Tallulah Waters 🌙 Iko (minorglitch) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2019-11-23 12:10:00 |
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Tallulah had won a trip to Cancun! Cancun! Samuel had needed to Google where that even was, but he knew it was warm and tropical and there were beaches and she'd won a trip for two which hopefully meant that she would invite him to come along with her and they could have tropical beaches and kissing. Together. He was, needless to say, a little excited at the prospect. So when Tally had asked him to come by the salon that afternoon, Samuel hadn't thought anything of it. He'd visited her there before, of course- between her other appointments- and he even happily stopped by Sweet Nothings to pick up one of her favorite cinnamon streusel muffins on the way. Waving a cheerful hello to the receptionist, Samuel made his way back to Tally's suite. The door was ajar, but he stopped and knocked on the doorframe anyway, holding up the Sweet Nothings bag with a smile. "Special delivery!" -- Girlfriend. Tallulah could not stop thinking about that word, and all that it meant. She had told herself - promised - at the beginning of all of this that it was fun and uncommitted. Despite her sister's warnings, she had jumped into something, and she hadn't wanted it to have labels. That was probably foolhardy, and her fear or hurting Samuel was likely coming to fruition. She had told him that she trusted few people. Told him that she didn't always see herself as deserving of his kindness. You'd probably be better off not getting mixed up in the utter mess that is Tallulah Waters. She had warned him. She had been pacing the small space that was her suite, biting the inside of her cheek as her feet carried her aimlessly across the space. Her heart was in her toes, her stomach churned into a mess. Winning a trip to Cancun may have been the worst thing to happen to her all year. As he knocked and peeked into the suite, holding up that bag that presumably held some muffin or cookie or sweet, Tallulah couldn't even bring a smile to her lips. She wanted to scream, "You can come in." Her voice wavered a little as she said it, but nothing about this felt OK. She wasn't supposed to feel anything at all. -- For all the excitement that he felt, it seemed that Tallulah held very little of it. Maybe she was just still in shock, though. It was a big deal, after all - a trip to another country was no small thing! Samuel could easily see how that would be something that would take some time to get used to. Stepping into the suite, with a smile still plastered to his face, he only barely refrained from skipping over and pressing a kiss to her cheek in greeting. Instead, he just offered his perpetually cheerful, "Hello! You look lovely today." Which… even if she wasn't smiling, it was still true. -- Samuel did not seem to take immediate note of her mood, or attribute it to a them issue. That was just it, wasn't it? There wasn't really a them. They had been dating, certainly, and Tally would be the last to refute that. It just wasn't supposed to be a relationship. She hadn't been clear enough. She'd let herself get too comfortable…too swept up in enjoying those moments to realize…it was no longer what she had planned. What she had prepared herself for. She must have looked a little dumbfounded when he gave her that compliment, but she brushed off the way that it made her heart flip, "Samuel…" she gave a sigh, running her fingers through her hair, and shook her head. None of the feelings she had seemed to make much sense, but her stomach was knotted and nauseated nevertheless, "I think…there's been a miscommunication about this." She gestured between the two of them, heart clenched, "It was just supposed to be fun." -- For a moment, he thought this meant the bag he'd brought her from Sweet Nothings. Which, alright, he hadn't asked her if she wanted anything. But if she was really so displeased about a cinnamon streusel muffin, he'd just take it home, himself. But the tone had changed. He'd opened his mouth to say something more, but instead pressed his lips together as he tried to process the unexpected response to his compliment. (Not that Tally was always very good at accepting compliments, and he knew that, but… she'd gotten better, over the last few weeks.) "I… I'm not sure I understand, Tally. We are fun." -- "Yeah, but you just told the whole of Dunhaven that I'm your girlfriend!" the words escaped her in a frantic rush, and she realized that she probably sounded hysterical. She pressed her palms over her eyes because they felt like they were burning, and she was not going to cry. She wasn't sad. She was angry. She was upset. She was not going to cry. She dropped her hands, taking a deep inhale. "I distinctly don't ever remember us having that conversation," she tried to control her voice, and she was successful, though if anything, it made her tone go a little flat...almost cold. -- "Because you are!" He wasn't meaning for this to turn into an argument, of course, though his fingers clutched a little tighter in the small brown paper bag he was holding. And it was just silly to think that Tallulah wasn't his girlfriend at this point, right? They'd been dating for almost two months now! A pause, his tone quieter with, "Aren't you?" So maybe they hadn't had a direct conversation about it, like she was now insisting. Should he ask her now? He opened his mouth again, but once more thought better of it. "But we… we've been going on dates and we talk every day." Samuel felt, suddenly, like something very important was slipping out from between his fingers. "We… we kiss a lot, and we went to prom, and we wore costumes together for halloween, and…" Wasn't that what boyfriends and girlfriends did? How had he missed- messed up- something so obvious? -- She shook her head, a denial, resistant to those words. You are, aren't you? No. No she was not. "We have been going on dates. I'm not denying that," she felt it was an important clarification, "But we never made any promises to commitment." There had always been a distinction in her head. A line drawn. Something that let her know that this was still OK and safe because it wasn't something that could hurt her. Tallulah's emotions were so jumbled that she couldn't separate one from the next. She could not - would not - allow herself more than what she'd accepted this to be. She was not the kind of person that let others get close, and to be in a relationship, you had to do that. You had to let someone else see the messy parts of you. The only thing that terrified her more was what undoubtedly came next. The leaving. "I don't know that I can promise anyone that, Samuel," she admitted, voice quiet. It was, at least, the truth. Faithfulness was easy to promise. Emotional availability, truthfulness, and proper communication, all things necessary for a healthy relationship, were not cards she held in her hands. They might not even be in her deck. -- Maybe she'd never made any promises of commitment, but they had been there, for him. Unspoken, yes, but felt just as keenly. A little place of residence in his heart that he had opened up for her, without ever being asked. Without ever being wanted. But, Samuel supposed, that was his problem in all of this. And maybe it was good, even, that he was finding it out now, before his heart was any more vulnerable than it felt already. It wasn't as if he had years of experience to draw on with all of this. Tallulah was- had been- his first real girlfriend. Well, no. She hadn't been anything to him. That was the point. Maybe, Samuel thought, this would have been easier if he, like Ron, had the emotional depth of a teaspoon. Or maybe he did, because he couldn't seem to grasp where everything had gone so irrevocably wrong. He just knew that it was his own fault. He'd said those words on the network, after all. She wasn't his girlfriend. She didn't want to be his girlfriend. That was the end of it. Samuel set the bag from Sweet Nothings on a nearby table, exhaled heavily, and gave a single nod. "Have… have a good afternoon, Miss Waters." Before the tears could come, he turned and left. -- She felt too much. Unlike Iko, who wore her emotions on her sleeve and so deeply threw herself into her every feeling, Tallulah didn't want them. If she could have erased them entirely, she would. She was desperate not to feel because right now, her heart felt like it was on fire…like what little that had been left of it was burning to ash. She watched him walk away. She made herself do it. She watched until his tall figure disappeared out the front door of Miss Belle's, and she lost sight of him around the corner of the building. She told herself that it was OK. That it was better that way. That he would be better off without her, because she had the touch of destruction. Spine straight, Tallulah walked to the door of her suite and shut it firmly, ignoring any looks that she received. When the door was closed and locked, she turned and pressed her back to it. She slid to the ground, her knees buckling to her chest as tears burned in her eyes. She pressed her hands over her mouth, and finally…she screamed. |