viii. WE DID IT, JOE!

sunday, december 13th

THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME THAT BOTH AWSTEN KNIGHT AND ROSIE SOAP WERE SINGLE WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS SINCE 2011. And now, here he was, staying at her house.

  Staying in her bedroom, in her bed, with her. And what was he doing? He was admiring her bookshelf.

  What he should be doing is marching across the room right now and telling her that he's had a big high school type crush on her ever since he met her.

  "I hope we kiss goodnight / It might just end my life" the song continued as Awsten got up from the floor and took a few steps towards Rosie.

  She was putting a new quilt down on her bed when he turned her around by her waist.

  "Yeah?" she breathed, looking up at him.

  Her brown eyes scanned his face as he thought of an excuse. He wasn't going to kiss her. It didn't feel right. Not now, not tonight. Maybe not ever.

  "Thank you," he told her quietly. "You didn't need to do this. You could've made me sleep on the floor."

  She shook her head. "That's unnecessary. I told you, the bed's big enough."

  She could feel the shift in the air, and wondered what it meant. Was he going to kiss her? Was she going to kiss him first? She didn't know how she felt about this.

  Rosie definitely still had feelings for him, that was obvious to everyone. Oh, and the song. How cliché would it be if they kissed right now.

  Awsten's hands ghosted over the shape of her, and he moved them to brush his thumbs across her cheeks.

  She raised a hand to his face, and brushed the multi-colored hair off his forehead. He looked so good like this. In the soft light of her bedroom, the blue's and green's from the lava lamp reflecting across his face.

  His lips, a shade of pink that haunted her dreams.

  "You have an eyelash," she whispered, her voice nearly giving out as she spoke. Moving a shaking hand to his cheek, she brushed it away. Awsten shut his at the contact, and let out a sigh.

  Moments later, his eyes fluttered open to find Rosie still studying him. "Rosie," he began, his voice just above a whisper. "Rosie, I think I want to—"

  Kiss you, he wanted to say. But he was interrupted by the sound of someone yelling through the house.

  "We did it!" the voice called. It was Aurora. It was so late, why was she yelling?

  Before Awsten could even blink, Rosie was out her bedroom door and down the stairs. He followed, and when he got down to the living room, Herc and West were already there as well.

  "What the fuck do you want, Rora?" Herc asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

  "We did it!" she repeated. "Jesus, I sound like Kamala Harris..."

  "Did what?" West yawned, sitting down on the couch. Herc plopped down next to him, and the pair nearly fell asleep on one another.

  "We found an apartment!" She clapped her hands together and gestured to Venus and Cassidy behind her, both girls looking like they could fall asleep at any second as well.

  "Jesus, what time is it?" Rosie asked.

  "Doesn't matter." Aurora shook her head. "What matters is that Cassidy and Venus can be out of here by Wednesday. Meaning...Awsten, the couch'll be free for you any day now!"

  Oh, he nearly said. The couch would be free; Meaning he wouldn't be sleeping in Rosie's bed anymore; Meaning what happened tonight...wasn't going to happen again.

  "I mean," Aurora continued, "you'll have to sleep there 'till Wednesday. But by then you'll be out of there!"

  Wednesday.

  He needed to make a move by Wednesday.

  Awsten glanced over at Rosie. She was in her pajamas. She had a cardigan over them. and had it wrapped around herself like how an English teacher would wear it.

  She looked so pretty.

  Wednesday.

  When he and Rosie got back to her bedroom, a different song was playing. It sounded familiar, but Awsten couldn't quite place it. Before he could figure out the song though, Rosie turned it off.

  She sat down on the bed and ran her fingers over the new quilt. Awsten stood in the doorway.

  "What did you want to do, by the way?" she asked finally, breaking the silence.

  At her words, Awsten finally moved into her room and shut the door. "What?" He sat down on the bed next to her, and she continued to trace the patterns on the quilt.

  "Earlier, before we went downstairs. You said you wanted to do something and then Aurora cut you off," she explained.

  "I don't remember," he played dumb. Of course, he remembered. He still wanted to kiss her.

  "Oh," she frowned. "It's a shame you forgot, I wanted to hear."

  An idea came to him. One he hoped wouldn't backfire too bad.

  "Actually, I remembered," he told her. "Just now, I remembered what I wanted to say before."

  She looked up at him with those big brown eyes again. "Oh yeah, what was it?"

  "I wanna talk about Herc's 20th birthday party."

made a cake today and the frosting's gonna say "boba fett is neat" cause i'm watching a star wars movie tonight with my sister, and why am i living the dream