You expect a quick reassurance, but Carmilla’s eyebrows crease together and she looks away from you, growing quiet for about a minute before she finally decides on what to say.

And when she does, it definitely doesn’t soothe you.

“Eileen, really?”

You roll your eyes, meeting your girlfriend’s gaze.

Carmilla is sitting - more like lounging, really - in her seat at the table you usually share at Starbucks, coffee in one hand and one of your old notebooks in the other, the name tag fading in the front but still holding your full name perfectly readable on it.

“Should I be afraid of what might happen tonight?” You ask, because meeting Will had been fairly easy but everything you’ve heard about Mattie makes you think that, well, this time it might not.

Your father takes you to one of the high school hockey games on your birthday. It’s the last thing you wanna do, the last place you wanna be, but he had asked and you hadn’t been able to say no, not when everything was so fresh and so new in your mind and you just wanted your father to be there for once.

So you go to the game. 

And the second Carmilla Karnstein steps on the ice it’s as if you’d disappeared from the face of the earth and there’s only her. It’s absolutely infuriating.

Earlier, in one of the classes you share with her, your teacher had paired you together for an in-class assignment. Perry and LaFontaine had already formed their little bubble that you’d come to notice ever-so-often it didn’t include you and you had had no choice but to accept Carmilla as your partner.

It was a calculus class. She finished the assignment in less than half of the alloted time and, of course, you’d gotten a perfect grade. She’d turned to you then, lips crooked to the side, a small smirk on her annoying lips.

“Happy birthday, cupcake.”

For some reason, you put that stupid assignment in your pocket when you left the house and when Carmilla scores the first goal of the night and your dad starts cheering you can feel your hand crumpling around it, turning it into nothing but a little ball of paper.

You wish you could throw it at someone. Mostly your dad, for being so tactless.

But Carmilla. God, you hate her. You truly do.