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“We want…” Angie turned to Eli, smile as warm and bright as always, and rested her head on his shoulder.
A pit of dread started to bubble in Victor’s stomach, like some witch’s cauldron cooking a poisonous brew.
Eli finished her sentence. “We want your blessing.”
And Victor’s world ground to a halt.
He stared into Eli’s eyes.
An empty void looked back. Victor was no fool: He’d seen Eli’s longing stares, the way he laughed too easily at Angie’s jokes and beamed the kindest of his endless smiles up at her any time she pulled out a seat and plunked herself next to them at lunch, but Victor didn’t think things would go this far, this fast. He had spent a year comforting Angie, after all, laughing at how Micah did what on their date and batting new angles to approach old research off one another. Victor knew her, better than anyone, knew that she was young and bright and hard to please, and that if he, in all their perfect conversations together, wasn’t good enough, nobody could be.
— Except fucking Eliot Cardale, who’d shown up at Victor’s door with a smile and a mask, who’d charmed the whole of the student body within a week of his arrival, and to score the hat trick with an easy flourish and an infuriating grin, had now charmed the impossible-to-catch Angie Knight, too.
Victor forced himself to breathe. He couldn’t let Eli know how this rattled him, after all. A predator never lets the sheep know it can bleed.
“We want your blessing.” How was Victor meant to take those words? Angie said ‘we.’ Eli said ‘we.’ They stood before him, two perfect, shining marble sculptures with smiles so warm, so delicate, so permanent that the only way to rid the world of them would be to shatter them both into a hundred pieces.
Angie said we. It meant this was real. This wasn’t Cardale pulling a cruel trick to test the boundaries of their odd friendship. This was real.
This was real.
Victor rarely had to waste time convincing himself of something. The world was not as illogical as people made it out to be -- most simply blind itself to its obvious machinations.
But. But.
Angie and Eli?
It made sense, but he didn't want it to.
Victor looked at Angie. She pulled at a lock of her hair, tucking it behind her ear and turning the impossible beam of her gentle smile up towards him as though to say look, isn’t this perfect, as though Victor hadn’t ground his teeth into dust to try and give her everything, as though Angie in all her smarts and ambition could somehow be blind to the glimmering violence that shimmered like a hot mirage in the shadows of Eli's footsteps.
His neck felt stiff. Victor stifled the urge to crack it. Eli didn't deserve Angie, but all Victor had ever wanted was to make Angie happy. He couldn't have both.
He looked back at Eli and tried to pull the knife out from between his ribs.
“To date?” He forced the words out between his teeth.
Eli's pupils stared right into his own, the warmth of his cheeks not meeting the crinkle of his eyes.
Why was Eli looking at Victor?
Angie was the sun, the world (or at least Lockland) orbiting around her perfect gravity, and now -- with a single yes spilled from Victor's lips -- would be Eli's girlfriend.
So why wasn't Eli looking at her?
Victor blinked slow, looking between the two of them as though he could give an answer besides yes.
There was a monster lurking in Eliot Cardale, something kept locked tightly in a cage, but every day Victor grew a little closer to finding the key. Maybe Eli saw the monster lurking inside Victor, too. Maybe Eli wanted to taunt his reflection and see what it would do.
He would give Eli nothing. Victor slipped a smile onto his face, willing his shoulders to relax and his brows to smooth over. “I’m not your father. You’re both adults. Why would you ask me?” His lips split to show his teeth. “You're my friends, you know I want you to be happy.”
If Angie was the sun on a summer’s day, warm and comforting, then Eli was the painful afterimage left behind you stared at it too long.
Victor couldn't bear it any longer. He turned his smile towards Angie, and it grew a little softer, a little easier to keep on his face. She grinned, resting her head on Eli's shoulder just long enough to say something like I love you, then lifting it up again to say "Thank you, Victor."
He forced a laugh. “Maybe this will break your curse, and free you from all those awful dates. We’ll have to find another excuse to get milkshakes, okay?"
"We don't need an excuse. We're friends. Right?" Angie glanced at Eli. He looked back, swithcing another mask onto his face for his new girlfriend, and nodded. "Right."
Right.
Victor couldn't look at them for the rest of the day.