Previously: Truth or dare gone bad.
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Marines: After Tessa starts sobbing, Landon asks if he really heard Hardin say he loved her. So, you know, if we haven’t said it yet Landon is a trash-ass friend because the correct question here would be ARE YOU OKAY? Landon becomes the absolute trashiest as he asks if maybe Hardin really does love her? Maybe? (S: Hey sobbing friend, let me poke some more at where you’re wounded!) Tess says absolutely not! Not because of the extreme amount of evidence he’s shown that he doesn’t value her, her autonomy, her agency, her worth as a human being, for starters, but because he’s so broken and so incapable of love.
Landon graduates to an actual dumpster-ass friend when he says he’s “on Tessa’s side” but also did Tessa see Hardin’s face when he made the confession? He was ~*heartbroken*~. Yeah, and a toddler is heartbroken when you don’t give him ice cream for breakfast. Doesn’t mean those are complicated, mature feelings, Landon.
No, but Landon says:
“And you can’t be heartbroken if you aren’t in love.”
For the love of God. Someone check on Anna Todd and see if she’s doing okay.
Samantha: Mother. Fuck. We are for real being asked to prioritize Hardin’s feelings right now. Moments after he laughed at and humiliated and emotionally beat up on this girl. All because he’s “hurting” because he basically isn’t getting his way.
Mari: Tessa thinks that logic can’t be true because she felt her heart shatter when Hardin kissed Molly and she doesn’t love him. Landon asks if she loves Hardin. She says no on the basis of he’s a jerk, she’s only known him for 2 months, and he’s a jerk. Landon smiles at her repetitive reasoning, but it seems sound to me.
Samantha: Don’t condescendingly smile at her you asshole.
Mari: Landon asks if Tessa wants to go back to her dorm or wants to stay at his house. Tessa would like to go to her dorm, but seeing has how Hardin has no respect for her privacy or space, she can’t actually do that. She asks Landon to take her to the dorm to pick some things up before heading to his house. She apologizes for the trouble, but he assures her it’s totally fine, because that’s what friends do. You’re still a dumpster friend, sorry Landon. I don’t make the rules.
Tessa grabs her stuff, including her phone, from her room in a tizzy. They head back to Landon’s and it’s “after eleven.” It always trips me out when parties are so early, but I’ve learned that it’s because I’m from south Florida/Miami, where that’s when people start going out. (S: The horror.) Anyway, Tess and Landon eat pizza and cupcakes, and then he shows her to the guest room. Tessa has a wall of text paragraph all about how strange time has seemed since she’s met Hardin. It’s because you’re stuck in the Twilight Zone, Tess-tess. Get help.
She turns on her phone and has a tone of messages from Hardin, Steph and her mom. She deletes all her mom’s messages without reading them, so I hope she wasn’t dying or anything. Tessa tosses and turns, thinking about how early she has to wake up in the morning for class. At 3am, she makes a terrible decision to go into Hardin’s room, put on one of his shirts and fall asleep in his bed.
Next time on After: Wow, guess who shows up in his own room in Chapter 62.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 28 year old graduated English major and almost librarian. I can often be found singing too loudly (poorly) in the car or spending some time (hours) on Tumblr. I am a lover of Harry Potter, the Spice Girls, and too many other things.