I’m really fucking angry because I love you
It started out simple, stupid… almost. Eponine and Cosette had been friends forever and Marius Pontmercy, puppy dog face, perfect blue eyes, and all, appeared in middle school, right in that perfect moment when boys start to matter.
And he was perfect. He was perfect in sixth grade when his voice was yet to drop and he had a boyish face always complete with a stupid grin. He was perfect in seventh grade when the acne started to appear. Then eighth grade happened and he became beyond perfect. He grew, maybe six inches, built up some muscle, developed a jawline. He started doing his hair instead of just leaving what happened in the morning, he started dressing well, and he started actually liking girls back.
They both loved him the moment they saw him, as best friends tend to do, but it was never a big deal. Every day was brightened for each of them by the way he looked and the other’s comments about it. Cossette was set on Marius. She believed he was the only person in the world she could possibly feel this way towards and focused every single ounce of her being on him.
It annoyed Eponine. It wasn’t just annoyance. It was this passionate need for Cosette to stop talking about him because she really couldn’t think about him or really them any longer. Then again, she never stopped Cosette because she would get so lost in talking about him that her beautiful blue eyes would wander off in the distance and sometimes light up a brilliant color. She’d eventually stop, usually mid sentence, and tell Eponine “God I sound so stupid right now,” and Eponine would assure her that she didn’t because she didn’t have the heart to say anything else.
But how could Marius not like Cosette back?
Inevitably, Eponine got a text from Marius one day asking “should I ask Cosette out?” and she shut down. She had been expecting it ever since they met him and for some reason she had never been that bothered by it… until she had realized it was Cosette. She could deal with Marius hooking up with other girls, but then there was him and Cosette and something was just wrong with that. It had always felt wrong. Which was weird, because everything else with Cosette always felt right. That was the dynamic of their friendship. Cosette said something, Eponine said the exact right thing to make her laugh back; Eponine wanted something, Cosette already had it. Everything was right and perfect and they could always move in synch. And “Marius can dance little asshole circles around us like the dickwad that he is,” scoffed Eponine when she saw the text.
That’s when it hit her: it wasn’t Marius. It would never be Marius. Why would it be Marius when it could be Cosette? Hit is the wrong verb, though, because she had always known this. There was some feeling for Cosette that she never felt towards anyone else and it was always there, even before they were friends, but in that moment she understood what it meant. She was deeply, madly, irrevocably, and, most importantly, stupidly in love with Cosette. Which is why she told Marius to do it, because Cosette loved Marius and being with him would make her happy and Eponine could have meaningless relationships with hot strangers for the rest of her life. It would be okay. Cosette would be happy.
I heart you
When Marius texted her, Cosette was nothing but ecstatic. She immediately responded yes before even thinking about what anyone else would have to say about it. Jean Valjean would forbid it… she’d say she was going to Eponine’s house. Eponine! She would be so jealous… and hurt… and mad. So, though all Cosette wanted to do was tell her, she didn’t and she silently waited the two days alone.
Strangely enough, her best friend acted extremely weird during those two days that Cosette didn’t even have to worry about avoiding the topic. On Thursday, when they usually ate in the library just the two of them, Eponine dragged her down to the cafeteria to eat with the whole group. Cosette noticed Grantaire give her a shoulder hug on the other side of the table and say something that looked like “unrequited love is a bitch.” She immediately regretted her seat next to Marius. On Friday, Eponine didn’t even show up at lunch. She responded “busy” to Cosette’s twenty “where are you” texts. Cosette just promised herself that the pain she was feeling at that moment was worth it. Anything to save Eponine from the pain that this would bring her was worth it.
I love you and I fucking hate you.
Eponine wouldn’t have cared if Cosette told her everything. She could have survived the nonstop chatter about Marius; she would have enjoyed it even, but this… this was awful. Marius texted her constantly about the date while Cosette said nothing. She just talked about normal, arbitrary things that Eponine could not bring herself to care about because “YOU ARE GOING ON A DATE WITH THE BOY YOU HAVE LIKED YOUR WHOLE LIFE AND YOU HAVEN’T TOLD YOUR BEST FRIEND ABOUT IT WHAT THE HELL” (a texted she had typed out and ready to go but could never send).
The worst part was that she knew Cosette was trying to save her and failing miserably. The worst part was she wanted Cosette to know that she wasn’t hurting her, that not communicating was Eponine’s worst nightmare and that she felt like she was drowning every time the conversation hit awkwardness and every time she looked at Cosette everything hurt. She wanted her best friend back. She didn’t need love, she just wanted this friend.
So then Friday night came and Eponine went for a walk around 9:30 because what else was she to do? Grantaire was off fucking the hot blonde (“unrequited love is a bitch, but you’ll be fine”-- easy to say when you’re with the once unrequited lover) and Cosette was on her stupid ass date. Eponine kicked a rock. This shouldn’t be so hard, she shouldn’t be so stupid. Plenty of guys wanted her… plenty of girls wanted her… why was she so set on this goddamned beauty?
Because of the way she smiled and her eyes lit up with the brightness of a thousand stars, the milky way galaxy painted in her two tiny, but vast crystal clear eyes. The way she twisted and twirled the blonde locks into a careless messy bun the second she walked into Eponine’s room, proving that she felt so much more comfortable around only her. How Eponine could make her laugh so easily and how her cheeks crinkled and she got so loud even though it seemed like her voice never reached above a whisper. Cosette was everything right in Eponine’s tragically flawed world wrapped into one small, beautiful person and she couldn’t just let that go. She needed her.
Eponine found herself walking down the side street to her favorite place to go and think, a small space by the pond in the center of town, it was just far enough away from the world that Eponine didn’t feel pressured to think about the real stuff. She and Cosette had shared many a silent poetry writing session there and many a long conversation. She didn’t really realize what she was doing and if she had, she would have changed routes. It made perfect sense for Cosette to take Marius there, but she thought nothing of it; until she turned the corner.
And there they were, her blonde beauty and cover up childhood crush sharing a kiss in the most romantic moonlight surrounded by stars, yet Cosette was still the brightest star there. Eponine hated these stupid romantic thoughts, she hated her stupid romantic self, in that moment, she hated everything. So she started running, sprinting the the edge of the pond and when she found herself there, she stopped short, caught her breath, and began to cry. The tears stung and felt stupid just like everything else, but they wouldn’t stop because really it wasn’t the salt water against her slightly cold cheeks stinging, it was the massive open wound Cosette had been burning in her heart since the day she met her being ripped open.
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
We go for tall hot girls and we fucking love it.
The kiss was not all that great. Marius just went for it with that tongue and was all sloppy and it really did not meet the high expectations she had been setting since sixth grade. Watching Eponine sprint away right as they broke apart really did not make the already disappointing experience any less awful, to be honest it was quite the contrary.
Marius glanced at his phone, “I should get going,” he told her, brushing a hair from her face, “I’ll text you.”
She just told him “okay” before she was flying down the street after Eponine.
The spot next to the pond was perfect. The canopy of trees let down the perfect bed of leaves around this time in the fall, it was Cosette’s favorite place in the world, and it’s beauty quickly became heartbreaking when she was faced with the image of her best friend’s back, shaking, obviously with tears. She walked over and touched Eponine’s shoulder “hey,” she said.
Because you broke my fucking heart.
Eponine turned around and met eyes with the two tiny galaxies she was so in love with brimming with tears. “Hey,” she whispered, “why the tears?”
“I could say the same for you,” answered Cosette, “but I know why and I am so so sorry I should have told you about it and really I shouldn’t have done it in the first place because I knew it would bring you this much pain and yet I did it anyway,” Eponine was crying even more, Cosette couldn’t help but believe it was all her fault “and I promise I never meant to hurt you I just… I know we’ve both liked him, but I like him so much Eponine I couldn’t help it… I’m so so sorry.”
Eponine was still crying, but she managed to sputter, “it’s honestly completely fine. You did not do anything.”
“No it isn’t,” Cosette argued, “you’re still crying, something is wrong.”
“No but,” started Eponine, but she trailed off, lost in the stream of her tears staring off at the water, “but” she tried again, “it’s just not you… it’s not your… you saying yes to Marius couldn’t have changed anything.”
“But you like him,” she exclaimed, “I broke the number one rule in the best friend code you should hate my guts, I stole the guy you like.”
“First of all,” said Eponine, breaking out of her depressed self and into regular Eponine, “guys aren’t property you can’t steal them,” they both made eye contact and smiled for a fleeting second before Eponine started crying again (she remembered that this was one of the many reasons why she loved Cosette so much).
“Ep, what the hell is wrong then” cried Cosette, she too was distressed now, “I know it’s him! I kissed the boy you like!”
“It isn’t fucking him,” Eponine argued, “I never even really liked him.” Cosette looked appalled. “It’s… it’s…” Eponine stuttered, “it’s not him,” and then they made eye contact. Eye contact that they never had before. It was like the scene in Harry Potter where his wand connects with Voldemort’s and the two spells just hold each other suspended in thin air and it feels like every ounce of the world is also suspended in thin air.
Why do you always feel so inevitable to me?
Cosette, like always, knew what Eponine was going to say before she said it, and she wanted her to say it because in that moment of eye contact Cosette felt every emotion she had ever felt toward Marius, just amplified. It was like all of the yearning and pining and sheer desire combined with what she knew would be a good outcome and then the words finally left Eponine’s chapped, but still perfectly red lips (all Cosette could focus on at the moment):
“It’s not him,” she said again, “it’s you.”
And then their lips were crashing together. The friction between the wands finally snapped in half and the world started moving again, but at twice the speed, and the world became so small and yet so big; like Cosette's galaxy eyes. Doors opened in every way, but really, for the both of them, it felt like the world was so simple: Eponine’s cool hands running up Cosette’s back, Cosette’s intertwined in Eponine's hair. As usual, they knew exactly what the other wanted and where to be at what time. The world was this. The world was the quick dash of Eponine’s tongue, the recant of Cosette’s, eventually insinuating a battle between the two. Eponine’s world was the way Cosette’s skin finally felt brushing against her’s and Cosette’s was the way that a kiss actually felt really, that a kiss actually felt right.
Their world was when the finally broke apart, breathless, but those slow deep breaths in perfect sync, foreheads pressed together and the way everything finally fell into place.
I think when you have a connection with someone it never really goes away.
You snap back to being important to each other because you still are. And time finally became normal, but they were still there, suspended their world: every heartbeat in sync, every touch in the right moment. “The only thing you did wrong,” admitted Eponine, “was you being so damn easy to fall for.”
“And I cannot express how glad I am that I was.”