August | winrina

Last Chapter : Epilogue

Senior year is a different ride altogether. Ningning tells Winter once that she feels like she has one foot down in the current year and one already in the next-like she's here, but already half away in college, and Winter is forced to admit she agrees, sometimes.

When she gets her first college acceptance letter, it has her screaming and jumping to hug her mom, but it's soon followed by a bitter sense of dread.

Every new letter, even the ones telling her she's waitlisted, is like a tick on the clock of the time she has left here, with her friends, with her family, with Karina. Sometimes she feels so far away from where she's stood that it's distressing.

Yujin tells her it's normal but also to try not to think about it so much. Yeji tells her to shut up and not get her nervous. Her dad tell her he's proud of her.

It's Karina who pulls her back to the present, invariably, every time.

They don't dwell on it. They've had their serious talks, they've had their tearful moments, and there's nothing left for them to do than enjoy their time together and wait to see how the cards will fall.

Karina's stubborn, anyway. She's long since convinced Winter to stop looking at the two of them in comparison to Ningning and Giselle. When Winter gets the acceptance letter to one of her top choices in colleges, Karina has nothing but pride to show for it-she hugs Winter tight and tells her nothing about this is cause for sadness, and Winter believes her.

It's an active choice to believe in Karina-rather, it used to be. Now it comes as second nature. Looking into Karina's eyes and trusting her is as easy as breathing now.

Seeing that trust reflected right back at her, then, is as exhilarating as their first kiss-like when she pulls Karina closer to herself when they're with their friends, and gets a soft look and a smile from her as she presses in closer, when Karina's body language screams how much she wants Winter.

And Winter trusts Karina, loves her, and wants her right back.

After college acceptance letters, everything starts happening really quickly. Finals come and go, and Winter spends more time studying than sleeping, but she passes all of her tests with flying colors. It's easier now that she knows her options-turns out the possibility of going to college with Yujin is no longer a joke but something she's actually considering-and somehow that also makes it easier to believe that she and Karina will be okay.

She tries not to think too much about how convinced Ningning and Giselle had been back when Giselle graduated high school, nearly two years ago now. It's been a long time since the two of them broke up, and while Winter thinks they're still sad about it sometimes, they say it's okay. In fact, both of them have told Winter, repeatedly, that it's okay, and Ningning even threw in a vague hint that Winter and Karina were going to be okay, too.

Vague, because even though Winter is pretty sure everyone knows about them, she hasn't explicitly told all of her friends that she's dating Karina now. Yeji is really the only one, because she's Yeji', and it's not like Winter and Karina are trying to keep it a secret anymore.

That's why the decision to tell Ningning comes easy to her. She feels like Ningning should know, too-for real. With Winter coming out and telling her straight out.

Winter really wants to do it between the two of them, so she waits until they're hanging out on the softball field by themselves after school one day. She waits until they're on a break from throwing balls back and forth, flopping themselves down on the field with bottles of water and hair sticking to their faces.

"I want to tell you something," Winter says, slowly, and waiting for a sense of anxiety that never comes. When she turns her head, Ningning is looking back at her with an expectant twinkle in her eyes and a knowing grin on her lips, and Winter playfully shoves her shoulder. "I'm dating Karina."