#i was gonna .. .write all the dialogue of brandon explaining the shit to her but .. i got lazy

[athcnvs]

☾✧.° leaving it up to you ft. brandon

“ i arrived there early and as always you swanned in much later as if nothing had ever changed, you nod at me and order your double mixer to see you again, to be your friend, to hold you in my mind ”

Athena had never been known for impulsive behavior, so sitting there in the cafe, she felt guilty. Pathetic, even. It was difficult to wrap her head around the fact that four years later, she still carried a soft spot for the boy whom she used to call her best friend. The boy who broke her heart without saying a word. Four years later, and she was giving him a chance to explain himself. To give her closure. That’s all she wanted, right? Closure? Though long overdue, she simply wasn’t going to pass up on the opportunity. She needed to know how Brandon was able to drop their friendship so easily. For the longest time, she believed it was because of a crush. A stupid crush she got in the way of. It all felt so stupid, their entire situation. As she sat there waiting for him, she considered leaving. Going back home. But she couldn’t, and she hated how she couldn’t. He had knocked on her door years after running away from home, and she just let him in. How pitiful.

Brandon: i’m just around the corner Brandon: really sorry i’m late

A soft chime came from the entrance, causing Athena to look up from her phone. There he stood, in the flesh, scanning the cafe before locating her. A gentle grin graced his lips, and a wave of nostalgia washed over her as he neared, taking a seat on the other side of the small table for two. She stared at him for a moment, her gaze lingering longer than it should’ve. Though it had been nearly half a decade, there was no doubt this was the same boy she once couldn’t imagine a future without. Yet there they sat, two strangers meeting in the night.

Realizing she had been caught in a daze, Athena quickly glanced down at the table. “Please tell me why we’re getting coffee and not dinner or whatever,” she said plainly. Stay aloof, she reminded herself. Don’t be an idiot. As if she wasn’t already one for agreeing to meet with him.

Brandon chuckled. “It’s nice to see you too, Athena.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Of course.”

“Remember when we used to study at that one coffee shop near your house? You’d always get a latte and a cheese danish. This’ll be like old times’ sake.”

“I’m not into cheese danishes anymore,” she lied, “and I’m not here to reminisce, Brandon. You told me you were going to explain. You were going to apologize.”

He tilted his head as he looked at her, seeing right through her cold demeanor. Even after all this time, she could never truly fool him. “Alright, just let me get you a drink. Latte sound good?”

Athena shrugged.

“Okay, then. Latte it is.”

After watching him get up and make his way over to the counter, she briefly buried her face in her hands. What am I even doing?, she wondered. She had no clue how she was supposed to carry herself, how she was supposed to act. It felt so wrong, this detached facade she had planned on committing to, but she couldn’t give in to the idea of welcoming him back into her life with open arms and a warm smile. She couldn’t seem as though she had been waiting for him. She hadn’t been. She was doing just fine these past four years, so what was the point in revisiting a part of her life that only brought her grief? Athena once again contemplated the option of going home, but she remained planted in her seat, some force inside of her determined to get the answers she tried piecing together herself time and time again. She knew she owed it to herself to finally move on from that chapter of her life.

“Here you go, miss,” Brandon chimed, setting her drink down on the table. “Be careful, though, it’s probably pretty hot.”

“Thanks,” she muttered. “You’re not getting anything?”

“Nah, I’ve got a lot of talking to do anyway.”

“Fair enough.”

And so he did. As far back as he could remember, Brandon told her everything. He spoke of his discomfort with their friends constantly pairing them romantically, how it affected his friendships. He wasn’t able to get through a single conversation without someone bringing her up. To him, it was beginning to feel as though he wasn’t treated as an individual anymore but, rather, a unit. He couldn’t exist on his own, and it was suffocating. When he developed a crush on a girl in their class, their friends made it seem as though he wasn’t allowed to have feelings for anyone else but Athena. Their friendship was suffocating, and that fact only made him see her in a different light. Every little thing she did bothered him. He couldn’t do study dates anymore. He couldn’t do movie nights. He couldn’t walk with her to classes. Talking to her only made things worse. Their friendship grew toxic and he was the one who poisoned it. But at the time, it didn’t seem to matter. All he wanted to do was be his own person, be able to breathe. He was consumed by tunnel vision, and once he realized what he had done, it was too late. He had gone too far, and it was practically impossible to repair the damage. After what he did, he knew he didn’t deserve her anymore. So he let her go. Without any word, he let her go.

“I’m really sorry, Athena,” he concluded. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I wouldn’t. I just—” Brandon reached over to place his hand over hers, squeezing it gently. “Even after all these years, I never stopped thinking about what I did and how I hurt you over something so stupid.”

She simply stared at him. The entire time he spoke, Athena didn’t mumble a word, her latte remaining untouched. With each revelation, she had tried to make sense of it all. She tried to find the words to say, but she came up short. How was she supposed to respond? He gave her the explanation she was searching for, but why didn’t she feel like she was ready to leave him in the past like she had planned?

Pulling her hand away from his grasp and setting it in her lap, she managed to choke something out, barely above a whisper. “Brandon, did you not know that I had feelings for you?”

“Oh,” was all he could say.

“Yeah, tragic, huh?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

They sat there for a moment, a somber air filling the space between them.

“What now?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“I don’t know.”

“Are we okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want us to be?”

The answer should’ve been obvious, but the longer Athena looked at him, the more she realized how she didn’t actually know him anymore. People change, and she couldn’t tell if she missed him or the memories they shared. Brandon once was an important part of her life, and the thought of denying him a do-over seemed wrong. It was as though she was eighteen again and fresh out of high school, still soft for a boy who didn’t deserve her.

“Do you?”

He nodded. “As weird as it sounds, I really did miss you, ‘Theens.”

You can’t do that. You can’t just call me by my nickname and expect everything to go back to how they were before we fell out, she wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him to go back home and never speak to her again. However, the words remained unsaid. Athena couldn’t understand how she could sit there after everything and still consider letting him back into her life. She couldn’t understand why he wanted to come back in the first place.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss you too,” she mumbled, unsure if she was later going to regret this admission.

“Listen, how about this?” Brandon pressed his lips together before he continued to speak. “I sort of brought along some DVDs from our old jazz band concerts. We can watch them back at my hotel room—”

“You booked a hotel room?”

“Yeah, I didn’t know how long I’d be out here. But we can watch the DVDs, catch up a little. You can make a decision about me after that, if you want. No rush. What do you say?”

Athena bit her lip, brows knitted together. She knew she had to get home before her absence was far too noticeable, but the offer was tempting. As long as she set boundaries, it would be okay, right?

She shrugged, her eyes trailing to her still-full latte mug. “I guess. Sure.”

“Are you gonna drink that?”

“It got cold.”

“Oh, alright. Let’s go, then,” he said, standing up. “You can apologize for not appreciating the latte the next time you come here.”

The two made their way out of the cafe before hailing an Uber to their destination. Athena remained silent the entire ride, simply listening to the radio and the driver’s attempts to initiate small talk with Brandon. She wasn’t sure why, but the longer she sat in the car, the more she wished she had never agreed to anything in the first place.

“Okay, have a nice night,” the driver said as he brought the car to a stop in front of the hotel.

“Thanks,” they replied in unison.

Athena followed him to the room, the lack of conversation on her behalf quite uncharacteristic. There was a heaviness in her soul that she could not label. Was it the result of her being in Brandon’s company? For keeping their meeting a secret from her friends?

“You can go and sit down on the bed. I’ll load the DVD from freshman year.” He laughed. “Get ready to cringe, ‘Theens.”

They managed to make it through two full concerts, exchanging commentary about little things they had remembered about each one, before lethargy hit. Athena was the first to knock out, then Brandon shortly after. Her head rested on his shoulder during their slumber, and there she remained until she woke.

“Fuck,” she whispered upon realizing where she was. Slowly getting out of the bed so as not to wake the boy and have to deal with what a conversation would entail, Athena checked the time on her phone. 5:24am. She immediately shut her eyes, hoping she had been dreaming, in reality still back at the villa without ever having communicated with Brandon, but alas, her reality was the hotel room. Her reality was being there with a boy she shouldn’t be with. Hesitantly, she opened up the Messages app, only to see an exchange in the group chat having to do with her disappearance. Great, I’m officially in deep shit.

Pocketing her phone, Athena glanced back at her old best friend. Having been so caught up in the memories of high school, they forgot to talk about their present lives during the time they spent watching the performances. Perhaps that was really all they had in common anymore, the past. Perhaps it was finally time she acknowledged the fact. She didn’t have to forgive him for what he did, he even said so himself, so why was there a part of her still holding on? The only way for her to move on from what happened is to let go, she knew that, so why was it hard to leave?

Taking a pen and a piece of notepaper from the nearby desk, Athena scribbled a quick ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do this,’ placing it on top of one of the DVD cases. This was the closure she decided to give herself. It might not have been exactly what she had expected, but it was what felt right. Just because someone meant the world to her in the past, it didn’t mean she had to give up her world to have him back. She knew better than that.

So Athena took one last look at him, then she left.

[imanes]

I loved the ways of king too and the series is definitely one of my fave but this man cannot write dialogues that aren't plot relevant,,, i don't kno how to explain but his dialogues are painful like it's different if you tell a reader that your character is clever than if you let your readers feel it through the scenes,, all shallan chapters were annoying to read up until the second book for me. Also all scene of romance he tries to do are terrible, he rlly shouldn't try ndnskskek

i’m gonna have to disagree with you on the relevance of his dialogues i think the man knows how to write a. amazing dialogues (i was just telling that to people from my reading group the other day... nobody does dialogues like he does!) and b. not plot-centric dialogues. see: lightsong in warbreaker, specialist of going into somewhat irrelevant tangents, but i reckon it’s a personality trait. however i somewhat agree with you on shallan. the best part of her chapter is jasnah kholin aka my one and only. i think it’s a matter of personal taste but as someone who reads 70 books at the same time and who’s had time to really get to know what i personally prefer for my dialogues, i think brandon sanderson does really well for me. i don’t think shallan’s dialogues are supposed to prove that she’s smart (although she is, no matter how much she can get on my nerves), they’re supposed to prove that she’s contradictory and that she doesn’t quite yet grasp her own sense of selfhood. i also see that if she weren’t put in the same book as characters like jasnah, kaladin, szeth and dalinar, she’d probably be a very decent main character, but she doesn’t charm me the way the others do. in a way i think sanderson’s dialogues are a way of showing the reader that the characters are smart in different ways, not just telling readers about it. telling vs showing happens mostly in the narration imo, not necessarily the dialogues. important scenes can (and sometimes should) be dialogue-centric, to let the characters develop their own voices and thoughts and ideology, rather than the author telling you how incredibly intelligent and skilled they are through the narration and then letting them act like idiots and say dumbass shit. i’ve seen it too many times for me not to recognise how much it pisses me off aldkfjgsdl i literally cannot articulate how much i hate books with very little dialogue or with very irrelevant sub-plots and side quests full of pseudo witty banter (yes i am talking about a gathering of shadows by v.e. schwab)

as for the romances idk about that book just yet but in what i’ve read from him (elantris, warbreaker) i may be in the minority by saying that i don’t mind his romances. his mormonism definitely shines through at times (like the very concept of the cosmere and how everything is cosmically connected) and i think the romances that he writes are kind of a reflection of that, as in they can be somewhat conservative and ‘bland’, which is honestly something i can get behind. however i will say that idk about the romances in this book just yet! i reckon i might be annoyed in anything shallan is involved, bc she’s shallan, and she’s at the bottom of the ranking of my fave characters. i hope to god she ends up with adolin and not kaladin, bc adolin is a bit bland too and they deserve each other LMAO

ok i sound like brandon sanderson has me on a payroll here alkjfklgjsl i swear there are things that are annoying me in the way of kings (despite also loving it so much), just not the same as you. but i think that my reading experience is different from yours, especially since i have conversations about the story and the characters with people on a daily basis and they somewhat “convinced” me to give a chance to shallan and i had to confront my own feelings about her lmao. in any other book, i’d find her a very interesting character. it just so happens that in this book in particular, there are so many GREAT characters (with great dialogues! noah fence akjdfgjkfl) that i’m just like meh.... 

anyways, thank you for sharing your thoughts!! do you have any other favorite fantasy books??