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There’s a shaky sigh that builds in her chest and is exhaled through her nose. The lump in her throat feels like thorns carving themselves into her skin, painful and scratchy as her eyes sting while she tries to fight back tears. She tries to follow his trail, watching how his blurry figure disappears into the end of the hallway. She’s suddenly alone despite the fact that Chris sits only a few feet away on the other side of the open door. Chris. In mere seconds he’d become an afterthought, her focus shifting to how nothing had happened between them yet so much had changed; how he was pushing her toward the one thing she so desperately wanted to reach and in doing so, was ending their partnership. Mentorship. Relationship.
She doesn’t understand and perhaps she’s not meant to. How is it that she feels like her heart’s shattering into a hundred pieces despite the fact that nothing happened between them? Absolutely nothing happened between them. We were about to—but we didn’t. we didn’t. It’s Tim’s words that play in her mind as she tries to process what just happened. How one moment they were up in the air, locked inside a bathroom as Lucy kissed him like her life depended on it because in a way it did. It may have been under the pretense of the expectation that they were hooking up but in reality, she needed him to ground her. His touch, his lips, his warmth. All encompassing in a way that calmed her, made her feel safe. There’s more to it than that, she knows but there was a fear that stopped her from being able to admit it. To him, to herself. Not in the hotel room when she gave him the excuse of ‘biology’ nor when she asked him if he was trying to get rid of her as his go-fer.
Her world feels like it’s suddenly turned upside down and she can’t help but feel another twinge of guilt at the fact that it has everything to do with Tim walking away and not because Rosalind targeted Chris. It’s the reason why she didn’t go to Tim in the first place. Why it was so easy to use Chris as an excuse to not go to U.C. school and why she didn't tell him about the offer because she knew what his answer would be. He’d encourage her to go, remind her once again to never let anyone stop her. Yet unlike her last day as a rookie where it filled her with a sense of affirmation and hope, this time around it left her feeling so helpless and hopeless.
There was so much left unspoken. So much she didn’t say, so much she could have said. In the end, all she was able to find was a simple reassurance that distance would do them some good because it would, wouldn’t it? After all, he had Ashley and she had Chris. They had no claim over the other, they couldn’t belong to one another not just because of the other people involved but because it was too complicated. It was a realization Lucy had reached long before Tim stood at her doorstep, letting her go. Before the U.C. operation where he asked her point blank and fed him a lie. Truthfully, she’s not sure when that line blurred. They’d been through so much together. Maybe it was inevitable for them to end down this path, that somehow she was destined to know heartbreak.
It’s not fair and while she’s no stranger to life not being fair, this sucks. Really, really sucks. She can’t help but wonder if she had been more forthcoming, had things played out differently? If she hadn’t hid behind the guise of doing undercover work and had been honest with him, with herself, would the outcome have changed? Considering all the different factors that have led them down this path, it’s hard to say. It’s a question that’ll haunt her. Keep her awake in the middle of the night laying next to a body that she knows doesn’t fit right against hers because it’s suddenly clear as to who that should be.
It should be Tim.