If You Ever

2

"What the fuck?" Bailey hissed at her best friend as soon as Sean left.

Kaycee was in shock. Absolute shock, to say the very least. She could swear she was hallucinating, really.

Before Sean could question the confused and frightened looks on both girls' faces, he was immediately dragged by Julian who supposedly needed help setting up the speakers or something, and Kaycee vaguely recalled Julian saying something about how Sean was the most tech-savvy friend he had.

"Kaycee, what the fuck?" Bailey repeated, nudging the curly haired girl's arm. "Why are these here?"

Kaycee could only shrug in response, her eyes glued to all six of her paintings on the damn wall. Staring at the wall with their jaws dropped to the floor probably seemed maniacal to the other sane people in the apartment but both girls could care less. "I have...I really don't know."

"But...but those are yours!" Bailey continued, confusion overpowering the poor girl's system. "And you had them with you, in your room, yesterday!"

Embarrassed at what she had done last night, Kaycee couldn't fathom how much more embarrassed the boys would be if she were to confront them about it. They got these paintings, her paintings, from the freaking trash chute.

"Did they steal them?" Bailey whispered, her eyes widening with horror. "Should I go talk to Julian?"

"God, no!" Kaycee hushed, her head beginning to spin dangerously. "I...god. Okay, just promise me you're not going to get all mad. At least, not here."

"What did you do?" Bailey breathed. "Did you sell it to them?"

"Just...stop." Kaycee interrupted quickly, not wanting to embarrass herself further.

She heard the words, "No, I threw them out at two in the morning because I couldn't sleep" playing in her head and couldn't comprehend how foolish that sounded.

"I was really, really frustrated last night. I need you to remember that." Kaycee began, her hands trembling. "I couldn't sleep last night, and...I was really angry. I was mad because I felt like nothing was going right and so...I, uh, I threw everything away in the trash chute."

Bailey waited. Waited for a moment to process things. What she recalled from last night was comforting Kaycee, eating grilled chicken for dinner, watch a couple episodes of Friends on Netflix and saying goodnight to each other before heading to bed. Things didn't quite add up, for Bailey.

"Are you serious? You threw them out?"

"Okay, I know. It was a reckless thing to do and I did it only because I was frustrated." Kaycee sighed.

"Kaycee, what are you talking about?"

"I honestly don't want to talk about it." Kaycee sighed, before lying yet again. "I regret it, I really do."

"But you spent hours on all of these, Kayc."

"I was upset, Bailey. None of that occurred to me."

"Kayc." Bailey sighed, disappointedly. "You could've talked to me if you were really that upset last night. I didn't know you were that upset."

"I know, I know." Kaycee breathed. "Don't worry, though. I'm okay."

"Okay, well, what are we gonna do?" Bailey continued. "Do you want to tell Sean and Julian?"

"No!" Kaycee said, quickly. "I don't wanna make them feel weird or anything."

"But you deserve to be paid for that." Bailey retorted. "They stole!"

"It's not really stealing, though." Kaycee shrugged. "I did throw them out willingly."