Mackenzie wished that Tatum had just let her walk away, she was extremely close to losing it. She wished that she could just turn around at that point and walk away from the redhead. It was the least painful thing to do, run away. Maybe that was her father’s thinking when he left them. Maybe her mother was right, she was too much like her father sometimes. But she stayed rooted to the spot, nodding numbly when Tatum asked her about the movie. Of course she remembered that movie, she remembered almost every single thing that her and Tatum had ever done together. She had tons of stupid picture’s pinned around her desk of her and the redhead.

Her defenses were starting to nag at the back of her mind, telling her to lash out at the redhead, to keep her at arms length. What the hell had she been thinking? Telling Tatum her deepest, darkest secret. It hadn’t really made anything better, it hadn’t changed anything, it just made things awkward between the two of them. It changed everything.

There would always be a her, there would always be Frankie, Mackenzie felt stupid thinking that there wouldn’t be. That maybe, just maybe, things could change. Frankie was right about her being pathetic, waiting around for someone she couldn’t have. She couldn’t even look at the redhead at the moment, instead studying the grass under her shoes. She needed to walk away, she needed Hunter.

“You know what to do Tatum,” She said, her voice rough from all the crying. Not that it had stopped, she wondered if she could ever get it to stop now that it had started. She had kept it all welled up inside her for so long. “And you know what you’re going to do. And that’s alright, okay? Really, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine, we‘ll all be fine.” She knew she wouldn’t be, but she had to get the redhead to believe that she would. Tatum would kill herself over worrying about her and she didn’t want to be a burden on the redhead.

She walked over to the miserable redhead and cupped the girls cheek once again. “Hey, you should cheer up Tater Tot,” she said, forcing a smile onto her face. She ran her thumb over the smooth skin of the girls cheek, wiping some of the tears away. She had to be strong for both of them, she had sworn to protect the redhead, even if it was from herself. “You’re so pretty when you smile.” She kissed the girl’s cheek and straightened up, it was time to walk away now. She wouldn’t be able to hold it together much longer.

She ruffled the mess of red hair and turned away from the redhead, making her way across the Quidditch pitch slowly. Her legs felt like lead as she walked and she really wanted nothing more than to turn around and race right back to Tatum. She hoped that the girl knew she wasn’t abandoning her, she just couldn’t handle it anymore today. She needed a break, needed to get away for a while. She needed to figure out what the hell she was going to do, and she couldn’t do that with Tatum sitting right in front of her.