James, too, glanced at his watch and opened his mouth to say that yes, they were getting close by now. But he quickly closed it, hearing - what was that, reluctance? - in Katherine’s voice. He held her gaze for a moment, realizing she was frowning and that, he too, was not all that happy about her leaving and that his brow was indeed starting to crease as his brows started to furrow. In that split second, he realized that he didn’t really want her to go. Not only did he not want her to leave, he very much wanted her to stay.
But before his thoughts got any further, her lips were pressed against his, and he couldn’t think at all. His lips simply reacted. It didn’t last long, no. A couple seconds at the most. But in those few seconds, it seemed that two things happened at once. Most alarmingly, James would swear that he felt his heart skip. It almost hurt, but it was over just as quickly as it had come. Harder to get rid of were the butterflies that seemed to have found their way into his stomach.
That was as far as it got though. Very suddenly, his brain seemed to scream at him that this was Katherine. She was his friend, right? Just his friend? That’s what he’d been telling Bastien this past year anyway. In fact that’s what he’d been telling himself for this past year. And, right, that’s just why he got irritated when Bastien made some stupid comment about her being his girlfriend or some rubbish like that. And it wasa stupid comment.
… Right?
Before he let himself answer that, he shut down his train of thought and pulled away from the kiss. Well, more accurately, he tore away from it, almost leaping to his feet. He felt quite tense, really. His heart was pounding in his chest and his breathing felt too shallow. His hands had balled themselves into fists and in somewhere deep in his consciousness he knew he was scared. Terrified, actually. Because just the smallest bit of him knew exactly what it was that he’d just felt.
Closer to the surface, he was angry. She’d turned him down dozens of times in the past two years, and now what? This? On her last day. Literally, in the last minutes that they were likely to see each other for the next year or more, she did this. Just when he thought that perhaps he was comfortable with the idea of just being her friend. Fucking god damned right that pissed him off.
James could only stare at her for a moment, brow furrowed and that oh-so-familiar scowl set on his face. It seemed that his jaw had cemented itself shut until finally, in a moment that normally would have called for a good deal of shouting, he could only breathe one word: “Why?”