(Based on my PC, Carter Shannon. You can read about him under "My PCs")
“I want you to say it,” Annie declared.
Carter sighed and closed his eyes. “I… But it’s not true.”
“It is, you just… you need to say it until you believe that it is.” She smiled. “Carter, you’re a good person. Take a minute, but… don’t leave her waiting.”
Annie left the kitchen, walking back towards the dining room where their very large extended family was chatting away.
Where Addison would be sitting, right beside him, waiting. Allegedly harboring the same feelings for him as he did for her.
Allegedly.
Carter leaned against the wall, tilting his head back against it.
It’s not true… It can’t be. A lanky, awkward guy like you? C’mon…
Even though he couldn’t hear him, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Abraxas would be laughing at him right now. Would just pile on with that same mindset - call him pathetic or a coward.
And worse, Carter knew that he would have been right.
He covered his face, and took a few deep breaths.
You can’t let him be right… Even if you can’t hear him, and you’re just guessing at what he’d say, you can’t let him be right.
He screwed his eyes shut, and gulped.
“Addison likes me... and I’m a good person.”
The quiet was deafening. The sarcastic response he expected from… someone, anyone, it never came. There was just the chatter in the other room, and even that sounded so far away at the moment.
The tension in his shoulders faded, but only a little.
Carter repeated, “Addison likes me, and I’m a good person.”
“Hell yeah!” Lumiset shouted from the dining room.
Carter slapped a hand over his mouth, at first thinking (mortified) that Lumi had heard him. But he hadn’t, so he used the hand to hide his amused chuckle at the timing.
Hell yeah! Lumi’s voice echoed in Carter’s mind.
Tears pressed at his eyes, but he pushed them back for now. The tension melted. Carter felt a jolt through his body, something that propelled him to take those steps back to the dining room and to sit himself right next to Addison with a smile - a smile that certainly wasn’t confident, but was genuine. Briefly, he cast a glance at Lumi, who was utterly distracted by Sly. He was completely unaware of what he’d done for Carter tonight.
On brand, Carter noted.
When Carter talked to Addison, he could still feel it - that jolt - running through him. He felt something else too, a sense of… severe longing. He looked at Addison, and held onto her every word because there was something in him that was begging to learn more about her. There was something so lovely in the way that she smiled. Every time, Carter felt like the room got brighter, like his heart - his heart weighed down by his own self-doubt - got just a little lighter.
Annie caught Carter’s attention again at the end of the night, as Addison was leaving. She shoved - literally shoved - him over to her.
His heart pounded. The Hell Yeah! jolt was wearing off faster and faster.
“I uh… I was wondering…” Carter started, trying to find the words, trying desperately to hold onto those last sparks of that moment. “I… I was wondering if you would like to… maybe do this again sometime? Like… a dinner… but just… with me, you and me…”
It was gone. Carter closed his mouth, hoping she wouldn’t ask any clarifying questions because if Addison had tried to, Carter knew he’d just laugh it away like it was a slip of the tongue.
But she didn’t. She agreed.
She kissed his cheek after he walked her home.
He painted her that night, painted her exactly how she’d been - gorgeous in that dress, smiling like she could outshine the sun - but walking in a garden of flowers.
“Addison likes me, and I’m a good person,” he said when he finished.
His heart felt just a little lighter.
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