The After-Math:

The room was heavy with silence. Thomas pretended he didn't feel Cecilia's defiant gaze on his back as he strode casually to a chair and began arranging a plate with finger sandwiches. He pretended he didn't notice the air thick with tension; he pretended she had never met that Mr. Pritchard.

      When he could no longer handle the silence between them, he rather forcibly set his plate down and turned to her and stuttered, "Listen, Lia--" but before he could finish, she interrupted him. 

      "No, you listen, Thomas Roudington. I have never been so humiliated in my entire life! Why, you had absolutely no right coming in here and acting as you did! And treating him in such a fashion--he a guest in my home, too! I could positively strangle you for being so rude!"

      Thomas did his best to keep cool, but a tongue-lashing as sound as that (especially when the deliverer was as close to tears as she was) did his composure no favors. "What the devil do you mean I had no right? I, being your oldest, dearest friend who swore to your father on his deathbed that I would see to it you would come to no harm or injustice, I who have wanted nothing but the best for you, (and that's not even mentioning my being your suitor) I have no right?"

      Cecilia gaped at his presumptuousness. "Of course not! We both know that promise you made to my father was to be enacted only upon the most dire of situations. Not when I had invited a man into my home that didn't particularly strike your fancy!" 

       "Fine. But father aside, what exactly were you planning to do about me? We had an arrangement, Cecilia. Does giving your word mean nothing to you?"Thomas could tell this wasn't quite the right button to push with her. But all the same he had to do it. He had to know, once and for all, how she really felt. 

       Cecilia seemed to explode in that moment. "You have never been a suitor to me, Thomas! You said so yourself, it was all an arrangement: a business transaction between two people in a spot of trouble. Well, it turns out it only created trouble, not fixed it. So I'll thank you to not mention it again." 

      For an instant, Thomas fell silent. He'd known this had been coming. He only hadn't known how much it would hurt to hear her speak the words; how it would hurt to hear her say he meant nothing to her; that he was simply a means to an end. But, just as he had fallen silent in that instant, in the next he was nothing but roaring fire and anger. After all that he had done for her, all that he had gone through for her, this was how she repaid him! Thomas spoke with a harsh finality. "That's fine, Lia. That's just swell. But know this: the next time you think your world is falling apart, I just might not be there to put it back together for you. And then, perhaps, you'll remember why you ever came to me with that blasted arrangement."
      As Thomas began his stomp out of the room, Cecilia suddenly felt the need to get in the last word, overcome, in that moment, by the sudden, powerful question of why. And though she could never know the implication of her words, they were ripped out of her in a force of longing. "Why did you ever care so much, anyway?"
      Because I love you. The thought came to him quietly, desperately. Though an explanation of it seemed futile, the answer, at least to him, was clear. He turned around for a final time before leaving, and, with a sad look in his eye, he answered her. "Because we are friends, and I was foolish enough to hope for something more."