hand over hand

chapter 1

As soon as they drove off, Rei connected her phone to the van's Bluetooth and played a song all three of them enjoyed a lot, then the three friends turned to look at each other and couldn't help to smile and start cheering and laughing "I can't believe this is real, we're finally leaving" said Asuka not really paying attention to the road in front of her. "Oh my god, we're gonna be living by ourselves now, this is actually crazy, but I'm so excited to be doing it with you guys." Rei and Shinji returned the smile and started to laugh along with her.

"I know, right? This is something completely new for all of us, even tho, if I'm being honest, I'm not very excited to be sharing an apartment with Mr. Everything Has To Be Organized over here." The blue-haired girl said mockingly as she looked back, meeting Shinji's brown eyes, to which he just laughed and rolled his eyes."No, for real, you're delusional if you think the apartment is going to be clean all the time, I bet after a week you won't even care about it."

The next hour they all talked about their expectations for college, their worries, and exchanged so many stories from when they were kids, kind of reflecting about how much they were all grown. After a while, Rei fell asleep in the front seat and Shinji and Asuka were still talking about anything to fill the silence of the van. "So is Mari going to be in the apartment already or she'll get there after we do?" he said completely changing the topic of conversation.

"I think she's already going to be there, I don't know actually, we talked about it yesterday but she always confuses me a lot," she laughed about the last things she said "you know? I really, really like her, dude, things are going amazing with her, even my mom loves her, and you know how she is with those things."

"Yeah, she can be a bit difficult, but I'm happy to hear that, I actually never thought that you were gonna fall as hard as you have for her, I figured it was just going to be for a while."

"Bro, I thought the same thing, but after spending so much time with her, like, I don't know, she made me see things differently li-" she was interrupted by Shinji who couldn't help but laugh at how cheesy Asuka was being, it was weird seeing her like this. "don't laugh! Oh my god I know I sound ridiculous but I can't wait to see you fall in love with someone, you're gonna be worse than me!" At the last words Asuka said, Shinji gasped and peeled his eyes open, which the red-haired girl noticed and mirrored.

"You love her!?" he said while laughing really hard at Asuka's face being red like her hair.

"Noo, oh god, I didn't m-meant it like that, you know what I meant, you asshole" she turned around to Shinji to give him a deadly look, which made him worried about her poor care of looking ahead while driving. "Besides, we've only been dating for like two months, it's literally impossible for me to love her in such little time and not to mention that we decided to take things slow, dude we haven't even, well you know, yet... it's THAT slow."

"Fine, jeez, I get it. It's cool you guys are taking things slow, not that it's important but I like her a lot too, can't wait to spend more time with her." he gave a comforting smile to his friend and looked outside the window car, admiring the plain fields next to them. "I wonder how Rei's going to be when she starts dating someone, I bet she's going to be all over them, she might not look like it but she is one for physical affection."

"Hell no, have you met her? In the time I've known her she has hugged me like, five times, and only because it was my birthday, maybe it's different with you because she's your sister, but hell no. She might be one for physical affection but she would never do it in front of others," she said looking over to the girl that was asleep in the seat next to her "but do you think she's ready to date someone else, I mean, I still see her pretty sad since things didn't work out with that guy from your school, but then again, he was an asshole to her."