likely get over this sensation by the time you'd been with someone for ten months, but Detta was not exactly normal in the ways she dealt with social interaction. That coupled with her naïveté was essentially a recipe for disaster (as it often was for her) on this occasion.
She made her way to the quidditch stands, hands tucked inside the sleeves of her sweater, with an uncharacteristically calm smile spreading across her face at the sight of Hudson. "Hi," she greeted simply as she sat beside him, one hand automatically leaving the safe, warmth of her sleeve and reaching for his hand.
He swallowed, feeling vaguely like he had a quaffle in his throat as he turned his eyes to the ground. "Hey." He stuffed his hands quickly in his pocket. "We should talk."
God, he hated hearing those words leave his lips.
Detta may not have ever had a boy say those words to her, but she wasn't dim enough to not notice when he wouldn't meet her eyes and wouldn't hold her hand. The anxiety that threatened to overwhelm her in that moment was immediate.
"Alright," she said in a small voice, both hands back inside her sleeves and her eyes turned to the ground.
"Did your classes go alright today," he asked, delaying the inevitable.
"Mmhm, classes were fine," Detta replied in not much more than a mumble, her hands twisting in her sleeves uncomfortably. "Yours?"
"Yeah, they were fine." He paused. "Listen, I've been thinking about something. We've kind of been dating for a while now and I'm... I'm just not sure we're really ready for things to get at serious as I think they're getting."
Detta felt like her heart had just stopped or dropped out of her body completely or something equally as painful. She could feel her hands starting to shake with anxiety. Of all things, she did not want Hudson to see her meltdown. Not now. Not ever, but definitely not now. She held tight to the insides if her sleeves, trying to stop the shaking.
"Oh," was all she could manage to say just then.
"I don't want to hurt you," he insisted, feeling a little panicked as she started to shake. "Just... We're really young. And I worry that we still have a lot of growing up to do before we're ready for something more serious."
Detta just nodded, now staring at her covered hands. She wanted more than anything just then to leave. Inevitably she felt tears starting to well up in her eyes that she immediately tried to blink back.
"Please don't cry." The rules of break-ups said not to touch the girl but she was crying and before he could make an intelligent decision, his arms were around her. "It isn't you. At all. You're brilliant. I just... I'm not ready."
Detta wanted to lean into him more than just about anything, but she forced herself not to. She pulled away and stood, hugging herself, one hand angrily wiping her cheeks. "Sorry, I just- ..." She took a deep breath, her hands were shaking worse now and she felt sick. She couldn't finish the sentence and shook her head instead.
He shoved his hands back in his pocket. "It's okay."
She couldn't look at him when she said in barely above a whisper, "I have to go."
"Okay," he said quietly.
She hesitated for a moment, desperately hoping he might take it back. With a shake of her head, physically convincing herself that this was happening and she didn't want to fall apart in front of him, she turned to leave. She clutched her arms around herself tighter.