Brallie Metropolis AU | In This Together

Chapter 42 | Dates

Saturday morning, the sun shining bright through the windows, lighting up the living room. Brandon walked into the kitchen, seeing Callie happily enjoyed a cup of coffee while she stood by the counter, flipping through what looked like a magazine.

"Are you shopping?" He asked coming behind Callie and noticing the pages and pages of dresses on models.

"Mariana keeps hounding me about that red dress she put me in. I can't exactly return it with blood on it," she laughed. "Which is odd because I would think that the red material would match the red blood, but no! Blood is darker, did you know that? I'm deciding whether I should try to find one that looks like the ruined one or I should find one that is better so she'll forget about the other one."

"You seem a little-" Brandon's words are a cut off by Mariana flying through the front door looking giddy as ever. Callie quickly threw the magazine in the sink so she wouldn't see.

"I have good news!" She shouts, skipping to the kitchen.

"There's an emergency?" Brandon sassed, thinking back to the semi-deal they made about Mariana barging in only if there's an emergency.

"No? That wouldn't be good news." She rolled her eyes. "I got accepted to Stanford!" She said through jumps of joy.

"You what?" Callie coughed on her coffee.

"It's like late acceptance or something."

"Does that even happen? Is that a thing?"

"I don't know, but it happened to me!" Mariana started jumping again, but in circles this time. She abruptly stops. "Well, I guess there's bad news too actually. I'm moving back to California."

"In the middle of the semester?" Brandon asked as he got the jug of orange juice out of the refrigerator.

"Well, yeah. But I always wanted to go to Stanford, and I'm getting a little homesick. Wow, I never thought I would say that."

"You've been gone for a week." Callie laughed, grabbing a bagel from the sac on the counter.

"I know, but still-"

"Look Mariana. You don't have to persuade us. That's great, I hope you do really well there." Brandon walked around the counter and hugged Mariana, Callie followed and did the same.

"When do you leave?" Callie muttered as she pulled back from their embrace.

"Today. My flight's in an hour," she expressed sadly. "I found out last night. I packed and shipped all of my stuff about an hour ago. I start bright and early Monday morning."

"Oh. That's means you need to leave like now," Brandon's face dropped.

"Well it's not like we won't be in touch." Mariana smiled.

"Exactly," Callie pulled everyone in for a group hug.

"Hey, would you put in a good word about us back home?" He laughed.

"Sure, I don't think it will help much though." They all joined in on the laughter. Brandon and Callie gave Mariana one last hug before saying their goodbyes, well more like a 'see you later' before she was out the door and off to the airport.

"Aw I'm gonna miss having her here. It was nice for the week she was here," Callie laughed.

"Yeah, it was nice having someone else to torment," he joked.

"Well I'm glad she didn't ask about that dress." she laughed again.

Callie and Brandon proceeded with their day, which mostly consisted of school stuff. Brandon was doing work with his keyboard in the living room and Callie was working on a paper on the laptop at the desk in their bedroom. She eventually got bored, her neck and eyes were starting to hurt so she took a break. She went out and sat on one of the chairs to watch Brandon play. She could watch Brandon's fingers cascade the keys all day. The way his body moves in sync with the music, the way he bites his lower lip, the way the muscles in his back shifted through his shirt with each press of a key, it was exhilarating to watch.