As soon as Melissa got home, she tried to go to sleep. Like, really really tried. It didn’t take, though; her heart was beating too fast. Between every breath, she replayed moments of the night one after the other like a highlight reel, and when she ran out of moments they just started back at the beginning of the day and played all over again. Actually getting ready for bed -- taking off the dress and the makeup and putting her corsage bracelet away and even taking a shower -- didn’t help much either. Her heart was beating too fast. One breath, she was standing before Student Council President Ashley Rendleman as she chatted away at her before casually dismissing her the moment someone more interesting came along, the next, Elizabeth was leaning on a bathroom wall telling Melissa how Ashley wouldn’t even hurt a fly.
With every loop, though, Melissa found more and more comfort in reminiscing. While some of the individual events had been concerning, hadn’t she succeeded in her goal? She’d been asked out on a date, asked to handle all the specifics that she could manage -- which turned out to be quite a few! -- and to show her date as nice a time as she could. And she had! Sure, there were hiccups, but of all the plans in all the world, how many didn’t go wrong at some point?
One breath, she had her hand outstretched, offering her wrist to her kickoff date in anticipation of wearing a bracelet she’d picked out herself, the next Gabby was calling her “little lamb” in a way Melissa had never heard her say it before.
Gabby… The nickname pinged around in Melissa’s mind, searching for a bell to ring. Jun had said it before, but she shortened everybody’s name, right? Meanwhile, when Melissa had said it right before they’d danced in each other’s arms, well, she’d used it because it seemed like the right name to use just before something so intimate. It wasn’t like she’d been specifically asked not to-
Oh. Oh no.
Melissa rolled out of bed and crawled over to her phone like a girl possessed. Fumbling around for it didn’t take long at all only because of how swiftly she swept it up into her hands and started scrolling through old messages. “Please don’t please don’t please don’t,” Melissa muttered over and over. She wasn’t sure if she was going to wake anyone up or not, but at the moment, she didn’t really care.
And then she found it. Because of course she did. It was only a few days old, after all, and failing that, it was right at the top of the message chain, before anything else had been said between them:
Greetings! I am sending this missive as I had said I would. It would be best if you responded post-haste.
The first message read like the calm before the storm.
This is gabby
Gabriela
Not gabby
Dont call me gabby
A DOOM sound rolled throughout the room. Melissa was the only one there to hear it, but its vibrations could be felt in the floor just beneath her knees and while that could also have been only her imagination, it still managed to crawl its way up into her legs until they were shaking as well. Crawling back into bed was a much more difficult task once that had taken hold, not to mention that Melissa’s eyes refused to move from those four ruinous messages. No, that phrasing didn’t give her enough agency in the whole affair. “She refused to take her eyes away from her phone” was better, not to mention truer. When she pulled her covers over her head, she did so with one hand so she could keep eye-contact with her screen.
And there she wallowed for quite a while. It had been such a simple request, but at the same time, it had been simple enough that it had somehow slipped through the cracks. She’d ruined the moment, probably. Actually, she hadn’t only done that, she’d probably ruined everything.
Everything! It sounded so dramatic in Melissa’s head but wasn’t it the truth?
One breath, and she was all the way back at Elizabeth and Hitomu’s duel. “My name’s Gabriela,” Gabby (no!) said. “Gab-ri-el-a.” The next Melissa was just outside Gabby’s (why‽) dorm room and she was leaning in to…
Melissa was lifted her non-phone hand up to her cheek. The moment she touched the spot she felt a wave of relief wash over her. It meant so many things to her, some of which she hadn’t realized at that moment, but the feelings were just as strong now as they were then. And the timeline of it all, it meant that her dreadful, horrid mistake had either gone unnoticed or had been wiped clean after that single act.
She turned her phone off and poked her head out from under the covers, though she didn’t take her hand from her cheek just yet. No, she liked holding onto that memory for as long as possible. And even when Melissa closed her eyes and her consciousness drifted away, she dreamed of herself and Gabby, dancing under the stars.Have mercy on me, Oh Lord, a sinner
Wipe away my transgressions,
and let me be reborn anew in your glory
Help me turn away from sin
and move towards your eternal light.
Oh Lord, how loving you are!
You give and you forgive in equal measure
though I always feel like I am asking for too much
Even now, I dare not ask for anything for myself
out of fear of being too wanting
when all I have is because of you
Instead, I thank you, again, for all you have given me
and pray that you continue to be my guide.
In the name of The Father, and of The Son, and of The Holy Spirit,
Amen
September 25, 909 PD
Feast of Saint Ceolfrid
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
-John 15:12 (NIV)Monday arrived, and with it the lack of Kickoff magic that Melissa had never thought she’d ever experience, yet somehow had. She even took a longer route to class, just to walk by her spot again. As she suspected, it was different in the morning light, and not just because, well, not just because it was morning. It was that little extra indescribable something, too, that could have only come from that night. She still could smile remembering it.
But she couldn’t linger for too long. Her first class was sooner than she’d like to admit, and the alternative path she’d taken was already longer than her normal one by a not-insignificant amount. Melissa allowed herself one final look at her perfectly-normal-yet-secretly-wondrous surroundings before she adjusted her backpack on her back and hurried off down the path.
She opened up her phone along the way and scrolled through the Community Service Club group chat, as was her wont. All they did really was share unfunny image macros and only the occasional meaningless club update, though. In one instance, there was a picture of someone Melissa didn’t recognize shunning the words “Community Service Club Group Chat” while in another frame they were smiling and pointing to “Community Service Power Hour”, and that was when Melissa realized someone -- probably Connor -- had changed the name of the group chat.
The other group chat -- the Entertainment Duelist’s Club -- seemed to have the opposite problem. Not much had happened since before Kickoff, and some of the participants, especially Akari, didn’t seem to post much at all. Still, rereading messages that involved her directly not only felt better than whatever was going on in the other group chat but also was probably a good idea in general. Especially when it caused her to remember she hadn’t actually met up with any of them like she’d told Gabby she would. It probably wouldn’t hurt to send out a message now, would it?
It took a few rewrites, but she ended up with:
To: Souji, Sai, Kyouko, Hoshiko, Akari
From: Melissa
Sorry! I meant to look for all of you at Kickoff but it slipped my mind. Hope you all had a great time.
After that, well, there wasn’t much else worth looking at on her phone, so she put it away and kept going. She had History first thing, and unless she wanted to be history, she had to get a move -
Oh?
Sitting on a bench just off the pathway was someone that Melissa a) had never seen before, on-campus or off, and b) was looking rather sullen, or sullen enough for her to notice while simply walking by (though that was something she liked to think she was good at). And now she was already approaching him. It was an instinct, she realized, and she was more than willing to let it take its course. The first few minutes of class were probably just going to be attendance, anyway.
“Excuse me,” Melissa said once she was sure she was in earshot. “I don’t mean to presume, but, um, you look like you need someone to talk to? I’m sorry if I’m wrong, but um…”
And just like that, she sat down next to him. “I’m not the best talker, but I like to think I’m a good listener, at least.”
