SILVER LINED DOUBT. [JESS MARIANO]

FIFTEEN.

(wooooo it's late for me to be posting but i've been gone for so long that i needed to get this one out. this is most certainly unedited. will fix in the morning. missed y'all! it's so good to be back!) -mags
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"YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE what came in the mail today," Marley said into her phone, cradling it between her shoulder and her ear as she unlocked the front door of her house. "Go on and guess."

She could hear Jess' sigh loud and clear over the speaker. "Do I even want to know?"

"The hell kind of question is that? Of course you do."

"The last time you asked me to guess what had come in the mail for you it was a box of just packing peanuts that had been accidentally shipped to you."

"And that wasn't worth asking about?"

"You really want me to answer that?"

Marley scoffed at him, walking from the kitchen to her room with a big envelope addressed to her gripped between her fingers. She threw her backpack at the foot of her bed and fell back on her mattress, holding up the package of papers. "Can you tell Todd that I want him to wake up and kick your ass because I'm not there to do it?" she asked, referring to Jess' roommate whose favorite activities were sleeping until three in the afternoon and watching Cheers reruns.

Jess chuckled, and the sound of him shutting a cabinet echoed softly through the phone. "What did you get in the mail, Acosta?" he asked. His voice was too light to sound begrudging.

"So glad you asked," she said. "It's something from Wesleyan."

Jess had stopped moving and the line went silent. "Big or small envelope?"

Marley grinned, sitting up and dropping the letter on her bed. "Big."

"Congrats," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "You're going to college. Never thought it would happen."

"I got into UConn last month, I was already going to college. Now I have two options."

"Don't count Penn out just yet."

Marley rolled her eyes as she put Jess on speaker and began to open the envelope. "For realism's sake, I have two options," she said. "Two options that I actually really like. I'm visiting Jacob this weekend, so I'll get to see UConn again before decision day."

"How the hell did you get Luke to give you the weekend off?" he asked.

"Because Luke likes me and doesn't think that I'm a threat to humanity when unsupervised."

"Says the girl who almost burnt down the diner trying to work the deep-fryer."

Marley gasped at his words, sliding out the papers from the envelope. "That was a very scary day and it wasn't my fault," she said. "And besides, you weren't even there, so you don't get to give me shit for that."