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Previously on PFS…
Rena attempted to reach out to her fellow students only to be met with cold shoulders. Uranus cheers her up with a movie and tries to plant one on her, but Rena, thinking of Holly and Liam, pulled away. Rena finally tells Liam that she likes Uranus more in a not-so-gently way. Liam’s upset and now Holly is at Rena’s house with a stranger.
Chapter Forty-Seven: Baby Steps
Her name was Echo, or that’s what she introduced herself as. Within the first three minutes I was around her, I decided I didn’t like her. She was rude, smelled suspiciously like alcohol, and she gave off a scary aura. Basically, she was the opposite of Holly.
“So…how exactly did you two meet?” I asked the question burning within me.
Holly looked at Echo with a small smile on her face. “It’s a long story,” she told me.
“That we’d rather not tell,” Echo added on with a tinge of hostility in her voice.
Twelve. Echo had twelve face piercings. One was on her slightly flat nose, two were on her plump purple-lipstick covered lips, and the rest were scattered on her small ears.
It was safe to say Echo was pretty in a dangerous sense. Her green eyes were catlike and looked like they were calculating my every move. Her brows were sharply arched. She had amazing bone structure with her high cheekbones and her defined jawline. Echo’s hair was a flaming ball of red, but some how her frizzy red hair just added on to her exotic beauty.
I was curious about where Holly had gone and how she ran into someone like Echo, but it seemed like Holly and Echo didn’t really want to talk about it, which was fine because I was kind of dying on the inside since Liam and I’s conversation.
“What kind of grub you got here?” Echo asked, but she didn’t wait for a response before walking to the kitchen. Why did I invite her in?
“I’m glad your back, Holly,” I told the recently MIA girl and gave her a hug.
“Glad to be back,” Holly said chirpily.
I pulled away from the hug when a huge crash came from the kitchen. “Your bowls are cheap! Broke with just one touch!” Echo shouted.
“Holly, I don’t mean to offend you or Echo, but is Echo…safe to be around?” I asked, choosing my words carefully.
Holly looked amused by my question. “She’s a tough chick, but she won’t hurt you.” Another loud crash came from the kitchen. “Just your bowls apparently,” she joked nervously. “We-we can leave if you’re not comfortable with her around,” Holly suggested while fiddling with her shirt.
My eyes flickered to the two suitcases Holy and Echo had placed next to the couches. I had a feeling that Holly was here for more than just a visit. “Why do I feel like the word ‘leave’ has heavier meaning than what you’re letting on?”
Holly broke eye contact with me, letting her gaze fall on something to the right of me. “My parents kicked me out,” she said sadly. “They told me they shouldn’t be responsible for such an ‘unappreciative’ child,” she added, quoting her parents. “And we need a place to stay.”
“It’s ultimately up to my dad, but I don’t think he’d mind,” I said automatically, feeling awful for what Holly’s own parents had done to her.
“Thanks, Rena. I promise Echo will behave and we won’t get you and your family’s way and we’ll pull our own weight in the house. Thanks for this, Rena,” Holly gave me a speedy thank you, pulling me into a bone-crushing hug.
“I will hear about your adventures out of town, won’t I?” I asked once I had successfully pulled away from her tight embrace and regained the ability to get oxygen into my lungs again.
Holly just got that small smile—the one that looked like she was lost in reminisce. “Someday,” she agreed, coming back from her mental fantasyland. “Though I know it’s unfair of me to ask now, what has been happening here?”
Suddenly the distraction of having Holly randomly appearing wore off, allowing the waves of guilt and sadness to hit me once more. This time, I couldn’t bear it and the waves manifested themselves physically through tears.
Everything that has happened the past few days spilled from my mouth. I started off simply with how Liam was fine and checked out of the hospital, but it got too hard for me to talk about him, so I rapidly shifted to finally explaining my fat suit to Holly. I had to follow up with my current internal struggle of my fat suit dilemma. Of course, since he talked it out so much with me, I started talking about Uranus. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out my issues with choosing Liam or her ex. As I talked, my sobs grew until what I was saying was barely recognizable, recounting what I did to Liam.
Holly listened to the entirety of my tirade, looking engaged. Even though I had told her that I had broken the most important rule in the girl code, she still kept a cool collected expression on her face.
Echo had walked in while I was ranting and remained leaning on the opposite wall from me, looking interested.
“Wow,” was all Holly said. “I sure missed out on a lot,” she said in a joking manner. “Umm,” Holly searched for something to say. “Are you sure about Liam? You seem really upset about the way things went.”
By this time, I had calmed down enough and regained my ability to speak more articulately. “But I don’t feel any regret for telling him. I just feel bad about the way I did it.”
“Yeah, that was totally a dick move,” Echo butted into the conversation unnecessarily and joined Holly on the couch.
“Echo, maybe you shouldn’t—”
“No, Hol, she probably needs to hear this,” Echo cut off Holly. She redirected her attention to me. “We could sit here and work through this emotional crap with you through ice cream and shit, but what will that gain you? Pounds? I don’t think you need that. You need closure, which you didn’t get from the runaway guy. I say harass the dude until he talks to you. Blah… blah...blah… then it’s decided—you’ll either remain friends or his love will turn into scorn and you’ll both just stay away from each other. You’ll bound back either way. There—simple as pie.”
I stared at Echo for a few seconds, trying to comprehend what she just told me, but my mind refused to accept it in all its simplicity. I knew that the dreaded talk between Liam and I would come eventually and we would come to one of the conclusion proposed by Echo. I just didn’t want to admit that there was a possibility of Liam and I’s friendship ending. But was it that simple? A talk?
“Rena, Liam loves you. I really doubt he’ll break off your friendship just because of something you can’t even control,” Holly added hurriedly when I didn’t respond to Echo.
“But you know what they say. There’s a thin line between love and hate.”
Holly was about to respond to Echo, but she stopped when the front door opened. It wasn’t seven yet, so it was probably Kurt.
“Renaaaaa,” someone sang cheerfully as soon as I heard the door shut.
Yup, definitely Kurt.
Holly and Echo sent a weirded-out look towards the direction of my front door.
“Brace yourselves,” I mumbled a warning to the two girls who weren’t used to Kurt’s peculiarities and awaited my brother go from weird to beyond the point of insanity.
“Guess what. Guess what. Guess what!” Kurt exclaimed excitedly as he came barreling into the living room, but upon seeing Holly and Echo, he straightened out. “Well, hello there,” my brother said all properly and gave them a wave.
“Chicken butt,” I said instinctively.
Like that, Kurt dropped his ‘proper’ demeanor, went back to his original chirpy state, and jumped over the couch to sit by me. “Look at it!” Kurt shouted and pulled a mug out from behind his back.
“What about it?” I asked looking at the white, porcelain mug he was shoving in my face.
“Don’t you see?” Kurt asked, exasperated. “Oh,” he said once he realized he was holding the mug too close to my face for my eyes to see anything. “There.”
The text on the mug read: World’s Greatest Boyfriend.
“Does that mean...”
“I’m Sadie’s boyfriend!” Kurt answered my now unnecessary question.
I sucked up the previous self-pity I was stuck in and tried to happy for my brother’s sake. But seeing the happiness on my brother’s sake, I didn’t need to pretend.
I was about to hug him, but he beat me to it and gave me his signature bear hug.
“You hear that ladies?” Kurt addressed Holly and Echo, whose presence I had almost forgotten, after he had let go of my hug. “This,” Kurt motioned to his body flamboyantly, “is more gone from the market than new iPhones on their release date,” he finished sassily and happily skipped up the stairs, probably to phone Sadie.
Before Holly or Echo could comment on my brother’s strangeness, Kurt came rushing down the stairs and into the living room once. “That was rude. I realized I didn’t know you. The name’s Kurt—Rena’s brother. Off the market,” Kurt introduced himself to Echo whilst reminding everyone of his new relationship status.
“I like him,” Echo said simply as he dashed up the stairs again, unfazed by my crazy brother.
My dad came home later that evening and almost instantly agreed to Holly and Echo’s stay at the house after the situation was explained. And somehow it was decided that I was the one that got to sleep on the floor of my own bedroom while Holly and Echo got to share my bed.
After about half an hour of trying to find a comfortable position to sleep, I gave up and decided to just give up and walk around my house for a bit.
I somehow ended up on my kitchen counter, staring at my phone, hoping that Liam would just suddenly decide to start talking to me again. I knew he wouldn’t though. I hurt him.
I wondered if I made the right choice though. I now knew that I still liked Uranus more than I did Liam. My mind wanted desperately for me to like Liam because of all that he did for me, his sweetness, my desire of making him happy, the fact that I wasn’t sure what was going to happen between Uranus and I, and for a lot of other reasons. But my stupid heart was telling me otherwise…just because. There was no explanation for it, which frustrated me beyond belief.
I went through my old phone’s pictures, which survived the cereal because they were on an SD card, on my iPhone and stopped at the picture Kurt had taken. It was the day that Liam was ‘babysitting’ me in my sick state. We had fallen asleep on each other and Kurt seized the opportunity to take a picture.
Liam looked so tranquil, calm, and blissfully peaceful while he was sleeping. Looking at the picture reminded me of his face earlier today—hurt, angered, pained. I would do anything to get Liam’s disposition in the picture back onto him.
But I knew I could never get that Liam back. Our friendship was strong and I only had but little doubt that we couldn’t repair things between us, but I don’t think we could ever have what we had because of what I did.
The only solution I could think of was to just come running back to him, to tell him I didn’t mean it. What would that really do, though? It’d be putting him through an ugly and one of the biggest lies I could think of. Thinking back, I knew I made the right choice, but I hated the outcome.
“Rena?” a soft voice called through the darkness.
“Kitchen,” I told Holly.
Holly came in and flicked the lights on, temporarily blinding me. “Sorry,” Holly apologized sleepily when he saw me flinch at the light. “What’re you doing up so late?” she asked, hopping onto the counter next to me.
I didn’t say anything. I just tilted my phone screen so she could see what I was looking at.
“Oh, Rena. You shouldn’t be doing this to yourself…at least not this soon,” Holly scolded me and took my phone away.
“Holly, why aren’t you mad at me?” I asked curiously.
Holly sighed. “Is this about Trent?”
I nodded.
“Rena, this is going to sound really bad,” Holly paused and gave me a warning look. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought of Trent in a romantic way.”
Silence hung in the air as I let her words sink into my mind. All those times I’ve been stuck in the middle of Holly and Uranus’s romantic crap flashed though my eyes—their cuddling, kissing, and goo-goo eyes. They were all one-sided the entire time?
“What?” I asked.
“I never really thought about it when I was here, but I think I was with Trent to simply go through the motions. I didn’t particularly want to start dating Trent, but I did because he wanted to. And as time progressed, I didn’t want to break it off because I genuinely care for Trent as a friend. But then, he told me he loved me and I was horrified at myself because it was then I realized I had led someone on for a year. That’s why I ran from him.”
I didn’t know what to say because I had conflicting feelings to what Holly had just confessed. I wanted to scold her for letting Uranus think that they had a serious relationship when Holly never really felt anything for nearly a year. I wanted to yell at her for breaking someone’s heart (which, I admit, is a bit hypocritical). At the same time, I understood she genuinely didn’t want to hurt Uranus by breaking up with him sooner. I got that maybe she didn’t want go back to being alone after their break up because her parents basically ignore her. I also knew, judging from her expression, that she regretted it entirely.
“Oh God, you probably hate me now,” Holly murmured and leaned back on the cabinet she was sitting in front of. “I never wanted to hurt him.”
“I know,” I finally said. “I’m not mad,” I decided. “Okay, not that mad,” I added, when I thought about it again.
“Just to let you know, I’d support you if you do decide to go for him. I think it’d be good for him.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “I thought you were team Liam.”
“I personally think you and Liam would make an adorable couple, but in the end it’s your choice,” she shrugged.
I gave her a sad smile. “That ship sailed about seven hours ago.”
“Like I said, Liam’s not the type of guy to break off strong friendships. Who knows? You might very well end up falling for him after all.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I told her, feeling more sadness weighing down on me as we talked about the guy whose heart I broke. “Does Uranus know that you’re here?” I asked, suddenly remembering.
“Yeah, he uh-he saw the entire fight had with my parents,” Holly told me. “He invited Echo and me into his house and talked briefly. He seemed a bit off though. And now I know why,” Holly said, sending me a suggestive look.
“What?” I asked, confused by why she was looking at me like that, but then I remembered our almost-kiss, which made me feel sick again. “Oh.”
“After that, we decided his aunt would never let two girls stay at his house, so we went here.”
“What?” I asked her repeat herself. A buzz had come from my phone and I got distracted, thinking that Liam might have texted me. It turned out to be a notification from fruit ninja.
Holly grabbed the phone from my hands. “You need to stop torturing yourself,” she told me.
“I know. I know. I can’t stop thinking about it though.”
Holly thought for a moment. “Maybe you just need to take a step back from boy-issues and focus on your other issues,” she said gently. “You want to stop wearing your fat suit, right?”
“I just don’t know where to start,” I said glumly, reminded yet again of my other problems.
Holly crossed her arms over her chest in thought for a moment, but then suddenly jumped off of the counter saying, “I’ve got it!”
After hearing footsteps bounding through my house, Holly came into the kitchen with a grin on her face and her hands behind her back.
“Do you feel like entering, but not breaking?” Holly asked me.
“No, not—”
“Well, we’re going to anyways,” Holly cut me off and showed me a ring of keys she had behind her back.
“Why do you have so many keys?” I asked, eyeing the keys curiously.
“I’m class president. I’m entitled to have the keys to the school,” she said.
“I don’t think going to school will help me now.”
“No, come on,” Holly ignored my refusal to go and dragged me off of the counter. “We’re going whether you like it or not. This will be good for you. I swear.”
“Holly, it’s two in the morning,” I started to whine.
“That didn’t seem to bother you when you were desperately awaiting a text. Now, come on.”
Ouch, that hurt, but it still didn’t make it less true or less necessary to be heard. Was it just me or did Holly change a bit? She seemed a bit more out there and spoke her thoughts more, which I guess was a good thing.
“How are we going to get there, genius?” I asked, pulling my wrist away from Holly.
“A car, obviously.”
“I’m not taking Kurt’s keys,” I told her. “He sleeps with them on his toes.”
“I’ve got it covered,” she said and whipped out her phone. While she was calling whomever was on the other line, I went back upstairs and quietly grabbed Holly and I’s jackets because it looked like I had no choice in the matter now.
I went back downstairs to see Holly waiting by the front door.
I handed her her jacket and asked, “What we going to do with Echo?” I asked.
“She doesn’t get up until noon.”
“I feel weird about just leaving her though.”
“Trust me, Rena. That girl sleeps like she was knocked out by an elephant tranquilizer. Now let’s go,” Holly assured me before ushering me out the door.
I instantly shivered when the cold air of the night touched my skin. It took a lot not to jump around yelling that I was cold and I wanted to go back to the sweet warmth of my house.
“It’s really cold,” Holly commented and pulled her jacket tighter to herself.
“I-I didn’t n-notice,” I said sarcastically, still shivering from the sudden change in temperature.
“You should lock your door,” Holly ignored my rudeness and pulled out her phone again.
While Holly walked around to the driveway, I went back inside my house and got the house keys. Once more, I left the warmth of my house and walked into the uninviting cold.
After locking the front door, I joined Holly who was jumping foot-to-foot, trying to keep warm.
“Regret it yet?” I asked.
“Nope.”
After standing there for at lest another three minutes, my teeth started to chatter and my hands were like ice cubes. “How ‘bout now?”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Holly said instead of answering my question. “He’s here.”
“Who in their right mind would drive us at this hour?” I asked, but my question was answered not even a second later when a truck pulled in front of us. “Oh…” I said in realization.
“Come on, Rena,” Holly urged me on when she noticed I hadn’t taken a step towards the truck.
“Did I just not tell you about all the awkwardness between you-know-who and.. actually all of us?” I whispered-yelled at Holly.
She seemed to not understand that she had recently broken up with Uranus, leaving him confused and angry and hurt, that I had feelings for her ex that both she and him knew about, that I had just broken Liam’s heart, and that her ex hard tried to kiss earlier today. I really wondered what went on between Holly and Uranus at his house for them to be cool like this again.
“Just get in the car, Rena,” Holly continued to spur me on, motioning for me to get in the car after opening the passenger door.
I gave Holly the deadliest glare I could muster, but Holly was not at all fazed. Instead, she held a determined look on her face.
“Rena, just get in the car. You’re letting all the warm air out,” I heard Uranus shout from the car.
After a few grunts in opposition, I finally admitted defeat and dragged myself into Uranus’s car. Holly followed suit and the awkwardness I had expected ensued.
“Do you want to tell me why we’re driving to school in the middle of the night?” Uranus asked, ignoring me and directing his attention to Holly.
“It’s a surprise,” Holly answered mysteriously.
Silence settled after their tiny exchange. I felt so uncomfortable with the silence that I willingly turned on Uranus’s crap music.
After a painfully long trip to the school, I’m pretty sure we all were walking as quickly as we possibly could to the school so we could get to whatever we were supposed to do quicker.
“You guys stay here,” Holly ordered Uranus and I once we had gotten into the school and were standing outside the girls’ bathroom.
I was about to volunteer to go with Holly, but she ran off too quickly.
“This place is creepy,” I commented, looking around at the dark, empty halls of the school.
Silence.
“It’s cold,” I tried making conversation again.
More silence.
I stared at Uranus, expecting a reply, but it looked like he was trying his hardest not to look at me. Why was he acting like this? He was the one to make the move, so there is no reason why he should be ignoring me…unless he completely regretted it. I turned away from him, sort of freaking out now. He didn’t like me even though he said that he had weird feelings for me. What if those weird feelings were weird-friend-feelings, like the one you get from wondering why a certain person is your friend? Or what if it was worse? What if he realized that he never liked me at all? He did just see Holly. What if his feelings were just some sort of rebound-feelings that disappeared at the sight of Holly? That’s probably why he was willing to drive Holly and I here.
“What are you doing?”
I stopped in my tracks. Weird. I didn’t even know I was pacing.
“What does it looked like I’m doing?” I snapped without meaning to.
Silence.
Shit.
“I was thinking,” I answered more civilly.
Silence.
Goddammit.
“What?”
“Did I say that out loud?”
“I’m back,” Holly announced and I could barely see her figure coming back in the distance. “Here you guys go,” Holly said and handed a bucket of paint and painting supplies to us.
“You dragged me down here give the walls of the school a fresh layer of paint?” I asked, giving Holly an annoyed look.
“No, silly, you’re going to erase a part of your alter ego,” Holly corrected me and motioned for Uranus and I to go with her into the bathroom.
Holly held the door open while Uranus and I walked in. I flipped the switch and light came flooding into the room. Seeing all the familiar words written on the wall, I finally understood what Holly was getting at.
She wanted me to get rid of the thing that summed up my alter ego, the thing that had given me motivation for wearing my fat suit the past two years. My wall.
“The first thing you need to do is separate yourself the negative aspects you’ve created,” Holly told me, gesturing to the wall.
I knew Holly was right, but I wasn’t entirely ready to give this wall up.
‘You know what she’d be perfect for? A giant’s bowling ball.’
‘Nah, she’s way too lumpy to actually roll down a lane straight’
‘Much like her orientation…. If you know what I mean.’
‘What?’
The wall itself was a huge part of my ‘alter ego’. Without it, I don’t think I could have gained as much hatred as I did. And, personally, I think it was my greatest instrument for making people feel better about themselves. They could spew whatever nasty thoughts they had about me and not be judged by other people because it was anonymous, everyone else was doing it, and I gave them no reason to be nice to me. And let’s face it, no matter how virtuous and honorable you are, it makes you feel a tiny bit better when you’re talking shit about other people.
“Oh, that one is a good one,” Holly said pointing at a picture.
I looked where she was directing and smiled at it too. It was based on the myth of Sisyphus. I was the boulder and instead of rolling me up the hill like he was supposed to, Sisyphus was walking away with a speech bubble over his head saying, “Nope. Even the gods themselves couldn’t do this.”
“You ready?” Holly asked me once she was done looking at the drawing.
“No,” I answered honestly. “But I know that I should do this.”
Holly gave me an encouraging smile and ushered me towards the wall.
I sucked in a breath as Holly opened up the bucket of paint. This was it-the first step of reversing two years worth of my fat suit project. I scanned the wall with a sad smile on my face.
“Here you go,” Holly said and handed me a paintbrush, already loaded with paint.
I was starting to feel anxiety bubble within me as I started realize that this was the start of something new.
With the paintbrush now in my hand, all I could do was stare at the words in front of me, hoping that some force would come and stop about what I was going to do.
Suddenly, the thick silence was sliced through by a ringtone.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Holly apologized and reached her phone that was in her pocket.
I let out the breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding in. Thank God. At least I’ll get a bit of a break before I have to start painting over my beloved wall.
“Hello? Oh, hey Echo. No where—don’t get snappy on me,” Holly started arguing on the phone. She took the phone away from her mouth and said, “Echo woke up and is upset that we left her. I’ll go out there and talk to her.”
“No, I can wait,” I assured her, hoping that she would let me stall a bit longer.
“No, no, go ahead,” Holly objected and started walking out of the bathroom. On her exit, she told Uranus to make sure that I wouldn’t back out. Once the door closed behind her, the sound of Holly arguing with Echo faded and silence ensued.
“Well?” Uranus asked impatiently.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I told him and set the paintbrush back down into the paint tray. “This wall has been the product of my all my efforts. I just can’t part with it just like that,” I explained, turning around and leaning against the wall.
Uranus’s eyes softened and he came and stood next to me.
“Rena, I can’t make you do anything, but I know that you’ll regret it if you don’t,” he said softly, his eyes boring into mine.
I turned my face away from him and shut my eyes, trying to gather my thoughts. Uranus was right. I knew I would beat myself up in the morning if I left this room with my wall still intact. I needed to do this in order to distance myself from my alert ego.
“You’re right,” I admitted and opened my eyes again.
“Always am,” Uranus said sending me a bright smile.
I just gave him a simple eye roll and with my newfound confidence, I bent down to pick up the paintbrush. I was doing perfectly fine until the paintbrush was an inch away from the wall and thoughts of ‘what if’ coming back.
What if this is useless? What if I change my mind about getting rid of my fat suit again? What if I do change and this wall still fills up with hateful comments?
My hand started shaking involuntarily and a feeling of dread came over me again. Wordlessly, held my shaking hand in his and guided it to the wall.
“Thanks,” I said quietly as he helped me paint over the comments.
Uranus didn’t reply to me. He just kept his gaze on the wall and it made me wonder what he was thinking.
As I watched the words disappearing from the wall, my thoughts grew more positive. This was the end of pretending everyday, being confined to this room during lunch, and the gossip about me. It was also the start of my progress of ridding my life of the fat suit.
And when I could finally bring myself to stop wearing the darn thing, I could start making friends, actually talking to my friends at school, and just be Rena with no worries.
The thought of this brought a smile to my face, but it was quickly brought down again when Uranus shoved the paintbrush in my face.
“Hey!” I exclaimed and stepped away from him. “What was that for?” I whined and tried wiping off the paint off my face.
Once I wiped off my eyes, I could see Uranus giving me a taunting smile, which infuriated me further.
“You weren’t paying attention,” he explained.
“You’re such an asshole,” I insulted before flicking the paintbrush and spotting his face with dots of paint.
He blinked a few times before asking, “Did you just really do that?”
“What are you going to do about it?”
Instead of replying, Uranus took a step towards me.
“You do know that I have the paintbrush, right? You’re weaponless right now,” I told him, confused to what he was going to do.
Uranus took another step towards me. He was now close enough to make me feel uncomfortable, so I took a step back towards the wall.
“Really? You kind of look scared now regardless,” he replied and took step towards me.
“Well, I bet you’d be scared too if I were towering over you with a creepy look on my face,” I said while cowering back another step. I slightly panicked when my back hit the wall.
Squish.
I looked down and saw that I had just stepped in the paint tray.
“You—” I was about accuse him of setting all of this up just so I could step in paint, but words got stuck in my throat when I saw that Uranus’s face so no more than three inches away from my own and inching closer.
I wanted to tell him to stop, but it came out as a breath of air. His lips just looked so inviting in the light of the bathroom and his eyes glistened like the head of a bald guy.
I closed my eyes and awaited the kiss I’ve envisioned so many times before, but then I remembered where we were, whom we were with, and why we were here. I turned my head away like earlier, but this time my cheek was met with something wet.
“Ew,” I said when I realized I had just turned into a wall fresh with paint. I turned back to Uranus to see that he hadn’t moved yet and that he had an amused expression in his face.
“Got you,” he said.
“I-you-what?” I stammered, embarrassed. He planned that entire thing out? “That’s not fair,” I muttered.
“Are you blushing?”
I looked down to avoid looking at him.
“Aw, Rena—” Not liking Uranus’s teasing, I thought quickly and cut him off with hug, making sure to wipe off the paint of my cheek onto his shirt and step on his foot with the shoe that was covered in paint.
“There’s something on Uranus,” I joked as I pulled away from him victoriously, but before I could even take my foot off of his, Uranus stopped me by putting his hands around my waist.
I looked up at him questioningly.
“As long as we’re exchanging paint,” he said before bringing his lips quickly to mine.
My brain took a few seconds to register the fact that Uranus was kissing me, but the frogs in my belly resurrected and took no time at all to start wreaking havoc in my stomach.
I smiled against his lips before I started reacting. It was a sweet, slow kiss.
“Rena, I like you,” Uranus told me right after he pulled away.
As much as I would have liked to grab and kiss him again, I knew that, despite the happiness that kiss ignited within me, I would feel guilty about this given the situation and the day I just had. So, I just settled for smiling and saying, “Good. Then I can do this without repercussions” and painted his face with the paintbrush.
Before Uranus had time to react, the door opened and Holly came back in the room.
“Hey, guys,” she greeted us cheerfully. “Whoa,” she said and paused to look at us. “What happened?”
I took a step away from Uranus. “He started it,” I blamed.
Holly started chuckling at us. “It looks like you guys managed to get more paint on yourselves than on the wall.”
I looked behind me to see that she was right. Uranus and I had only painted two lines on the wall and half of it was ruined from when I put my face on it.
“Yeah, well, Echo must be freaking out right now. Let’s just get this finished over with,” I said, not wanting Holly to ask further questions.
The next two hours were spent painting over the bathroom walls. Uranus sent me looks now and then, but the three of us just joked through most of the painting. When we were done, I felt like a different person already. No longer would I use the bathroom as my daily pick-me-up and that thought made me happy.
Driving back home, I couldn’t stop smiling, but as soon as we turned into the neighborhood, my phone vibrated.
It was a text from Liam.
It simple said: Goodnight.
My feelings were split on this. Part of me felt happy that he was still thinking of me, but I felt horrible for probably being the reason he was up at nearly five in the morning.
I sent the same reply to him and it pained me. There was so much I wanted to say to him, but all I sent was a simple ‘Night’.
“Bye, Trent!” Holly said, getting out of the car. “I’ll give you two a minute,” she told us and shut the door.
“We have to talk about this sometime,” Uranus told me.
“I know,” I replied. “Soon,” I assured him, before scooting out.
“Wait. No goodnight kiss?” he teased me right as I was about to open the door.
“No,” I answered. “One-because it’s five in the morning and two-because Uranus is dirty,” I couldn’t help but saying before I got out of the car.
What a weird ending to such a shitty day.
:::x:::O:::x:::
Author's Note:
Yeah, okay. I'm a few hours late on this update, but I did it finally! AND OMG THEY KISSED. AND HOLLY IS BACK AND ROOMING WITH RENA AND ECHO. OH AND KURT'S OFF THE MARKET. Oh, yeah, props to anyone who I named Echo after. It's not after the myth either.