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Carla.
Of course it’s her. It was the first thought that had emerged and subsequently been discarded as don’t be pathetic paranoid Rebe, she’s going away . She’s gone off to forget about every fucking tragedy that happened to her in this school and every adjoined hell. She went through a fair share; a greater one than Rebeka, maybe. She has to admit that. Then again, she likes to think that karma works.
Carla had caused half of her own tragedies.
But she’s gone. It’s not like Rebeka and Samuel will ever get back together - but it should be a lot easier to get over him if she’s not here. With him. Alone. However.
She never feels quite as inadequate as when she’s next to her. Even the air is different - it’s hers. Magnolia and old money and elegant crimes.
It’s like everything about her is better, even when it’s infinitely worse.
Then she talks to Guzmán. She’d lost her favourite hoodie - neon green, graphic, cutouts - and obviously, she wasn’t going to go to Samuel’s apartment, but she thinks it’s the most probable location considering she’d searched everywhere else. So, she’d asked Guzmán to do some digging when he goes visit his friend. That’s what guys like Guzmán and Samuel do, right? Hang out, drink beer on the couch? She’s not sure anymore.
It feels like she didn’t know him at all.
“I couldn’t find it,” Guzmán says, eyeballs practically spinning backwards to point inside his head, that’s how much he doesn’t want to look at her. Rebe would snort, if there wasn’t a freezing coat settling all over her limbs.
“Did you try the closet?” she says.
“N- Yeah,” he coughs. “Yeah, couldn’t find it.”
“It’s my favourite hoodie, you couldn’t even give it more than five seconds? I’m pretty sure you could’ve just asked. He’d probably stitch an apology letter onto the sleeve.” Samuel’s so sorry.
It makes it worse.
Guzmán chuckles nervously, finally meeting her eye, and that’s when she’s done being subtle.
“Cut the crap, Guzmán.”
He repeats that stupid fucking hesitant laugh, a little too high-pitched to sound manly, and she wants to shake him by the shoulders, especially when he has the audacity to try and deflect. “What?”
He’s a terrible liar. Just like her, way too shitty at concealing his emotions for it to work. She still tries, but the attempt at conversational comes out biting and, without a doubt, jealous : “She’s there, isn’t she?”
Guzmán looks a bit like he has another W-question on the top of his tongue, but his gaze goes over her face briefly and then drops, resigned, awkward but at least honest. “Yeah.”
“How long?” She doesn’t know what she means; how long she’s been there, how long she’ll be staying, how long it took Samuel to scrap out every remaining bit of his pride and let it go with the wind; how long it took to convince her. (She doesn’t know which answer would be worse.) It’s fucking stupid, because it’s not like she hasn’t known all of this already. Still, it hurts. It hurts and it’s like a third-degree burn or a seeping acid or a bullet right through her heart.
Why would he never fight for her, at least a fraction? He fucking fought against her. One-millionth of everything he’s willing to do for Carla would be enough for her.
(Why does nobody ever?)
“How long have you known?” she establishes, because that’s the one answer she has the chance at getting without actually bursting into tears like a thirteen-year-old at a One Direction concert. If he’s been keeping this from her for more than three days, she’ll just knock Guzmán square in the jaw.
She’d much rather hit someone else.
She’d much rather kiss that someone else . It hurts like a bitch.
“I went over on Monday,” Guzmán murmurs, again, looking at his shoes. “I probably could’ve announced myself.” Her brain starts to fill in details, the worst kind, the kind that will torture her regardless of whether they actually happened during Guzmán’s visit or not. What does it matter? They happened some other time, or will happen, or are happening as of right now when she’s standing here with a lump in her throat- “She was actu-” he interrupts her train of thought by clearing his throat, like he’s the one who’s fucking upset here, and looks at her like a fucking afghan greyhound, big-eyed and snobby and sympathetic. “I’m really sorry, Rebe.”
“It’s fine,” she shakes her head, but obviously, she does the most terrible job of all jobs at pretending. She’s not like her , who could, with her marble-sculpted face, turn everything into an icicle. Including her own heart.
Guzmán hugs her. A single fucking tear falls on his shoulder, and Rebeka wants to slap herself, but she can’t, because that would involve picking herself up from the rock bottom and she’s not quite ready to do that yet. It will happen (it better fucking be sooner than later), but not now. Guzmán’s hug is too comforting; she feels safe. He’s tall and broad.
Samuel wasn’t tall and broad, but she didn’t care. She still felt safe with him. Of course, until it turned out it was all a lie-
“What’s wrong with me?” she says before thinking about her pride at all. She’s pretty sure it’s all gone, the last piece left in one of the moments she saw Samuel staring at Carla during her period of relationship with him and just pretended she didn’t see. At least her and Samuel have that thing in common. (Naturally, it works for him where it doesn't for her.)
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Guzmán says, but he missed a beat, and she knows he’d wanted to say something else initially. He rubs her shoulder comfortingly, but it doesn't help, mostly because he keeps talking. “It’s just- Carla has this power over guys. Not me, we grew up practically siblings, but she’s just - she keeps them by a spell.” He needs a lesson on comfort, flashes through Rebeka’s brain. “Samu’s probably gonna get hurt, and I’m really sorry, but I guess this is just how it’s meant to go.” Fucking terrible. “It’s good if you stay as far away as possible.”
He doesn't have to tell her twice. “Thanks,” Rebeka untangles herself from his spider-limbs, and hopes the sarcasm could be confused with a general bitter-ex mood, even if that’s more pathetic; but, she doesn’t want Guzmán to know that he’s making everything worse. He really is trying. It’s not all his fault that he’s fucking terrible at it.
She wishes Nadia was still there. She’d be a bit better at comfort, maybe, even if she was a bit lackluster with empathy, too: she would, however, probably make Guzmán better in about all of the aspects of his personality. But c’est la vie - Nadia’s in New York, settling in her all-American fancy uni, and the person staying with her high school fling is someone else altogether.
She ponders if Guzmán’s jealous of that, but she also doesn’t care all that much. “I’m gonna go and hit the gym,” she announces, and Guzmán nods at her with understanding. They both work a lot better when they’re not trying to pretend, or sugar-coat.
“Yeah.” He shifts from one foot to the other; it’s a bit laughable, how unsure of himself he gets, the golden-boy gone-rogue, in situations that have to do with broken hearts or anything related to actual life . “And Rebe? It’s really not about you, you’re cool. It’s just that Carla-”
“Yeah, I get it. Bye, Guzmán.”
If he says something stupidly confused or even worse, offended, she doesn’t hear it. She’s blinking away the tears in her eyes while walking.
It’s not that anything’s wrong with her. It’s as simple as Carla just being better. Perfect.
It’s fucking brilliant.
-
The inevitable, yet the more dreaded friend-group run in happens at fucking Cayetana’s house. A more carefree Rebe would laugh at the great amount of situational irony. Anyway: Guzmán’s helping her move into student accommodation, apparently, and she’s supposed to go shopping with Caye later; the blonde was disproportionately excited when Rebeka had asked her to help her pick out some new, a bit more versatile, tops. (It has nothing to do with Samuel or other basic boys’ idea of pretty at all. Okay, whatever. Who cares. She needs a rebound hookup, and those are easier to get when you don’t look like you walked out of a circus.
Who’d think she’d miss Lu’s insults. They were a good distraction, though.)
Anyway: Guzmán was apparently not the only good samaritan who volunteered to carry some couches.
“Coming!” Before she could catalogue the voice, before her stupid slow brain warned her, the door was open in her face and a guy was inside it.
“Oh,” Samuel says dumbly, his dimply, sunbeam smile disappearing instantly when he sees her face. Rebeka’s clearly not in the headspace to talk - her feet have melted in with the ground. (Or maybe she’s just glued to the floor of the apartment-building by a vacant spat-out piece of gum.)
“Hi,” somebody says, and Rebeka realizes it was her only after she’d gone to the sun and back. What’s worse, though: there’s another sun in her presence. It’s blonde and shiny and nudging into statue-Samuel, who, unlike Rebeka, hasn’t had an out-of-body experience and is simply dumbfounded and mute in the doorframe.
There’s a person doing the talking for him. Said person is more digging into his forearm, presumably to get him to move, than affectionately holding it, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still touch.
“Hi,” Samuel says finally, probably due to the french manicure in his skin, and it reaches Rebeka from a different dimension, because all she can look at are those perfect nails and fingers traveling down Samuel’s arm, soon-to-intertwine with his tense claw.
And then- “Hi,” Carla echoes. She sounds a bit more hesitant than normal, quieter, probably apologetic, but she’s also standing tall, her skin is glowing with some stupid fucking product that Rebeka’s probably never even heard of (and if it’s natural - dear god), her hair is smooth and silky, and she’s wearing a croptop. Where the fuck did she get so toned? Rebeka doubts she’s much into working out.
It’s all so fucking unfair.
“I’m here to see Caye,” she says idiotically and wishes the sticky tile would just founder, she would fall down five stories, break all her bones and be left to be scraped off the ground.
She’d like to take a fair few people with her.
“Of course, come in,” Carla says, smiles a little, because she’s perfect, she’s nonchalant , and takes Samuel by the hand to make space so that Rebeka can pass through the door. “Everyone’s in the bedroom. They kinda cracked a wall when taking out a picture.” Carla’s tone is much too friendly for her standards; Rebeka realizes that the wide, teeth-showing smile is nervous, and she wants to miserably laugh at it all, because nervous and whatever-she’s-feeling Carla is still infinitely more composed and just, fucking perfect and welcoming and casual, than half the population of the entire planet combined. “Can Samuel take your jacket?”
“You still use him as a clothes hanger?” Rebeka’s mouth says. Rebeka sees Carla’s eyes, wide and hurt and then narrowed within a split-second, with that fucking little polite smile still in place, and wants to die. Literally. On the spot.
How can she wonder why he picked her, when it’s so blatantly obvious? Anyone would pick Carla.
Her only chance was Carla leaving, and now that’s clearly out of the question.
Samuel coughs awkwardly (angrily), and Carla’s thumb uncurls from where it's still around his wrist and strokes up and down. Rebeka sees how his tension immediately drops.
“No, thanks,” she corrects, hopes her tone was reconciliating/unbothered/whatever-the-fuck-appropriate, and fights the urge to cry or scream or actually die on the spot.
“Great,” Samuel says, still with detectable anger, and now she just wants to slap him.
He’s the last one with a right to be angry.
“Great,” Carla repeats twelve times more convincingly, tilts her head in the direction of the room, and Rebe takes three quick steps to get in front of them and to spare herself any more embarrassment, and more importantly, the sight of Carla’s thumb drawing little circles on the top of Samuel’s hand.
She hates herself for being so weak, but not as much as she hates her and him and them for being so fucking happy while she’s utterly miserable.
-
What hurts perhaps more than how he looks at her is how she looks at him .
In retrospect, Rebeka realizes she’d been a fool: Samuel was head over heels in love with Carla, and she saw it, but she still thought (naively, stupidly; hopefully) that maybe that could change over time. His feelings for Carla would disappear, they’d be washed away in his tiny shower, droplet by droplet, the two of them inside together after they’d had sex; his lips on the back of her neck, so good she couldn’t help but moan.
Deluded, idiot, stupid - of course. How could she even have held that hope? When she knew what he really longed for?
How could she ever compare to Carla?
She knows all that now; she probably always knew, in a way, some hidden and not-stupid and not in-love part of her, unaffected by the rose-tinted glasses (that still couldn’t re-colour the whole truth). Rebeka isn’t stupid, even if she’s been feeling a lot like she is, recently.
So even if it hurts, she was prepared.
What she wasn’t prepared for, is seeing how in love Carla is with Samuel.
She’s sitting on the couch, sipping a lemonade. Caye had disappeared into the bathroom to change, empathetically winking at Rebe that she’ll be quick, but she’s not great at the execution; Guzmán’s masking the crack in the wall with a new picture and Omar is entertaining Rebe with a story she’s not listening to for an obvious reason.
Samuel, she doesn’t know his reason, (revenge for her remark/too in love/doesn’t give a fuck/a combination of the above) is standing back to her, by the window. Front to Carla, who’s sitting on the windowsill.
Her ankles aren’t hooked behind his back; she doesn’t have her arms around his neck; he’s barely standing between her legs. They’re just talking. But they could be, she could have, he could be. Rebeka sees how they’re drawn to each other, how they would fit in like two fucking puzzle pieces.
She sees her fucking laugh.
She’s never seen Carla laugh like this before. She has a dimple and her front teeth are a little too forward. It makes her look better, not worse.
It makes her look better, because she doesn’t look like this normally. It’s almost as if she has an entire side reserved for Samuel; a special, cute, true side. A side entirely different from the ruthlessly attractive, blue-blooded princess guarded by an ice-spitting dragon behind stone castle walls.
Rebeka doesn't have a special secret side like that. With her, you see exactly what you're getting.
She never realized it was wrong.
Carla clears an unruly curl from Samuel’s forehead and her eyes sparkle; not with danger, the magnetic, irresistible siren-like attraction, but with charm. Affection. Tenderness.
Love.
Acid rises up Rebeka’s throat. She doesn’t register Omar asking if she’s okay (she’s fucking not, thanks). She runs to the bathroom.
“I’m half-nake-” Cayetana protests when she storms in, almost tearing the door off its hinges, but Rebe doesn’t hear it as she drops to her knees before the toilet bowl.
She was wrong for all of it.
Carla loves him too. Carla loves him more.
Not only she wasn’t enough, but neither were her feelings.
“It’s okay,” Cayetana’s hand is on her back, but her mascara’s already down on her cheeks and nothing’s okay, even as Caye rubs her back and whispers hushed comforts, more effective than anything Guzmán could ever provide.
-
“I fucking hate her,” Rebeka says. She’s drunk; too drunk. She saw Caye eyeing her rum-cokes with concern when she was a bit more sober. Now that's all gone; she's too drunk to focus on facials. “I fucking hate him. They deserve to die.”
Caye twitches. She’s been nursing the same Margarita she ordered at the start of this outing, and if the twitch wasn’t enough to clear Rebe’s head, seeing the tiny sip from her half-full glass definitely was.
“I mean. They don’t deserve to die,” she corrects herself, avoiding eye-contact. Fuck. Literally, no fucking reason Samuel should’ve picked her. The big-mouthed, unfiltered, joke .
“It’s actually all my fault. I’m such a fucking idiot.”
“It’s not your fault,” Caye says quietly, red neon lights of the bar glowing over her eyelids. “You fell in love. You can’t help that.”
Rebeka snorts, downing her drink. “Yeah. Neither can he.” Her limbs feel heavy.
“That’s why it's on him, being with you when he was in love with somebody else. That’s not your fault - when you’re in love, it's obvious you’re gonna try to make it work no matter what.”
Rebeka laughs hoarsely, disbelievingly. “Caye, do you realize how fucking pathetic that makes me sound?”
“I think it makes him sound pathetic.”
“Yeah, he’s the pathetic one here, hooking up with a princess.”
“She’s just a marquise. And I’m pretty sure they’re actually dating-” Caye stops herself at her very unhelpful remark. “Anyway, I don’t know what she sees in him. It's not like he’s a great catch or something.”
“You know, not all of us date to move up social classes,” Rebeka points out flatly. She doesn’t say that she knows exactly what Carla sees in Samuel, and that she’s getting all of it.
Caye shakes her head, ignoring Rebe’s blunt gibe. “His shoulders are so narrow. He looks like a pear. Tell me, how did you not knock him out five seconds into every training? I mean,” she licks her lips, “You box, right?”
“Yeah.” Rebeka would be more surprised by the blonde’s knowledge of her hobbies if she wasn’t positively dizzy. “He actually didn’t suck. After I trained him, of course.”
“He’s like a dwarf, I’m surprised you didn’t stomp him to the ground.”
Dainty Carla wouldn’t have that problem with anyone, the mean voice in Rebeka’s head retorts, but it’s easier to silence now, in the dim limelight and with Caye’s glittery top sending rainbow sparkly glitters in her field of vision, making her head spin even more. She laughs instead, and some of it is genuine.
“He’s like Grumpy and Dopey and Sneezy combined,” Cayetana goes on, and Rebeka doesn’t think if it’s the effort she’s putting in or the actual stupid diss that makes her chuckle, and then again and again, until she’s doing something reminiscent of giggling. “Seriously, lighten up. And like, can he ever open his eyes fully? He looks like he’s permanently half-asleep or high.”
“When his eyes are open, he looks like a scared mouse,” Rebeka throws in, even if it is, in her biased opinion, not particularly true.
“Tom and Jerry!” Cayetana nods vehemently, practically hopping up and down on the bar stool. “Seriously, you can do so much better. You’re way more badass than him.”
Ignoring the stupid not-feminine implication that her brain is so keen on supplying, Rebeka bends over to Caye appreciatively. “You’re pretty cool, blondie. Definitely my favourite blondie out there. The scam-the-rich thing was pretty badass too, I have to say.”
Cayetana blushes. “I didn’t wanna- Yeah,” she settles on, finally finishing the rest of her drink in one gulp. “Sucks that Lu found out.”
“And now look at what she’s hiding, or local patrol.”
“Yeah,” Caye looks down and Rebeka wants to hit herself again. Why, why can she never stop talking? It's seriously like a disease.
“You wanna get out of here?”
She’s so relieved that Caye’s not mad, that after her too-enthusiastic hug and exit from the bar stool, she hugs her. It was a bit of an accident after she’d stumbled, but Cayetana hugs her back. “Yes. Where?”
“If you don’t mind the bus…”
“Nope.”
_
The ride’s long and she sobers up, sitting by an open window with the wind blowing in her face. With that, however, her perception of time. “Are you kidnapping me, blondie?”
“Just a few minutes,” Cayetana laughs nervously, toying with the zipper on her purse. “I mean, this was probably stupid, it’s not even like fun or anything but you seemed so sad that I-”
“Hey,” Rebeka recognizes the nervous rambling and impulsively puts her hand to stop Caye’s restless palm. The blonde looks up at her. “Thanks, Caye. You’re really nice.”
She smiles at her shyly. “Um.. so, just two stops until the last one, if that’s fine?”
“Sure. Just so you know, I’ll totally take you down if you try to rob me.”
Cayetana laughs.
-
The last stop is at the top of a hill. They’re the only two passengers, but the bus driver doesn’t seem to care what two teenage girls are doing in the middle of nowhere at midnight; he just gets off and walks in the opposite direction to light up a cigarette. “You’re really kinda thug, no?” Rebeka establishes, seeing as Cayetana confidently strides on the side of the pavement-free street with rather infrequent street lamps.
“It’s fine, you’re not gonna die,” she says, and Rebeka laughs. Sassy Caye is fun.
“What, you’re gonna protect me?”
“With my gang fight skills,” Cayetana’s teeth glisten in the dark. “Okay. So, don’t tell this to anyone, but this is where I had my first kiss.”
“Here?” Rebeka eyes critically the dusty lookout with an overflowing garbage can. Sure, she can see some Madrid light - that's about all this place has going for it. “Romantic.”
“It was terrible. I was taller than him, to make matters worse. That’s why dwarf’s not worth it,” Cayetana winks. Rebe’s pretty sure she has a split personality, but she’s not about to complain - this Cayetana is cool. “So, just yell it.”
Rebe eyes her critically. “That cliché?”
“It helps.” When she sees her hesitance, she giggles. “What, Rebe?”
“It's too Perks-of-a-wallflower-y.”
“I HATE BEING POOR!” Cayetana screams on top of her lungs unexpectedly, so loudly that Rebeka almost falls over the flimsy bannister. “MY LIFE’S TRASH AND I HAVE TO WORK FULL-TIME DURING COLLEGE BECAUSE I HAD A SURGE OF MORALITY AND TURNED DOWN A SCHOLARSHIP FROM MY DEAD BOYFRIEND’S MOTHERS’!”
“SAMUEL IS A FUCKING BITCH AND I’M STILL IN LOVE WITH HIM BUT CARLA’S IN LOVE WTH HIM TOO AND I CAN’T STOP HER SO NOW I HAVE TO WATCH THEM MAKE OUT UNLESS I WANNA LOSE ALL MY FRIENDS!”
“POLO’S DEAD AND I JUST LEFT IT THAT WAY WITHOUT A FIGHT!”
“MY DAD DIED AND I BARELY EVEN REMEMBER HOW HE LOOKS ANYMORE!”
“MY DAD LEFT WHEN I WAS THREE!”
“I’M HANGING OUT WITH A FASHION MAJOR!”
“I’M HANGING OUT WITH A DRUG-CARTEL MEMBER!”
Her mum quit, but what does that matter? Rebeka inhales deeply and lets out one last time on top of her lungs. “I THINK MAID BARBIE IS PRETTY COOL!”
“I THINK YOU’RE COOL TOO!”
“Thanks,” Rebe gets out. Her stomach hurts from laughter.
“Even if a bit vulgar,” Cayetana says, bumping her forehead against Rebe’s shoulder. “But you know, I’ll hang out with you over the lovebirds anytime.”
Rebe mimics a throwing-up sound, but it doesn’t hurt.
-
It hurts the following morning.
She’s hungover and gets a text of Samuel. It’s a simple: Can we talk? She fights the urge to say No. She leaves him on read instead.
She leaves him on read for weeks, going on vacation to the Bahamas with Sandra; she thinks about him, of course he does. It’s fucking impossible not to: the marquesita loves flaunting her life on instagram.
It’s a type of masochism how often Rebe starts to check her instagram. At the start, she really thought they’d break up - but they don’t seem to be planning on it. Rebe doesn’t miss how none of the stories are from any fancy destinations - it’s all Madrid, and an unspecified beach for a few days. Carla posted a picture of two silhouettes hugging against a dark see (to make matters worse, Rebeka couldn’t detect a bikini top).
She screenshotted it. After said action, she realized that she looks pathetic to Carla (even if she might not even find her in the list of people who saw her story, considering her 20 thousand followers), and made a burner account. (And also a screentime limit, not that it helps if you can just click it away.)
Carla, at least, follows the “picture is worth a thousand words” rule - or so it seemed to Rebe. If she posted daily declarations of love, Rebe wouldn’t be able to deal. This way, she tortures herself a little, aggressively munches on watermelon, hooks up with a lifeguard and it's cool.
This way, the blow comes from the man himself. Samuel, whose instagram account has been as dormant as the Mount of Vesuvius, posts a stupid fucking pisture of himself and Carla. (Guzmán took it, to make matters worse.)
Te quiero.
She’s half-sitting in his lap at what looks like a garden party, all angelic and glowing and smiley in a short summer dress; a non-marquess one, blue with white flowers. Her smile is radiant as she looks at him. He’s in a white t-shirt and looks at her like she’s the most precious thing in the world.
She wrote him the same comment back. With a blue heart, presumably to match her dress in the picture. Influencer-like bullshit normally makes Rebe laugh.
This time, it almost makes her fucking cry.
She could never live up to Carla, the one Samuel fell in love with despite everything. He wouldn’t fall in love with her even if it were easy. She knows it now.
Maybe she’s pissed she even tried. She helped him make a fool out of her, she refused to see the signs, and she refused to stop being in love and see what was actually happening around her. At this point of the night, she punches a pillow and doesn’t know if she’s imagining Samuel’s face instead of it or her own.
She blocks Carla’s instagram account at two at night. She ignores Samu completely on the first day of school and spends her breaks talking to Caye in the janitor's closet. (Poor chick, seriously. She starts to call out people for littering.)
When Carla shows up at the club for the welcome-back-in-hell party as Samuel’s plus-one, Rebe just gets up and leaves the group.
Even if it makes her feelings blatantly obvious, it’s the best she can do for herself.
She’ll be bitter, and there’s probably going to be a seedling of that bitterness in her forever; she’d never fallen in love before him, and he always loved someone else. And never her.
It’s a bit of a hard pill to swallow. But Carla and Samuel look happy - so happy that she can’t feel a bit happy for him, a bit, one step at a time, when he looks at her like she’s the sun and she looks at him like there are a thousand stars in his eyes.
It still hurts; of course it does.
But it's gonna stop, eventually.