Ophelia
I keep my days neat.
Lectures, Bellamy, the library, then repeat.
I hardly see the girls anymore, except for Octavia, and I don’t see Arlo at all. Only the faint prickle of being watched.
Everyone seems to be redrawing their lines after Switzerland. Even Adelaide and Octavia nearly came to blows yesterday, the video was everywhere before lunch.
No new notes have appeared, but I’m not gullible enough to think that’s a good sign.
Or maybe there were never any notes at all. Maybe I’m losing my mind, seeing things that were never there.
Maybe the day I woke up covered in blood was just another hallucination.
Maybe all of it was.
A bad dream I’ll wake from eventually.
After my last class, I take the path that winds back toward the dorms. Once inside the building, I choose the stairs over the lift.
I reach my door, unlock it, slip off my shoes, shrug out of my coat, and freeze.
The air feels faintly charged, a prickle at my back making me instantly alert as I glance around the flat.
Arlo is on my sofa.
He’s sitting there, turned slightly toward the window, his expression impossible to read. I can only see half his face, but it’s enough to put me on edge.
“What are you doing here?” I ask quietly, the words far too loud in the stillness.
“I don’t know,” he says after a moment, his voice distant. His gaze stays fixed on the window, watching the rain gather and slide down the glass.
“I… I think you do.”
He doesn’t answer, and I don’t push. I just wait, the silence sitting thick between us, my pulse slow but heavy.
It takes a moment before he finally turns his head, his eyes finding mine.
Midnight blue to green.
Green to midnight blue.
When he speaks, his voice is rough. “I think I do,” he says.
Then he stands.
Each step he takes toward me is slow. My breath catches somewhere in my chest. He stops only when the tip of his shoe grazes my foot, close enough that I can feel his warmth.
He lifts his hand and tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear with a tenderness that hurts.
“I hate you,” he says quietly.
The words land harder than I’m ready for, like a hit I never saw coming.
His face doesn’t match them. There’s no anger there, no real hate. Just something raw underneath, something he’s fighting to keep down and losing.
“I know,” I whisper, the sound barely there.
He exhales, the sound rough, almost bitter. “I can’t kill it,” he says, and my brows knit together, not understanding what he means.
“Whatever this is between us, I’ve tried. Fuck, if I haven’t.” A humourless laugh slips out. “I’ve tried not to love you. I’ve tried to hate you, the way you deserve. And still…”
A fissure opens inside my chest.
He loves me?
He hates me.
He’s both, and I can’t tell which part of him is winning.
“Then don’t,” I find myself saying.
His gaze flicks up. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t love me.”
He lets out another empty laugh. “If only it worked that way, ma lune.” His voice softens, though the edge beneath it doesn’t fade. “I keep trying to stay away, and somehow, I always end up here. At your door. Every. Bloody. Time.”
I look down, unable to meet his eyes. “How’s your foot?” I ask, anything to shift the heaviness in the room, to breathe again.
“It’s fine,” he says, dismissing it without thought.
Then, after a beat, he adds calmly, “I think this will be the last time I see you.”
The air leaves my lungs. My fingers curl into my palms until I feel the sting of my nails biting into skin.
My head lifts. “What are you talking about?”
He meets my gaze. “I mean I’m done,” he says quietly. “I came here with a purpose, Ophelia. And I’ve already crossed too many lines for you. That ends now. It has to.”
“You’re talking in riddles,” I whisper. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
A raw look flickers across his face, gone almost before I can name it. “You don’t,” he says. “But you will. Soon.”
My heart knocks painfully against my ribs. “Arlo—”
“The reason I came here,” he cuts in, “I forgot it. You made me forget. The lines blurred, and I can’t let that happen again. It ends here.”
His hand lifts, brushing my cheek. His thumb catches a tear I hadn’t realised had fallen. The gentleness of it undoes me.
I think he’s breaking up with me, though we were never truly together, never in the way I’d hoped we could be.
I tell myself I do not care. I repeat the words in my head like a mantra.
I am too bloody foolish.
How could I do this to myself? He made it perfectly clear from the start that he hated me, yet somehow I still managed to fall for him.
Whatever these feelings are, they shouldn’t exist.
He’s made it clear that what we had was nothing more than a way to scratch an itch, that nothing real could ever come of it.
And still, I didn’t believe him, that’s on me.
But I will move on.
Whatever he said about loving me doesn’t matter. Words mean nothing when there’s still that much hate behind them.
Love and hate can’t coexist, with him.
With us.
He bends down, and for a moment the world stills. His nose brushes mine, the faintest touch, and his lips graze the corner of my mouth.
I hold my breath, my eyes closing of their own accord, feeling the softness of him, wishing for something more, something reckless. But I know better. I know this is where it has to stop.
I lift my chin and try to put strength into my voice.
“Bye, Arlo.”
He holds my gaze for a long moment, a shadow flashing behind his eyes.
“Goodbye, Ophelia.”
His hand falls from my face, his back straight, as he turns and walks to the door.
It closes with a soft click.
And that sound, feels like something inside me sealing shut.
I stand in the stillness, staring at the door until my eyes blur, realising too late that finality has never felt so incomplete.