#also sorry juniper's almost date im sure you don't look like a frog thiago is just mad jealous

[rxtualistic]

Thiago could have hit the man—he wanted to punch him desperately, if he was being honest with himself. The mask of shock the unlucky recipient of his wrath was sporting didn't sit well with Thiago. Because in his mind, there was no possible scenario in which Juniper's sudden exit wasn't due to something coming out of her interlocutor's frankly-too-big-for-his-face mouth. Or, even worse, spurred by uncalled behavior. His own date remained forgotten, pushed to the sidelines without as much of an explanation. If he had stopped to think for a second rather than letting his hot temper take over, maybe he would have realized his actions were no better than those of the man he so vehemently was judging.

But then that would have raised new questions. Was it the idea of Juniper getting hurt that awoke his ire, or was it just misplaced jealousy? Was it a justified sense of protection, or was it, perchance, that the mere thought of another man touching her, making her laugh, slowly carving their way to her heart, made his blood boil?

Did he still see Juniper as his?

For a painful, flickering moment, Thiago didn't recognize himself. He had never been the possessive type. The man holding a complete stranger by the lapels of his jacket looked exactly like the reflection he saw every day in the mirror, but he didn't feel like it was the same person. He couldn't even remember when the situation had escalated. One moment they were face-to-face, and the next he had his hands on him. It scared him. The person sorrow was turning him into. Blinking rapidly when his eyes fell on the figure hiding around the corner, he loosed the grip on the other man, took a step back, and opened his mouth with every intention of apologizing.

But then the man's attention shifted elsewhere, and Thiago's followed suit. And then he forgot how to breathe. Somehow he had managed to miss her walking towards them, so when he turned around to find out who the other man was calling over, coming face-to-face with Juniper caught him completely off guard. Somehow, he thought he would have more time. Which was stupid, considering there couldn't be more than a few feet between them and the wall she had been using as an impromptu shelter. At the end, nothing could have prepared him to be so close to Juniper again. She hasn't changed a bit. She looked exactly as beautiful as he remembered her, if not more. She still made his pulse speed up and his heart miss a beat.

When Juniper started speaking, he stood there like an idiot, watching the two talk as if he weren't there. It made him mad, but above all, it made him sad. A little voice in the back of his mind reminded him that he had no right to feel that way. Not when he had come to the party in the company of someone else. Someone who obviously had his number and had exchanged more than a few pleasantries over the phone.

And yet, it hurt to know she was ready to do the same with someone else. Someone who looked like a frog, if one were to ask Thiago.

When their eyes met, he forgot how to formulate words. And when she was gone in the blink of an eye, Thiago found himself chasing after her before he had time to consider the consequences of his actions. "Juni —," he called, reaching for her wrist, "are you — are you okay?" His eyes searched for hers, hoping to read the truth there. "Did he... did he do something bad?"

Finally, within the confines of the bathroom, Juniper was able to let her mask slip and allow all the emotions to freely flow through her. Shaky hands clutched tightly onto the rim of the sink, her head down and hanging between her shoulders as she took deep breaths in and out. All the pretending she had done from the moment she left her room up until her eyes set on Thiago in the company of another girl felt like a performance done in vain. What was the point of bottling up all her pain and acting as if it didn't exist if it would be inevitable for her to feel so low afterwards anyway? If she went back home now, she wouldn't feel as much of a failure - because she tried. Thiago was very much still under her skin, buried deep enough to flow through her. He wasn't something that could be suppressed or ignored, not when simply seeing him across the room had her hyperventilating in a bathroom. A few moments turned into several minutes and a desperate knock on the door was enough to bring Juniper back to reality, perhaps it was the only bathroom in the house. "Just a minute!" She called out, hardly recognising her own voice. She sent a text message to her friend, letting her know that she would be booking an Uber to make her own way home and exited the bathroom. The person who had been knocking on the door barged past her and slammed the door shut, forcing Juniper back into the ambience of the party. Remembering that, before her rush to the bathroom, she was having a conversation with someone who would most likely be wondering what the hell her problem was. Juniper made it her first priority to apologise before she left but then she stopped in her tracks when she saw Thiago speaking to him, returning the bottom half of her body to hiding behind the corner. "What the hell..." She muttered as she watched the interaction, being too far to make out any of what was being said but registering the look of confusion on the man's face. As if he could feel Juniper's stare, the man's eyes locked with hers and he raised an index finger - in Juniper's direction - and spoke to Thiago again. "No...no..." She shook her head and shrunk back further behind the wall. Why was he looking for her? Better yet, why was he interrogating anyone about her whereabouts when he had his own company to look out for? Rather than go over there and start off any enquiries that could cause a scene, Juniper started to make a beeline for the door. She kept her head down when she passed by the two men, though her attempt at invisibility was exposed when the guy called out to her and she felt too bad to completely ignore him. "Hey...um, sorry about that but...I'm not feeling too good, nothing too serious but I'm just gonna go home..." Her eyes remained on the man, trying with every bit of willpower to ignore Thiago entirely. "...I'll text you?" and that might as well have been the only thing she said because he nodded like an enthusiastic child. Only because she couldn't resist it, Juniper spared a single glance in Thiago's direction as if to confirm that his looks hadn't diminished in the time they had been apart and damn him, it didn't. Juniper turned and quickly headed for the door, opening the Uber app on her phone to get the hell out of there.