I could feel that Colby was doing better, so I didn't stay in the same position for long. Angela and I had news, after all, and it was news that was good enough to allow me to push away my anger for once. I could also feel her anticipation to tell everyone burning through the air in the room, which was starting to get frustrating in its own way. She wanted to blurt it out, I was sure—especially when I shifted to sit sideways on Colby's lap instead and glanced at her. She met my eyes immediately, waiting.
Colby pulled me over his lap to wrap his arms around me, making Sam's eyebrow raise. For once, he voiced his concerns loud enough for me to hear. "Are you good, brother?" he asked.
"Fine," Colby replied shortly. His voice wasn't mad or a snap, though, and Sam caught on and started to smile to himself as he gave Katrina a look. She was amused, too, but I didn't want to know who else had the same expression.
Taking Colby's hand in one of mine, I looked over to Angela once more. "Stop staring at me, Angela. You're the older one, take charge for once."
She grinned. "I thought you'd like to say it, but alright." She paused for dramatic effect and looked around to make sure everyone was paying attention to her—classic Angela. "The Woods, specifically our mother, are going to be a huge part of the Fashionista Gala once again this year, and I'm not the only Woods daughter to be invited." Angela looked at me, still smiling. "But it's going to be short-lived, huh, Becca?"
I rolled my eyes. "It fell at a bad time."
"Actually, it's the perfect time. Becca's announcing her leave from the designing community." I felt a couple of the others start looking at me now, wondering why the hell I was leaving it so soon. I knew I didn't have to explain myself. Colby was looking at me too—partially for unrelated reasons, I guessed—but I knew he knew why I was leaving.
"What's this gala like? It sounds fancy," Katrina said to take the attention from me as she shifted forward on Sam's lap to look at Angela.
"It is fancy—it's one step down from a black tie event. As Mom and I offer up our "services" to help plan the whole thing, we're allowed special rules, too." Angela grinned. "We're allowed to bring unlimited people."
There was a beat of silence.
The most excited of everyone about this prospect was Xepher, it was pretty clear, so she broke the silence to say, "As in... us?" Angela nodded without a word. "Holy shit, actually?"
"If you want to come," Angela giggled, glancing around for everyone's reactions. I found myself looking to Colby for his, only to find him watching me still. I smiled and he smiled back, squeezing me. I was pretty sure that was a yes.
"I'm really down," Xepher said.
"I'm not a suit and tie kinda guy, but it sounds fun to pretend for a night," Elton agreed.
"As long as Colby's fine with it," Sam added slowly, "I think we're all going to come." Colby held his hands up for barely a second, making Devyn, of all people, squeal in excitement. I could see she wasn't the only girl to be excited, but she was the only one so open about it—besides Xepher.
"Is it a good idea right now?" Mike asked Colby, ignoring all the girls with smiles on their faces.
"To get you all out of the house, yes. Julian's," Colby hesitated but I squeezed his hand to get him to continue, "gone for right now, so what's he going to do? He might not even know about the event and if he does, he wouldn't do something in front of so many people."
"He's a subtle attacker," Angela agreed, still smiling, "which means we can all go to the gala!" Her voice turned into a squeal toward the end and she jumped up from Aryia's lap to suddenly run across the room—surprisingly to me. She dragged me up, though I tried to resist, and held me at an arm's length in front of her. "You are helping me."
"Um, no, I don't think I am," I replied snappily, frowning.
She rolled her eyes. "The Woods help every time—it's tradition."
"Fuck tradition. What am I even going to do?"
"Ah, I'm glad you asked." Angela took one of my hands now to drag me to the door but I wasn't having it, snatching my wrist back. She turned to me with a sigh. "Rebecca, it's not much."
"I don't care."
"You're announcing your leave from the community, right? That means you have to write a speech, and if you have to do a speech, you need to fit in with the scheduling, and how do you know the scheduling and pick the best place to have your own speech?" She left it open for me to answer but I was silent. "You do the scheduling yourself. Mom always says something and so will I, so you'll go..." She took a moment to think, during which I slid away from her to go back to Colby. "I think you'll go first."
"Still don't care," I murmured, leaning against Colby's chest. He'd accepted me onto his lap instantly and wrapped me up in his arms already. I could feel his calm now, rather than his rage, and it was more pleasing than I wanted to admit.
Angela stared at me in my comfy position, glanced at Colby, then turned to Aryia. "Can you take me to my place for two seconds? I need to grab the planning stuff. As she refuses to leave, we'll do it here."
I rolled my eyes but she was too busy getting picked up by Aryia. They disappeared and I got comfier, sliding more to lie down. She could plan whatever she wanted, I wasn't going to take part in any of it.
At least, that's what I thought. I was close to falling asleep, somehow, when Aryia and Angela reappeared. She held two binders in her arms—one old and tattered, and the other brand new. She dropped them both on the floor before sinking to sit down and looking at me. I made no move, so she sighed and shoved the old binder across the floor. Aryia flicked it open before he zipped to his place on the couch.
"That's from the last time I was heavily involved in the Gala. It's got pretty much everything I had control over, but Mom's become more important since then. Whatever I don't plan for, someone else will, meaning I have all the control aside from that. Mom's leaving this to me—I don't think you were listening when she told me. However much you help, you get to have control of, too. Offer's open."
Angela waited, still staring at me. I could feel her judgement hidden behind patience. She still thought I wanted anything to do with her and Mom after all the shit they'd put me through and she was wrong, but this whole planning thing was mildly interesting me as a leader-type. I enjoyed the idea of controlling parts of this big event.
"You realise letting me choose anything is a bad idea?" I questioned as I lifted my head from Colby's chest.
"You're helping to choose, you aren't choosing."
"Mhm," I murmured, exchanging a look with Colby. We both knew I wasn't going to be that easy.
"Are you coming down here or not? I can work alone for a few hours."
"Hours," I repeated through a groan. Angela didn't say anything before flicking over the new binder, which was filled with blanks instead of all the notes and photos in the older. It did seem... interesting.
Ugh.
Without a word, I placed a kiss on Colby's cheek then slid off of him to sit as far from Angela as I could whilst still having access to the binder. I felt like a kindergarten kid awaiting instructions sitting on the floor like this, but Angela was quick to distract me.
She brainstormed aloud and let me tell her when something was shit—most of the time—then accepted when I was being genuinely criticising. It was hard to tell, considering I only ever spoke in sarcastic comments, but she'd managed to figure me out. Katrina slid down to help us after a short while, too, with Xepher pitching in whenever she felt strongly about something.
I was an organised leader. I liked things to be in order—binders, dividers, labels, all of that—but aside from the binder, Angela was far from it. She continually shoved pieces of paper in random places, leaving me to go along cleaning up her shit while she brainstormed more with Katrina.
"Rebecca, a clean freak? Who knew?" Jake said in amusement as I sorted through a number of random sheets of notes and sketches made by Angela in the midst of her brainstorming.
I didn't look up at Jake as I placed close to the last paper into a divider in the binder—Angela wasn't even in the room to do this herself.
"I knew," I heard Colby mutter, a smile in his voice. I grabbed the nearest pencil and threw it at him without looking, though I heard him catch it. After placing the last piece of paper away, I looked up at him expectantly. He threw the pencil back.
"Tell them one more thing about me, and I'll stake you with the pencil next time," I promised when I met his eyes.
He clearly didn't find my threat very threatening as he close to grinned back at me. I despised the cockiness in his voice when he muttered, "Okay, cheerleader."
Before I could get up to throttle him, Angela returned. She had food—somehow my favourite, and it distracted me completely from my obnoxious boyfriend.
I sent a glare at Colby to keep his mouth shut before accepting the small tray from my sister. She sat down beside me, the look on her face as clear as day: she knew it was my favourite.
"You never change, huh?" she asked, smiling.
"Say a word and I'll end you, Angela. I'm perfectly capable of fighting two battles at once... especially when one of them has told me just about everything about them." My eyes found Colby's again, but he broke the contact quickly. He knew what he'd told me—a million embarrassing, funny, and personal stories, any of which he'd kill me for ever telling anyone. That wasn't mentioning the things he told me about the others and his own feelings toward me or what was going on right now in life. He was a softie and any number of the stories I could tell about him proved that.
Angela and I "worked" on the plans for only another hour after that. Anything I had been responsible for was completely figured out since I was an efficient worker, whilst Angela had jumped around the binder deciding and brainstorming random bits. She'd have a job figuring out the rest the next time she did this, but I'd definitely made her life easier by organising it all for now. She didn't say anything about it, though, in fear of me undoing all the work I'd done.
She closed both binders and left the room with them. Colby appeared next to me a second later to help me up from the floor—I'd been there a while and my ass was starting to hurt—before he moved us both in a blur to his chair. He was laid across it now with me over him, which I certainly wasn't going to complain about. I chose to lie down, the exhaustion of actually doing shit today getting to me for the first time.
By the time Angela was back in the room and settled, my head and hand was resting on Colby's chest, and my eyes were starting to drift already. The light circles being drawn on my back didn't help, either, in keeping away the sleep, so I didn't bother fighting it off.
Some battles just weren't worth losing.