hexes for exes

epilogue

"YOU REALLY HAVE settled in nicely," Amphion said as he strolled through the doorway, glancing around the little apartment Livia had neatly prepared for herself. "I thought you were secretly hiding some mess every time we called."

Livia shot him a glare. "I fixed this whole place up the first day I arrived."

"Most impressive."

"How's your apartment?" Livia asked, motioning for him to sit down while she fetched him a drink.

"I dropped all my stuff off and just came here," he said with a shrug. "I'm procrastinating unpacking, you see." He hadn't changed at all in their few weeks apart. Livia hadn't expected him to, really. He was Amphion. Amphion, the boy who always seemed to know what to do. Who was fearless, who met the world's challenges with a smirk and his twin by his side.

One thing that did feel weird, though, was seeing him here without Zeth. The two had practically always been inseparable. And any time Livia was with one, the other was always nearby one way or another.

"That's a horrible decision," she commented, tossing him a can of soft drinks. "You'll be up til midnight unpacking tonight."

"Or," he mused, "I can just unpack the rest tomorrow."

"During which you'd procrastinate unpacking during the day tomorrow and leave it for the evening again."

"You wound me, Livia."

"It's how you work. I've been around you long enough for that. I hope you don't plan on doing that with your schoolwork."

Amphion rolled his eyes. "Livia, I got into the same school as you for a reason. It's not just because of my name."

"One thing that has been interesting to me..." Livia glanced at him, one brow raised. "Your mother informed me before I left that Redchester was your second choice. Your first was Eastfold University. And you got accepted. Why'd you come here instead?"

He raised one brow.

"You did not," Livia mumbled.

"Redchester's basically on the same level as Eastfold in terms of education and ranking," Amphion said with a casual shrug, opening the can and taking a sip out of it. "I chose Eastfold over it originally because I thought it'd be closer to Zeth and to home."

"Yet now you're here."

"Your mother called mine the night you got accepted here. I made my choice."

Livia was flabbergasted. "We hadn't talked for over six months at that point. What if we never made up?"

"For some reason, I kind of knew we would. I knew we probably shouldn't, that it was probably a bad decision for a large array of reasons... but I just had that feeling, you know? I just had a feeling we'd be friends again by the end of the summer and that everything was just going to be okay. And that if we were not, maybe close proximity to each other during university..." his voice trailed off. "In hindsight, it was an idiotic decision. But it paid off."

"My god, Amphion. I didn't know you were such a..." she racked through her head for the appropriate English translation, but gave up in the end. "A lian ai nao."

"I have no idea what that means."

"It means someone who's willing to give up everything for love."

"Maybe not everything," he laughed, standing up and moving over, hands wrapping around Livia's waist from behind. He sniffed her hair. "New shampoo?"

"Dumped my old one in Briarville."