Beside You

2//gal pals

I was rudely awoken by my phone ringing. As soon as I managed to open my eyes, I seized my phone and picked up the call.

"What happened?" My best friend's voice rang through the speaker.

"May have kissed Luke," I grumbled, wiping sleep out of my eyes. "You woke me up."

"Sorry. Was it good? Where did you go on your date? Was he a gentleman? Did you look fit?"

"Yes to all."

"You went to Yes on your date?" she laughed.

"Shut up," I complained. "We went to Doubles, that wine place in the city."

"Oh my god. What were you wearing?"

"My red dress."

"I'm outside."

"What the fuck?" I laughed, pulling open my curtain to see Maria waving at me from my path. I hauled myself out of bed and opened the door for her. She immediately walked in and made straight to make herself a cup of tea. "I'll have a cup of coffee, please."

"The coffee machine is full, do it yourself." I groaned as I poured myself a mug, "Anyway, how was last night?"

"It was amazing," I sighed. "He looked gorgeous, and he was so polite and it wasn't awkward because we've known each other for seven hundred years and it was lovely."

"I'm so glad you two are finally together," she beamed, tossing a lock of blue hair back over her shoulder.

"Woah, slow down. Who said anything about together?"

"Me," she grinned. "You have to get with him, come on Bonnie."

"Maybe, we'll see. He's coming over at some point today and I'm sure we'll talk about it."

"Good! Anyway, I'm going out with Caleb today, so I'll call you later and I expect you two to be married and have at least three children by then, bye!" She skipped out of the house, taking her cup of tea with her. How that girl had so much energy before eight am, I will never know. Mere moments after she'd left, Luke appeared in the living room window. I indicated for him to come in, since I couldn't be bothered opening the door myself, and next thing I knew he was sat on the couch next to me.

"What are we watching today?"

"I was thinking some CSI, if that's okay with you?" We regularly had couch days where we'd just watch random TV shows together, and we always took turns choosing. Today was my turn, and I was feeling some mystery in my vibe.

"CSI is good! Which one?"

"New York, of course. Mac is gorgeous."

"More gorgeous than me?" I glanced at him, and he was looking at me with an eyebrow raised.

"He's more of a silver fox," I whispered, leaning in towards him, a smile playing on my lips. "But I think you're both very attractive." I kissed him softly, placing my hands gently on his chest as we leant into the back of the sofa. His tongue pressed against mine, and with anyone else I would have pulled away in disgust, but Luke made it feel right. I pushed further into the kiss, moaning very slightly, and suddenly, as if I was a puppet, my leg lifted and I was straddling his lap. We finally pulled apart, more for breath than for any other reason, and as soon as we made eye contact we were kissing again, each second more hungrily, more passionate than the last.

"We aren't watching CSI yet," he whispered between gentle kisses, his hand moving slowly down my back.

"I don't care," I said, grabbing his lip with my teeth. Suddenly we were both standing up and he was leading me upstairs, into my bedroom, where we fell onto the bed and started kissing again. His hand was approaching my inner thigh, and I finally pulled away, with no intent to start again. "Luke, stop."

"Okay," he whispered. I knew, and he knew, that I wasn't ready to go there yet. I'd talked about it with him before, when I'd had boyfriends in the past, and they'd tried pressuring me into things I didn't want to do, but I'd never relented. It had always led to me breaking it off with them, as whenever I'd told Luke he'd become so protective I almost did it for the boy's safety.

"Luke," I said quietly, ready to explain myself.

"It's okay, I know," he said. "I shouldn't have gone there, do you want me to go?" I nodded, and he got up to leave. "If you need anything, I'm on the other side of the wall." That was true. Our rooms were next door to each other, and we'd always joked about getting a door put in to avoid going outside. I texted Maria quickly, needing best friend time.

girly night please, imy

She responded almost immediately, telling me she was on her way, and I didn't doubt her. She'd likely told Caleb there was an emergency and had abandoned him without further ado, something I'd seen in action when her little sister had been broken up with when we'd all been out together. She'd seen the text and just bolted off from us in the middle of the train station.

Within minutes, there was a knock at my door. Thankful my parents were at work, as they would have been annoyed with the amount of visitors I'd had, I wandered down the stairs to let her in. She bounded in, a spring in her step as usual, clutching a pile of DVDs.

"I've ordered Chinese and I thought we could use some musicals and stuff," she said, dumping all her things in the middle of the room. "Pitch Perfect?" I nodded, stunned as usual by her efficiency. I collapsed into the sofa as she put the DVD into the television, then brought over a couple of bottles of beer from her bag. We opened them, drank to "Mannie" and snuggled into each other, watching the movie in almost complete silence - except for joining in on the songs and the most iconic lines. As Anna Kendrick started singing Cups, the Chinese arrived, and Maria leapt up to collect it and pay. She stumbled back in, weighed down by piles of food, and we started separating them straight away. There was chicken and sweetcorn soup, fried rice of every variety, beef and black bean sauce, and of course salt and pepper chicken. We dug in straight away, finding the prawn crackers, and looking at the haul it was a wonder we weren't both morbidly obese.

"Love you," I said through a mouthful of fried rice.

"Love you too," she mumbled in response, fighting to get a large piece of chicken into her mouth.

"I never told you why I wanted you here, basically Luke and I were kissing and he tried to go further and I didn't like it."

"Dick," she said, almost instinctively. "He should know you better than that."

"Mm," I agreed, setting my sights on a chunk of beef. As I lunged to stab it with my fork, I collided with Maria's chopsticks. "Fuck off, I want it."

"I saw it first."

"I'm closer to it."

"I bought it," she fired, and I rolled my eyes and relinquished the beef.

"I hate you," I complained, settling for a smaller piece of meat.

"You love me really," she grinned, chewing her beef in victory. "It's all fatty!" I laughed at her, glad I'd given in.

Once we'd finally finished most of the food (leftovers in the fridge for breakfast, obviously), we cuddled close, a fluffy blanket draped over us, and carried on watching Pitch Perfect. Then Les Mis, then High School Musical because we're big kids really, finished off with a bit of Moana.

"Tomorrow we're watching Romeo and Juliet, I've not watched anything with Leo in in a while," she decided, and I nodded happily.

"Bed time now though?"

"Of course." We made our way up to the bedroom and climbed into bed, top and tailing as usual, however I made Maria sleep against the wall. I wanted that little bit of extra distance between myself and Luke. As I was settling off to sleep, I heard a gentle knocking against the wall. Three knocks - code for 'text me'. I ignored them, and closed my eyes to sleep.

*****
Grace pressures me to upload hope its not too much

question of the chapter: what's your favourite colour? //my answer is light blue, its the colour I imagine maria's hair to be. answer in the comments!!

loza x