#I love my little Nicole hat

[bqstqnbruin]

Tattoos of You

Look, I know this gif is ancient but I love this one don't judge me.

ANYWAY here I am with my entry for @wyattjohnston's summer 2024 fic exchange! I had the pleasure of writing for @senditcolton so I hope you enjoy this because I have literally been thinking about this fic so much for the last like three months (yes I have been working on this idea for too long)

These following links are some of the tik toks that I used for inspo for this fic: X X X X X

Special shoutout to @nicohischier for reading this the entire time I was writing it, love you (I swear you'll get a happy fic at some point)

Warnings: Swearing, drinking, aNGST (Nicole you asked for it)

WC: 11k

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an open book with a sunset coming out of it

The sun was shining, children were running around and laughing, people were splashing around in the water.

Colette was under an umbrella, trying to stay in its shade as much as possible, with a hat on her head and her sunglasses on. 

“Can you please enjoy yourself?” Becca asks. 

“This is as close to enjoying myself as you’re going to get,” Colette mumbles, not looking up from the book that she was reading. It’s not that she hated the beach, it’s that she hated the sun, the sand, the heat, the noise, the crowds of people.

Maybe she did hate the beach.

“Do you want to go back up to the house?” The house was not much better: the AC barely worked when they got in last night, and Colette spent most of the night not sleeping because of how hot the room was. She was also pretty sure that there was a raccoon somewhere in the walls of the house, since the scratching she could swear was coming from behind her head when she was in her bed only happened at night, and magically stopped once the sun came up. 

“Do you want to go back to the house?” Colette asks.

“Not at all.” 

“Well, I’m not going to walk the two miles back alone, am I?”

Becca rolls her eyes, shielding them from the sun despite the huge sunglasses on her face. She looks out to the water and lets out a long sigh. “Everyone else is in the water having fun, why don’t we join them?”

Colette makes a face as she looks out at the rest of her friend group. They were playing some horrible version of chicken, given the fact that she was sure she and Becca were the only ones sober at this point. “Then when you get out of the water, the sand sticks to you because you’re all wet and it’s impossible to get off.” 

“You’re, like, the only person I know who hates the beach this much.”

“I wanted to go to a cabin near the lake we used to go to when we were younger, and you all wanted to ‘try something new,’” Colette points out. “I told you I didn’t like the beach, but you guys said you wouldn’t go away without me.” 

Becca rolls her eyes again, “That’s because we like you, Lettie. You’re the responsible one in the group.” 

Becca gets up without another word, going to join the rest of their friends in the water. “Great,” Colette mumbles, going back to her book.  

She loses track of time, her friends never even coming back to talk to her while she finishes one book and quickly moves on to the next. The people around her come and go, the beach slowly emptying out as people leave for dinner. She wasn’t sure how long her friends would last without food, given the amount of alcohol they had consumed and how little they had come back to their spots in the sand to even grab the snacks they ran around packing that morning. 

“Watch out!” she hears coming from her left, a ball hitting the book out of her hands and into the sand a few feet away before she even has the chance to react.

“You bastards,” she shrieks as two guys come running over to get the ball. “That’s a library book.” 

“Your book is fine,” one of them says, holding up the book with two fingers as if it had a disease or something else rancid oozing out of it. 

“Are you ok?” the other one asks, Colette holding up her hand to shield her eyes so she could at least see the guys she was scowling at with the sun behind them. 

Despite her anger at them for nearly probably injuring her, they were, unfortunately for her, attractive. Not that made her less angry, but if Becca were there next to her, she would somehow manage to force Colette to acknowledge it to their faces. 

“I’m fine, but my book is not,” she says, ripping the thing out of the darker haired boy. “You ripped one of the pages when you picked it up.”

The one with lighter hair looked behind his friend, scoffed and thrust the ball into his friend's chest to pick up the now missing page. “You’re giving her money to pay for a replacement book,” he says, handing Colette the page.

“Fine, I’ll give her the ten dollars.”

“This book cost twenty five,” she tells him, showing him the price from the back of the book.

“Books are twenty five dollars?” he scoffs. “For what?”

“If you could read above a fourth grade reading level, maybe you would know,” Colette mutters, earning a laugh from the lighter haired boy. 

“I’m not paying that much for a book.”

“You’re the one who kicked the ball that ruined her book. You’re the one who’s going to pay for her to replace it so she doesn’t have to. You get, like, a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a week for your paycheck, you can handle twenty five dollars, you jackass.”

Colette nearly chokes when she hears the number he casually spit out, the two sending themselves into a bickering match over the money. She gets out her phone, wincing as she stands up for the first time in hours to hand it to the dark haired boy. “Send the money here.”

He starts mumbling something under his breath, Colette rolling her eyes as he does as instructed. One of the guys from their group calls for them, him running back to them with the ball.

“Sorry about Mat,” his friend says, standing over Colette as she sits back down.

“He seems like a delight,” she deadpans, trying to hide the combination of disgust and excitement as he sits down with her, laughing at her words.

“He’s an asshole,” he tells her, squinting as he looks out at the water. Colette couldn’t help but study him, the green of his eyes, the sharp angle of his jawline, his somehow perfectly styled hair, all combining to something she didn’t understand her need to look at. “And thankfully, my opposite.”

“People don’t talk like that,” Colette blurts out before thinking.

“Excuse me?”

“‘And thankfully, my opposite,’” she imitates him, lowering her voice and earning another laugh from him. “That’s something people say in rom coms.”

“You’re awfully judgemental for someone who doesn’t have to pay for a damaged book.”

Colette laughs, a smile forming on his face that, for some reason, she didn’t want to stop seeing. “It’s part of my charm. I’m Colette, by the way.”

“Anthony.”

Colette loses track of time again, not because of her now ruined book. Becca eventually comes back, as do the rest of the friends, letting her know that they were running to grab food before coming back to watch the sunset. Anthony’s friends had seemingly all but forgotten about him, at one point leaving without him realizing it, only to come back with Colette’s friends with food for both of them. 

“You guys came all the way to Canada when you live in Pittsburgh?” Mat asks.

“We go somewhere every year together, Lettie picked Vancouver for her turn,” Eddy says.

“I did not pick the beach, though,” she says, only loud enough for Anthony to hear. 

“Glad you did,” he replies, again, only loud enough for her to hear. He smiles at her, his hand inching towards hers in the sand as the sun sets over the water. 

a tent on the ground with a pine tree next to it, the moon and shooting star over both

“Those guys from the beach said they wanted to go camping with us this weekend,” Eddy says during their group facetime. 

Becca immediately started making plans of who was driving with who, Addison talking about the tents and sleeping bags she could borrow from her dad and brothers from their scouting days, Devyn talking about the food they would be able to bring, Franco talking about the beer. 

“Hold on, guys,” Colette interrupted, doubting that any of her friends was actually listening to the others. “Since when do we camp?”

“Since hot guys ask us to,” Eddy says.

“You liked those guys?” Colette asks, the rest of her friends laughing at her.

“Oh, come on, Lettie,” Addison teases her. “You ignored us for the entire three days we were there because you were talking to Anthony.” 

Colette rolls her eyes, thankful that her friends couldn’t see the rapid succession of texts from Anthony appearing on her screen at that moment. She didn’t want to tell them that they were right that she liked talking with him that weekend two months ago, so much so that she had been texting him almost as often as she was texting the group chat. She didn’t want to admit that she thought she was starting to fall for a guy she had only interacted with in person once, because who the hell did that? 

But, this was an excuse to see him again, without her friends nagging her about her crush, that may or may not exist, in a way that wouldn’t be a date. 

“I’m not driving.” 

“Does that mean you’re coming?” Eddy asks, all of her friends faces’ way too close to their cameras for her to do anything other than groan.

“Unfortunately.” 

By the time they got to the camping site, the guys already had enough tents set up for a small army. Eddy stops the car, Devyn and Franco getting out and immediately starting to unpack the trunk full of their stuff. 

“Damn,” Eddy drools, Colette laughing. “I never knew setting up tents was hot.”

“It’s not.”

Eddy fans himself, taking in a deep breath. “It is once you realize that that active bakery over there is attached to your boyfriend.” 

Colette cringes, trying not to let Eddy see her looking at Tito with his back towards them, bent over at his waist, his ass right there. “Not my boyfriend.”

“Not yet, babe,” Eddy corrects her. “That could change tonight.”

“And how, praytell, do you see that happening?”

“You’ll share a tent with him, you’ll share all your secrets, fall madly in love, get married with me as the bridesman of honor, of course, have tons of babies, and die in each others arms like that one couple on the Titanic.” 

“You could eat and shit out a bunch of Scrabble tiles and whatever they spelled out would still make more sense than whatever just came out of your mouth,” she says, getting out of the car just as Becca and Addison pull up behind them. 

Eddy laughs, locking the car doors. “Just because I don’t make sense to you doesn’t mean I’m not right. I’ve never seen two people who align so well before you and Tito. You are so meant to be.”

Colette laughs. “I’ll remember that next time you’re fawning over Devyn and Franco’s relationship,” she tells him, gesturing over to their two friends who had already claimed a tent to share together. 

Eddy had a sly smile forming on his face, one that Colette knew was going to lead to something she hated. “Hey, Anthony,” he calls.

Anthony perks up once he sees who calls his name, Colette telling herself that it was simply because he heard his name and he had ‘golden retriever vibes’ in general, not because he saw her, despite the fact that he was looking at her the entire time he came over. “What’s up, Ed?”

Eddy visibly swoons at the sound of Anthony calling him a nickname, trying to collect his composure before Anthony actually notices or Colette calls him out for it. “Lettie here said that she wanted to share a tent with someone since she’s never been camping before.”

“What?”

“Ok?”

“Well, I snore like a jet ski, so I would never want to subject our girl to that,” Eddy continues, throwing his arm around Colette and pulling her close to him, throwing her off balance, “So we were wondering if you wanted to share with her?”

“Oh!” Anthony says, his face turning red. Colette tries to discreetly pinch Eddy’s side as payback, her heart racing as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, I was going to ask you that anyway, but I guess you beat me to it.” 

Eddy walks away without another word, leaving an angry Colette and an embarrassed Anthony behind in his wake. “He’s lying, I’m fine on my own if you don’t-”

“You don’t-” he cuts her off, looking down at the ground, “You don’t want to share a tent?”

“No, I mean,” she starts, trying to find the right words. How do you tell someone you want to be near them without it sounding weird? “If you want to, I wouldn't say no to sharing.”

“Oh, I want to,” he says quickly, a small laugh escaping his lips that matched Colettes. “I want to.”

Colette could feel her face getting hot as she smiled at him. “Let’s go set up our tent?”

Their friends wander off again, just like the day they met at the beach, as the day wore on, leaving Anthony and Colette to finish setting up where they were going to start their fire for the night. 

“Hold on,” Colette says, trying not to laugh so hard that she couldn’t get the words out, “She threw what?”

“A dildo.”

“So that photo you sent me of your black eye from last season?”

Anthony’s face was bright red, biting his lip and nodding, “Yeah. yeah, it wasn’t from practice. It was from Tamsin throwing a dildo at me when she thought I was breaking into our apartment.”

Colette cackled, the ugliest sounding laugh she had ever heard bubbling up from her stomach. “I’m so sorry.”

“Like you’ve never had any embarrassing encounters with an ex.”

“The worst I’ve had is a guy named Mason sprinkled packets of those instant mashed potatoes around the lawn outside my apartment complex after a bad break up when we were in college.”

“How’d you know it was him?”

“He texted me right before it rained asking if I liked mashed potatoes, and then I never heard from him again.” 

Anthony laughs, the voice in Colette's head telling her that she wanted to hear that sound as much as she could. They keep talking about nothing as the sun sets, starting the fire before it gets too dark out.

“So,” Anthony says, sitting down on one of the chairs, the shadows from the flames illuminating every Colette had been mesmerized by the first time they met. “We’ve got Dildo Throwing Tamsin and Mashed Potato Mason as our exes.” 

“I think they’d like each other,” she laughs, plopping down on a chair next to him. Colette looks up to the sky. The stars streaked the sky like nothing she had ever seen before. She knew there were millions of stars up there, but she never thought she would see them. “God, you never get to see the stars with all the city lights. It’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful,” she hears Anthony say, his face red yet again when she turns her attention to him and smiles. Before she can say anything, he starts, “Do you think we can see each other?”

“Do you think I’m imaginary or something?”

“No, I mean,” he starts, the sounds of their friends coming back to start eating making him jump. He pulls his chair so close to Colette’s they practically overlap as he lowers his voice. “Can we go out when we’re back in the city? Just the two of us?”

Colette felt her face getting hot again, charmed by the nerves he showed around her. “Yes.” 

a mirror with an outline of a head in it, no face

“What are you doing right now?”

“I’m getting ready for work.”

“Do you want to hang out?”

“Did you not hear me?” 

Colette hears Anthony laugh on the other end of the phone. “I heard you, but I still want to hang out. I miss you.”

Colette cringed as she felt her heart skip a beat. She hated that she missed him too, and she wanted to see him, but, “I have to leave in the next two minutes if I want to be on time for my meeting, I can’t. What about tonight?”

“We have a home game at seven tonight. Tomorrow morning?”

“I’m watching my cousin and taking him to his soccer game for my aunt tomorrow.”

“What time?”

“You’re not coming to watch pee wee soccer.”

“What time are you leaving to pick him up?”

“You’re really bad at listening,” Colette says, grabbing the last of her stuff as she heads out the door. 

“What time?” he repeats, clearly not going to stop until she gives him an answer as she rushes out the door. 

“I don’t remember. Can I let you know after work tonight?” 

“Sure. Talk later?” he asks, alarm bells going off in Colette’s head about something she was sure he was scheming.

He hangs up before he can say anything, leaving Colette to stew as to what he was going to do. Anthony wasn’t going to show up at her apartment when she was supposed to leave to get her cousin, was he?

“Why do you look like that?” Addison asks once she sees Colette at work. 

Colette snaps out of the trance she didn’t realize she was in, looking away from her computer for the first time in a while. “I don’t know, genetics?” she asks, a slightly offended tone in her voice. 

“No, I mean,” she says, sitting down on Colette’s desk. “You look concerned.”

Colette shakes her head. “I was just working,” she says, leaning back in her chair and rubbing her eyes. She lets out a sigh. “Anthony was really adamant about hanging out.”

“Oh, no,” she says, fake concern dripping through her voice as Colette rolls her eyes. “The guy you’re dating wants to see you.” 

“He was kind of weird about it, though. He wanted to come over this morning, and I think he wants to hang out tomorrow.”

“Well, that’s not weird.”

“I’m watching Grayson tomorrow.”

“And?”

“And he knows that.”

“So?”

Colette rolls her eyes again out of frustration for herself. Why couldn’t she explain how she felt to her friend? “So we just saw each other, like, two nights ago. Isn’t it too soon to see each other again?”

Addison shakes her head. “Don’t you want to see him?”

“Well, yeah, but what if he’s only asking to see me because he knows I want to see him and he doesn’t actually want to see me? I have to take Grayson to his soccer game. That’s so boring. Why would he want to do that?”

Addison rolls her eyes. “Because he’s obsessed with you?”

Colette groans. “Don’t you have a meeting in a minute?”

The next morning, Colette wakes up to knocking on her door. She gets up, surprised to find Anthony standing on the other side of the door with coffees in hand. “What are you doing here?” she whines.

“You never texted me,” he tells her, pushing past her and heading to her room.

“I, uh,” she hesitates. “Sorry, I forgot.” 

Anthony sets the coffees down on her nightstand, pulling up her sheets as if he was going to start making her bed. “No you didn’t.” 

“I did,” Colette tells him, her voice sounding more sure of her lie. 

“You just didn’t text me.” 

“Look, I love taking Grayson to his soccer games when my aunt can’t, but they’re really boring for other people. Last time I took Eddy, he complained the entire time,” she explains, taking the coffee from him. “I didn’t think you’d really want to sit through that.” Colette starts to get ready, sitting in front of the mirror in her room to get her hair together. 

She makes eye contact through the glass with Anthony as he sits down on her now made bed. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.” 

a cartoon cinnamon bun

Anthony had his arms around Colette before they were even through the door, pinning her against the wall outside her apartment, his lips on hers. They had been like this since they were in the bar with the rest of their friends, them being teased that they needed to get a room. Since Anthony’s eyes got darker when he turned to her, his hands on her waist as he asked her who’s place was closer for them to get in a bed as soon as possible. 

They barely made it through her door and had it shut when Anthony’s fingers danced along the hem of her shirt, pleading with her to take it off and practically ripping his off at the same time. Anthony and Colette stumbled their way to her bed, nearly losing contact with each other when they collapsed onto her mattress, skin to skin and Colette already deliriously happy. 

They woke up the next morning, the sheets a mess, their clothing in a trail leading from her entryway to her bed. Colette’s phone was somehow on her nightstand next to her, buzzing continuously for what seemed like any hour. Anthony let out a groan, a result of the hangover he was probably feeling. 

“Don’t get it,” he mumbles into her pillow, his arm wrapped around her pulling her closer. She could feel herself relax as his heartbeat gently thumped against her back. It buzzes again, Anthony starting to kiss his way from the nape of her neck down her spine, a giggle escaping her lips at his attempt to distract her.

“If it’s going off this much, it has to be something bad.”

“One time it was Eddy melting down and calling to tell you he got water on his new shoes.”

Colette scrolls through her phone, multiple missed calls from her friend group as Anthony’s mouth works his way back up to her neck, propping himself up to try to get her cheeks. Another call from Eddy appears on her screen, her heart racing that something bad happened to one of her friends. 

“Hello?”

“Oh my god,” Eddy screams, “I thought Anthony murdered you.” 

Anthony and Colette laugh, Colette switching over to speaker phone even though Anthony had no problem hearing their conversation without it. “No, we were asleep. What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been praying to God all morning that you were ok.”

“Eddy, it’s like 9 am, and you don’t believe in God.”

“I found God so I could pray that you were ok.”

“I didn’t realize she was lost, but sure. What’s wrong?”

“Your parents are on their way. They said they’d be at your place at 9 am.”

Colette looks at the time at the top of her screen: 8:56 am. 

“Fucking shit,” she screams, dropping her phone on her bed and practically falling over the sheets as she launched herself off the mattress to collect the clothes scattered around her floor. 

“What, what’s wrong?” Anthony calls after her, picking up what he can and throwing on the shirt that was still sitting by her front door. 

“My parents are coming.” 

“And?”

“You’re here.”

“Do you not want me here?”

Colette whips around to face him, thrusting his underwearing and pants from last night into his chest while trying to get her own shirt back over her head. “Of course, I do.” She runs past him and back into her room to throw clothes on and panic make her bed. “It’s just, you don’t have enough time to leave before they get here. And, if you’re here, then they’re going to start asking questions about whether or not you’re my boyfriend, and probably a bunch of other things, too.”

“Then we tell them I am,” Colette hears, seeing Anthony appear on the other side of her bed to help her straighten up. 

She stops, standing straight up to stare at him. “What?”

“We tell them I’m your boyfriend.” He walks around to the other side of her bed to meet her. “Unless, you don’t want me to be your boyfriend.” 

Colette opens her mouth, no words coming out. “Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

Anthony throws his head back in laughter, pulling her in for a hug and kissing the top of her head. “Of course I do.” Colette gives him a kiss, a knock at her door pulling them apart. “You get more clothes on, I’ll go meet your parents.”

Colette scrambles to find something presentable enough for her parents liking, trying her best to fix her hair and the makeup that she never took off from the night before when she hears laughter coming from her kitchen. She finally comes out of her room, her mom’s hand over Anthony’s while her dad is animated talking to him, a pink bag from her favorite bakery near their house on the table filling the room with the scent of the cinnamon buns that made her mouth water. 

“Sweetie, we brought you some breakfast, but we didn’t know you had your boyfriend over,” her mom says, no hint of the fakeness Colette expected in her voice. 

“Why don’t we all go out for breakfast?” Anthony says, getting up from his seat, “My treat. Colette and I can have the cinnamon buns later.”

Her mother swoons as he takes her hand and leads her to the door, a wink from Anthony sent Colette’s way that made her cheeks burn. 

Her dad pulls her in for a hug, his arm around her shoulder as they follow Anthony and her mom down to his car. “Boyfriend, huh? Is he good enough for you?”

Colette hesitates, not sure why she did so before saying, “I think so.”

What if she wasn’t good enough for him?

a phone with an incoming call, no contact on the screen

“Franco, please, you’re giving me a headache,” Addison groans, her hands on her head to massage the headache away.

“No, I don’t care, you guys don’t understand how amazing she was.”

“We do, babe, I promise, but it’s 1 am,” Devyn tells him, giving him a gentle squeeze on his thigh. 

“No, you don’t get it. She has only lost the all-around once on the national and international level in the eleven years she’s been qualified for elite,” Franco argues back, launching into a rant about Simone Biles that none of them wanted to hear when they wanted to go to sleep.

Eddy groans the loudest. “I think you talk this much about your fiance,” he points out Devyn taking a minute before she realized he was right and giving Franco a glare. 

The rest of the group launches into an argument when Colette’s phone rings, Anthony’s name coming up with a picture of the two of them from one night when they fell asleep on the couch together. Eddy had taken the photo and immediately gotten a bucket of water to pour over them to wake them up because he wanted to go out and get food with someone. Despite the aftermath of the photo, seeing it made her smile every time.

“Hey,” she says, walking out of Devyn and Franco’s living room without her friends noticing. “How was the game?”

“We won,” Anthony tells her. They were on a west coast road trip that was supposed to end tomorrow with a game against Seattle. 

“Why do you sound so sad, then?” Colette asks. Before they left, he told her they needed to do well this road trip in order to get into the wild card spot since the playoffs were right around the corner. They needed this win to get the cap between them and the next team even wider.

He lets out a long sigh. “I didn’t really play that well or that much.”

Colette could hear the sadness in his voice. She knew that he had been bouncing around to a few teams in the last couple of years, finally finding what he hoped was a more permanent home in Pittsburgh. “Did anyone score while you were on the ice?”

“No.”

“Did you get an assist or score?”

“Two assists, yeah.”

“Then what happened?”

She knew Anthony was scrunching his face. “I don’t know, I just felt off.”

Colette nodded. “I get that.” Anthony lets out a long breath. “Are you guys leaving after the game tomorrow or the next morning?”

“I actually don’t know. I guess I’ll find out when I’m on the plane,” he jokes, Colette laughing. “I can come over whenever I get in?”

“Yeah,” she says, smiling at the thought of seeing him. “If it’s tomorrow night, just wake me up when you come in.” 

“Nah, I’ll let you sleep,” he says.

“No,” she argues, “I want to see you.” Eddy comes up behind her, making kissing noises at her. 

“Tell Eddy I can hear him,” he laughs, Colette following suit. Anthony lets out a yawn. “Ok, I’m gonna go.”

“Bye, babe.”

“I love you, bye,” he yawns, hanging up before she could say anything else. 

Colette stands there, staring at her phone with her mouth hanging open. 

“What did he do? Do I have to kill him? I have enough gas in my car and money in my bank account to drive to San Jose and commit a felony,” Eddy starts, dragging her back into the living room with the rest of their friends.

“Lettie, what’s wrong?” Addison asks.

“Anthony just told me he loves me.”

The entire group’s jaws dropped, Eddy screaming loud enough that Colette was sure Devyn and Franco's neighbors could hear him. “What did you tell him?”

Colette shook her head. “Nothing. He said it and hung up the phone.”

“That rat bastard.”

“Eddy, say something helpful for once, please?”

Her friends start asking her a hundred questions, all coming at once. Why didn’t she call him back? Was she going to tell him she loved him? When was she going to tell him? When was she going to talk to him again in the first place?

Becca asked the question that made her stop. “Do you love him?”

Colette didn’t know what to say, trying to find the words. She knew she liked him, a lot. He was probably the person she could see herself loving for the rest of her life if he would let her. 

“We should let her tell Anthony first, not us,” Devyn says, Colette letting out a little bit of an exhale as her friend told everyone it was probably time for them to go to bed.

She spent the night on their couch, Becca and Addison in their guest room, Eddy bringing his own blow up mattress and snoring on the floor near Colette. 

She barely slept. Could she tell Anthony that she loved him? She could tell him anything, but if she did, would she mean it? It shouldn’t have surprised her that he would say it first, and it didn’t even surprise her that he said it at all. What shocked her most was that she wasn’t sure what she would say back. 

Anthony was the kindest person to her, the one she wanted to call and see and be with all the time. She would do anything for him, but did that mean she loved him?

What if her love wasn’t enough? What if he ended up loving her more than she was capable of loving him? 

“Eddy,” she whispers, trying not to scare him into waking up. She throws her pillow over to his mattress, hitting his face.

“The fish escaped,” he says, startled out of whatever his dream was. He rubs his eyes, groaning. “I was just about to save the country from the dinosaur fish.”

“You can go back to that in a minute,” Colette says, turning on the lamp on the end table next to her, despite Eddy’s groans. “When you were with Alex, how did you feel when you said ‘I love you.’”

“I think I was drunk and then blacked out.” Colette groans. “Lettie, if you’re freaking out about telling him you love him, then you don’t have to tell him right now. It’s ok for you to not say it if you aren’t comfortable with it.”

“That was out of character for you.”

“A stopped clock is right once a day.”

“Twice, Eddy.”

“Whatever, I’m going back to sleep. I hope this dream lets me play with kittens instead.”

Colette spent the next day stressing, running on pure anxiety due to her lack of sleep the night before. She hadn’t been able to watch Anthony’s game that night, falling asleep before it even started. She woke up Saturday morning to the sound of someone coming in her front door, hoping that it was Anthony and not an intruder.

“Colette?” Anthony calls, wandering into her bedroom to find her just sitting up, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “It’s nearly two pm, are you just waking up?”

“Don’t judge, I couldn’t sleep the other night. I guess it just caught up with me now.”

“I feel like I freaked you out after the game against San Jose,” Anthony says, sitting down. They had barely talked the day before, Colette purposely avoiding him under the guise of being busy all day with something at work. It wasn’t technically a lie, she just also hid her phone in her desk and forgot about it on purpose.

“No, you di-” she starts.

“I do mean it, though,” he says, pulling her in for a hug. “I do love you.”

Colette felt her heart start to race as she felt his hand on the back of her head. She could say it. She was sure it felt right. “Anthony,” she starts, feeling herself start to sweat as she pulls away to look at him. “I love you, too.” 

Anthony smiles, kissing her.

Saying it felt just fine. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to feel more. 

wheel of fortune tarot card

Colette was exhausted. 

The entire last week was spent with her and Anthony unpacking all the things they had into their new apartment, trying to figure out what to get rid of and what to keep when they realized that consolidating their things meant they now had two of everything they needed to share with each other; two sets of silverware, two sets of plates and bowls, two bedroom sets, two sets of living room furniture. 

Anthony was willing to get rid of anything he needed to, but Colette was having a harder time going through her things. She didn’t mind sharing, but she wanted her own stuff. What if she, for whatever reason, had to move out, or if Anthony got traded and had to take stuff with him and left her with nothing because the stuff he took was technically “his” and not her own?

“Hey, babe,” she calls into the apartment, a little bit of an echo following her through the few rooms they hadn’t finished unpacking yet. 

“In here,” Colette hears, following Anthony’s voice into their bedroom. He was standing in front of the bookshelf he had built into the wall (by someone who knew what they were doing, not by him), putting up all the books she had brought from her old place.

“I told you I would organize these,” she told him, coming up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist, kissing his back. “I have a system.”

Anthony laughs, spinning around and hugging her back, kissing her on the lips. “Your system is ‘I have a bunch of books by this author, so they need to be together.’”

“And?”

“I’m not even touching your books yet,” he points out, turning her attention to all the boxes she left in the corner that were still, in fact, untouched. “These are my books.”

“I didn’t know you read.”

“Not all hockey players are illiterate, Colette,” he jokes, earning a laugh from her.

“No, I mean,” she starts, heading over to one of her boxes to start trying to organize them. “I know you normally don’t have time to do things other than, like, eat, sleep, and play hockey. Reading didn’t seem like something you had time for.”

“Well, you read a lot, so I thought I could do the same,” he tells her, his voice lower than normal. Colette looks up at the shelf he was putting books on; The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn amongst other books she loved and already had copies of sitting there on their own shelf. 

“I already have these, you could have borrowed them at any time,” she points out, feeling Anthony’s arms around her, his chin resting on the top of her head. 

“Yeah, but this way I can take them with me on the road and you’d still have your copies. I’d have a piece of you with me.”

What piece of him would she have with her while he was gone? She couldn’t think of anything as he spun her around in his arms to kiss her, feeling his smile against her lips while all she could feel was distress coursing through her.

a laundry basket full of clothes with a piece of clothing crumpled up in front of it

“What the hell?” Colette comes home from work to find that everything Anthony said he was going to get done was not done. He had promised he would get everything cleaned up before his friends came over tomorrow. “Anthony?”

Her boyfriend peers his head into the kitchen where she was standing, a smile on his face immediately fading when he sees the anger on hers. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, oh shit,” she says, gesturing around her. “This is the third day in a row that you said you would clean up.”

“I’m sorry, I got caught up.” He tells her, approaching her slowly, as if she were a tiger going to pounce on him with any sudden movement. “I’ll start now.”

Colette scoffs as he reaches out to her. He did this all the time. He would tell her that he would help her clean, especially when more than half of it was his mess to begin with, and then it always fell on her. “That’s not the point, Anthony,” she snaps at him.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“No, you aren’t. You tell me that every time you do this. You said you would help with the laundry, and look at where all the clothes are, not even in the basket still sitting on front of the washer and dryer where you left them two days ago,” she starts, gesturing to the mountain of dirty clothes she could see in their little laundry alcove that she swore she could smell from where she was standing. “The dishes from dinner on Monday are still here because you promised me after I cooked that you would clean them, but you disappeared instead and didn’t come home until after I went to bed. You have your coffee cup sitting on the table with coffee in it that I’m pretty sure is from at least three days ago. What the fuck is going on with you?”

“Nothing,” he says quickly, his face getting red as he turns towards the sink to start the dishes. “And, to be fair, you do this to me all the time. I come home from road trips and find you haven’t taken out the trash the entire time, or the dishwasher hasn’t been started. I’m sorry I forgot the last couple of days, but I’ve been busy.”

Colette bit her lip, knowing he was right. She was picking a fight with him they didn’t need to have, yet here she was anyway. “With what?”

“My job?” he says, shrugging, despite the slightest hint of a wavering going through his voice. It wasn’t just hockey. They were in the middle of a homestand and he had the day off today anyway. 

Colette studies him for a second. “You’re lying to me,” she tells him. She could tell he tensed up from behind, the way he does when he’s not telling her the truth about something.

“I’m not.”

“Then what has been going on with you?”

Anthony hesitates, shaking his head and opening his mouth, clearly trying to figure out what to tell her. “Nothing. Like I said, I just got caught up.”

“With what?”

“Mat needed some help with something.” 

Colette scoffed again, walking out of the kitchen and to their bedroom. She knew Anthony was following her, but shut the door behind her anyway. “Why would Mat need your help so urgently that he, on Long Island, needed to take you away from cleaning for the entire day here in Pittsburgh?” she asks, sitting on their bed as he opens the door back up.

“I can’t tell you that, it’s Mat’s business.”

Colette nods, knowing he was still lying. She pulls out her phone, pulling up her boyfriend's best friend's contact. “Hey,” she says when he picks up, seeing the wave of panic flash in Anthonys eyes as he pulled out his phone and started typing furiously on his own phone. She knew he was texting Mat. “Have you heard from Anthony today?”

“Uh, no, why?” Mat says, Anthony throwing his head back, sucking on his teeth and muttering ‘fuck’ under his breath. 

“He just seemed a little off this morning when I left for work, I thought maybe hearing from you would cheer him up a little,” she lies to him.

“Oh, sure?” Mat tells her clearly confused before they hang up with each other.

“I can explain,” Anthony starts, sitting next to her on the bed and putting his hands in her lap. 

Colette waits for a moment. “Then do it.”

“Tomorrow, I promise.” 

She lets out a laugh. “No, now.”

“I can’t.” 

Colette stares at him for a second, him still not looking directly at her but a pleading look in his eyes. “Are you cheating on me?”

Anthony finally looks at her. “What? Of course not.”

“Then what the hell is going on?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Anthony, you know everything about me. I tell you everything,” she says, looking around at the room they shared that he filled with her favorite things. She still hadn’t figured out what she would do for him. She could feel herself starting to panic, a year since they moved in together and she still barely knew anything about him. Colette shakes her head, looking down at his hands still in her lap. “We can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“If we want to be in a relationship like this, we have to tell each other what’s going on,” she lies. She couldn’t do this anymore. 

“I told you, I can tell you tomorrow.”

“What is so important that you can’t tell me now?” she asks, getting up from the bed and starting to pace. Her mind started spiraling, thinking the absolute worst of what he could be hiding from her. She was self destructing, and blaming it on him was the easier way out. She knew it was. “You’re cheating on me, you’re going to break up with me, you have a child you haven’t told me about, you’re dying or you’re seriously sick.”

“Hey woah,” Anthony says, stopping her and standing in front of her. He puts his hands on her shoulders. “Colette, why don’t you trust me?”

Colette stares at him for a second, trying to find her words. “I don’t know.” 

Anthony’s expression drops, his hands sliding down her arms as he shakes his head. “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t trust me like this.” 

Colette tries to hide the hurt that came with his statement. “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t tell me the truth when I ask him for it.” The two of them stare at each other for a few moments in silence. “Does that mean we’re done?”

Anthony nods, his eyes not reaching Colette’s again. “I think so.” 

a glass looking liquor bottle with a small amount of liquid inside, a solo cup on its side tipped over in front of it

The guy in front of Colette was so cute. At least, he was cute enough to flirt with while she was drunk and still wanting more drinks she didn’t want to pay for. The cup of rum and coke in her drink never seemed to empty for long enough with him standing there with her.

She wasn’t even sure what his name was. She wasn’t sure she cared what his name was.

She was pretending to listen to him while twirling a lock of her hair in her fingers, trying her best to make it look like she was intrigued so that he would get her a refill of her almost empty drink. It wasn’t how she normally flirted, but it was working for him, so why not? 

“Lettie, babe, come on,” she hears Anthony behind her, his hands wrapping themselves around her waist and pulling her ever so slightly towards him. 

A month ago, she would have done anything to feel his body against hers like this. 

Now, she wanted nothing more than to get out of his arms. 

“Anthony,” she tries to fight.

“This your bodyguard?” the guy asks her, looking incredibly pissed off. 

“Boyfriend,” Anthony corrects him.

The guy scoffs, running his hands through his hair. “Nice.” He walks away despite her protests, not listening to her as she tries to pry herself free of Anthony’s grasp. 

He laughs, leading her back to their friends. Colette sits down, a now empty cup in front of her since she didn’t get that last refill that she wanted. None of her friends noticed her not participating in their conversation, her anger toward Anthony increasing along with her sobriety.

“I think I’m going to call it a night,” she stands abruptly, nearly knocking over the table holding all of their drinks. 

Anthony gets up with her, Colette not hearing him say, “I’m gonna turn in too, I’ll walk her home,” before she pushes her way out of the bar and into the muggy air outside.  

“I don’t know how you could stand there and let him flirt with you when you made it pretty clear that you weren’t even interested in him,” Anthony whines, not noticing how annoyed she was with him. He was acting like a hero when he shouldn’t have been. “I mean, I can’t believe I had to step in and help you.”

“You didn’t,” she snaps at him, catching him off guard. “I was interested in him. He was nice. He was buying me drinks. That’s why he was flirting with me, because I was flirting with him.”

Colette thought that they were actually going to be friends, like they said they would be. They had been out together since they broke up. They had hung out with their friends in the exact same setting and had the exact same scenario happen but without this ending to the night. There was no reason why he should have stepped all over her like that to ‘save her,’ as he put it. 

“What? Oh, come on, I know how you act when you’re flirting with a guy.”

“Do you?” she asks him, followed by him giving her a confident, ‘yes.’ “Really? So what do I do?”

“You, you,” he starts, knowing that he dug himself into a hole. “You smile at him, you laugh at everything he says, even if it isn’t funny. You run your hands through your hair because you know that fucking collar bone of yours drives me crazy.” He stops, both of them shocked that he just said that. That isn’t how she flirts with anyone, that’s how she acted around him when they were together. “Fuck.”

“Anthony, you cannot keep doing this. We broke up,” she starts, not adding that it was her fault, even though she still felt like it was. “Stop interfering when I’m with another guy.”

“I’m just trying to protect you,” he tries to defend himself.

“From what? From who? What could you possibly be protecting me from? Other guys? Why, Anthony?”

“Fuck, Colette, you think it’s easy watching you flirt with another guy? Just because we broke up, that doesn’t mean I stopped loving you,” he spits out.

Colette stands there, trying to process what he just told her. She could feel her heart racing, the sound of it beating the only thing she could hear. “I didn’t know you still loved me.”

Anthony scoffs, looking down at the ground, shaking his head. “Of course I did. I do. You haven’t noticed that I haven’t looked at another girl since we broke up? I want you, and only you.”

“I didn’t,” she tells him. “Anthony, you’re just saying this because you’re drunk.”

Anthony raises an eyebrow, shaking his head and biting his lip. “Look, I might be. But I know that drunk or not, I cannot sit around and watch you flirt with every guy in existence, while you, the one who was supposed to be my best friend, didn’t even notice that I was miserable while it was happening.”

“What do you want from me?” she snaps. “What am I supposed to do? We tried. We didn’t work. As much as we both wanted to, we did not work.” 

They stared at each other for a moment, neither of them knowing what to say. He had to know it was her fault they broke up. It wasn’t mutual, not really.

“I guess, nothing,” he tells her, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Nothing at all.” He looks down at the ground and lets out a long sigh. “I’ll see you at the wedding,” is the last thing Anthony says to her before turning on his heels, leaving Colette alone on the sidewalk. 

a ring, not on the ring finger

“Devyn really picked the worst shade of blue she could find for these dresses, didn’t she?” Devyn’s youngest sister, Blake, complains to the rest of the bridesmaids.

Devyn had just stepped out of the room to do her first look with Franco, leaving the girls alone to finish getting ready. 

“She picked sapphire,” Becca said.

“You know,” Colette continues. “Her birthstone?”

“She should have picked a lighter blue. This dark blue totally clashes with my skintone.”

“Blake,” Kendall, her other sister scolds her, “Devyn didn’t give a fuck about your skintone when she picked her favorite color. Either you’re wearing the dress without complaint or I’m telling mom and you’re not in the wedding.”

The sisters keep bickering, Addison, Becca, and Colette slowly moving away from them. 

“I always forget that Blake is still in high school,” Addison says, grabbing her bouquet before checking her makeup one last time.

“I don’t know how you could when she’s constantly tagging Devyn in her posts,” Colette points out.

“Especially the ones she’s not even in.” 

“To increase her visibility,” Colette starts, reciting word for word what Blake had tried to explain to them during Devyn’s bachelorette party. “So she has more people who know her brand when she becomes famous.” 

“Teenagers make no sense,” Devyn appears, a nervous look on her face. “I think we’re almost ready to start.”

“What’s wrong?” Addison asks.

“Colette, we have a problem.” 

“What did I do?”

“Sebby thinks Becca is hot and wants to walk down the aisle with her.”

Colette could feel the color draining from her face at the realization of what this switch would mean for her.

“Is he Franco’s older or younger brother?” Becca asks.

“The older one.”

Becca turns to Colette. “I’m not coming back to the hotel room tonight,” she tells her, practically giddy. “Oh, wait.”

“That means Colette has to walk with-” Addison starts.

“Anthony,” the four girls say at the same time. 

“I’ll be fine,” Colette says, her voice noticeably higher than it should be. She clears her throat, trying to calm herself considering the last time she talked to Anthony was the night he told her he loved her. “I’m fine.”

Devyn’s wedding planner, Jax, comes over to tell them it’s time to line up to enter with the groomsmen. 

“I love you,” Devyn calls after her bridesmaids, all of them calling back to her the same sentiment. 

Colette nearly stops breathing when she sees Anthony in his suit, helping Eddy adjust his tie. The suit fit him perfectly, Colette silently cursing the fact that Franco picked dark gray as the color. She hated to admit that she still thought about that one suit of his that he wore on game day, one that looked identical to the one he had on now. 

“Hi,” she says, standing next to him, trying to not look at him. 

“Hi,” he repeats, staring straight ahead at the back of Eddy’s neck.

The music starts, both of them rigid while everyone else around them is relaxed.

“I thought this would be us one day,” Anthony breaks their silence as the first couple starts to walk arm in arm down the aisle towards where Franco was already standing.

“What?” Colette asks, caught off guard.

Anthony nods, still staring in front of him as they move closer to the entrance of their venue. “I had the proposal all planned out. Had the ring. Had the reservation for dinner. Had a photographer. Everything. And then, the night before I was going to ask you, we broke up. That’s why I couldn’t tell you what was going on. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

Colette looks at him, not noticing that they were next to go down the aisle, Anthony taking Colette’s arm in his as Jax tells them to start walking. 

a candle with a long wick, uncut, the lid propped up against the glass

“Are you sure you’re ok to come to this?” Franco asks her.

Colette hesitates for a minute. She hadn’t seen him in months, so she wasn’t sure why she was being invited to his apartment. She hadn’t been to his place since he moved in over a year ago, and honestly, Colette hasn’t intended on going. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’ve looked like you were going to vomit since we picked you up for this?” Devyn twists her body from the front seat to face her. “We can take you back home if you want.”

Franco pulls up in front of Anthony’s new place, knowing that she couldn’t ask them now to turn around and drive the entire way to and from her place again. “No, I’ll be fine.”

Colette takes in a deep breath as Devyn and Franco get out of the car, leaving her behind in the back seat to stare up at the building they were all supposed to be heading into. There was no need for her to be this nervous. She and Anthony were friends. They talked still, occasionally. Maybe once a week. And the conversations were never more than half an hour long, just to check in, but that’s adult friendships.

Right?

She gets out of the car, jogging to catch up with her friends as they were already to the elevator. 

“You’re going to be ok, you know,” Devyn says, putting her arm around Colette.

“Yeah, we’ll kill him if you want us to.”

Devyn smacks her husband's chest with her free hand, scolding him as Colette laughs. 

She could do this. 

They make their way up to Anthony’s place, getting turned around and somehow ending up two floors above where they were supposed to be, thanks to Franco not being able to read a text message properly and upsetting one of Anthony’s elderly building neighbors. By the time they find his apartment, the place is full, their friends and Anthony’s taking up so much space they could barely move. Franco and Devyn break off from Colette, leaving her alone to scope the place out.

She wanders through his place, people in every single one of his rooms. She stumbles across what she assumes to be a guest room. It was way too neat to be Anthony’s own room, despite him always making her bed when they were together. 

Mat appears behind her, laughing at the sight of the room. “I guess it’s easy to figure out which room is Tito’s, huh?”

Colette lets out a small laugh. “I was just thinking that.” 

“How have you been?” he asks, sitting down on the bed. 

She goes to join him, sighing. “I’m at my ex’s place for the first time since we moved out of the place we got together. Clearly, I’m on top of the world.” 

“It could be worse.”

“Maybe,” she shrugs.

“Ok, what animal are you least afraid of?” Colette looks at him, confused by the non sequitur. “I’m trying to distract you.” 

“Fine, fine,” she rolls her eyes as he nudges her shoulder. “I guess fish?”

“No, I said an animal.”

“And I said a fish.”

“No, a real animal?”

“Are fish fake?”

“You can’t find a fish at a zoo. Have you heard of fish zoos?”

“Yeah, they’re called aquariums, you fucking walnut,” Colette tells him, laughing so hard she could feel pain in her sides.

“Oh. Oh, yeah,” Mat sits there for a second, looking down at his hands with a smirk on his face while Colette continues to laugh. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh that hard since you broke up with him.”

“This is the first time we’ve seen each other since before he and I broke up,” Colette points out once she catches her breath.

Mat sighs. “I don’t think he’s laughed as hard as you just did since you two broke up.” 

“Yeah, sure,” she says, not believing him. 

“Colette, you make him want to live as long as possible so he can have as much time sharing the planet with you as he can. He has all of your favorite things in his Notes App on his phone that he will not delete. That one picture I took of you guys way back when we all met is still one of his lock screens, again that he won’t delete. I mean, look around his whole place. You are in every corner.”

Colette shakes her head. “Come on.”

“Look at that bookcase,” Mat says, bringing her over to the other side of the room. A picture of Devyn and Franco’s wedding party is framed on one of the shelves, one where he is looking at her so lovingly that someone in passing would assume they were the ones getting married while she was looking at the camera if not for what they were wearing. Her favorite candle scents were still unlit, sitting on the shelf next to all the books she loved by Leigh Bardugo and Gillian Flynn, the same ones from when they first moved in together, their spines now noticeably more worn, the copies loved by someone who had to have read them multiple times. She picked up the copy of Ninth House, seeing his writing in it and comments saying things like ‘remember when you said this to me?’ or ‘this has to be your favorite scene because’ left unfinished. 

“He was writing these to me,” she realizes, not noticing Mat leaving the room.

“Of course I was,” Anthony says, her turning around so fast she loses her grasp on the book in her hands to send it falling to the floor. “I can’t really read these books anymore without thinking of you.”

“Why do you still have them all then?”

Anthony looks at the book on the floor. “How could I get rid of them?”

The two of them stand there in silence for what feels like forever. She wasn’t used to having Anthony in front of her and barely being able to find the words to say to him. She hated herself for losing him, but how could she have kept him? Colette takes in a deep breath. “We made a mistake breaking up, didn’t we?”

Anthony nods, shrugging. “Yeah, probably.” 

“I don’t think we could ever go back, either.” Anthony sighs, opening his mouth to say something when Colette cuts him off. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

“Do what?”

“I think I’m still in love with you, but we can’t be together. We don’t trust each other,” Colette hears herself say, shocked at the words that come out of her.

Anthony closes the distance between them, taking her in his arms and hugging her so fiercely she could barely breathe. “I still love you, too.” 

The two of them pull apart, both of them crying. They knew what this was for them.

“God, this sucks,” Anthony laments.

 “It’s kind of amazing, though, isn’t it?”

“What?” Anthony asks, shock in his voice.

“How lucky we are that we got to love each other so much, that a simple goodbye could feel as devastating as this.”

two sets of eyes, one opened set, one closed set

“Don’t panic,” Addison says, Eddy rolling his eyes behind her.

“Yeah, because only good things come from people saying that,” Colette says, handing her friends the drinks she bought them. Becca was somewhere with Devyn and Franco, the six of them out together for one of their increasingly rare nights when they could all be together without having to worry about anything outside the building they were in. 

“She thinks she saw some of Anthony’s teammates,” Eddy explains, guiding them back to the rest of their friends. 

Colette rolls her eyes, looking back to her friend who had already downed more than half her drink. She knew that Addison had a drunken habit of mistaking strangers for people she actually knew, or thought she knew. Just because she thought she saw some of his teammates, that didn’t actually mean anything. “I think we can save the panic for when we know we see him, instead.” 

“You’re already panicking about seeing him again?” Becca asks, overhearing only the last part of the conversation as they arrive back at the table. 

“We are talking about different people,” Colette says. “I was just with Carter last night.”

“That’s, what, almost every night that’s he’s not away for the last five months that you’ve spent the night together, isn’t it?” Devyn asks, stirring her drink with her straw.

“Yeah,” Colette sighs.

“Oh, no,” Franco groans.

“You guys seem really in to each other.” Becca points out.

“I mean, physically, it’s great. But, he just,” Colette starts, trying to figure out what to say. She knew exactly what bothered her; it was why she broke up with Anthony in the first place. “He doesn’t really know me.” 

“Holy shit,” Eddy says, nearly choking on his drink. The group follows his gaze to see that Addison was right; Anthony’s teammates were there at the bar, but so was Anthony. 

Not only was he there, but he had his arm around a girl, guiding her through the place to see if they could find an open table, the only one close to them being the one right next to them. 

“You make it worse if you freak out,” Devyn scolds him.

“Hi,” Anthony says when he sees her, standing right next to their table. 

“Hey, bud,” Eddy greets him, Franco punching him in the arm for the over enthusiasm. 

“We’re going to go get more drinks,” Becca says, all of Colette’s friends grabbing their clearly new drinks in front of them and excusing themselves from the table. 

Anthony awkwardly chuckles as they all leave, just him and Colette alone for the first time in what felt like forever. “So they haven’t changed.”

Colette felt a pit in her stomach. “You didn’t have to stop talking to them because we don’t talk that much. I mean, you were in Devyn and Franco’s wedding.”

Anthony nods, taking a sip of his drink before setting it down on the table in front of her. He was still standing awkwardly, Colette knowing that he wouldn’t ask to sit down with her. “Talking to them made me think about talking to you.”

The two of them sit in an awkward silence for a moment. 

“So who was-”

“I saw you-” they start to say at the same time, both of them letting out a laugh in hopes it would calm them down.

“You first,” Colette tells him.

“I saw you started seeing someone,” he brings up, leaning against the table as he looks down at his drink, a sad smile on his face.

Colette cringes, nodding. She forgot she still had him on her private story. “Yeah, but it won’t last much longer.”

“Oh.”

“I saw you were here with someone?” she asks, gesturing to the girl who was with his teammates.

Anthony looks over, waving at his friends and the girl. “That’s Mat’s little sister. She’s just here to visit.”

“So are you seeing anyone?”

Anthony shakes his head.

“I’m sorry,” Colette hears herself say, gesturing to him to sit down next to her.

He waves her off, taking the seat previously occupied by Franco across from her. “It’s fine. I’ll find someone else eventually.”

“No, I mean,” Colette starts, taking in a deep breath and trying to figure out what to say after all these years of not saying what she wanted to. What she should have said. They both knew they had already found each other and they let it go too soon. “I’m sorry for ending things. I’m sorry for being the reason everything fell apart. I’m sorry I didn’t show you how much I love you the way you showed me.”

Anthony looks up from his drink, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“You knew everything about me. You have my favorite books, you always knew exactly what I wanted to get when we went out to dinner before I had the chance to tell you, you know my mood based on the smallest things I do. You showed me you love me with everything. I didn’t do that for you.” 

Anthony gives her a sad smile. “You always showed me you loved me.”

“Not the way you did. I feel like I knew nothing about you the way you knew me.”

Anthony shakes his head. “You know me better than I know myself.” Colette starts to shake her head, about to dispute him when he cuts her off. “If I had a bad game, you always had a cup of tea ready for me when I got home with a note telling me how you knew I’d be fine next game. You never tried to minimize how I felt after a game and listened to everything I told you. If I had to get up early for practice or to leave for a road trip, you had my coffee ready for me before I was even awake sitting on the nightstand waiting for me, even if you hadn’t slept great the night before. I’d open my bag and find the notes you wrote for me hidden in my suit pockets so I’d have them with me in the locker room. You still text me after games to tell me you’re proud of me. You think you didn’t show me you loved me? I’ve never felt more loved by anyone before meeting you.”

“I didn’t think those things meant anything.”

“They meant everything.”

I love you

Colette walks into the studio, paper in hand. She had booked yet another appointment with her favorite artist, Eleni, months ago, going back and forth as to what she wanted. Her left arm was covered in a series of small tattoos as it was, enough space right at the start of her forearm for one last small tattoo. 

“Hey, Let,” Eleni greets her.

“Hi, Len,” she smiles back, handing her the piece of paper.

“You want the words, ‘I love you?’” Eleni asks, eyebrow cocked. Colette swallows, knowing that this was the last thing she wanted on her arm. “Whose writing is this? I know it’s not yours.”

“Anthony’s,” Colette admits after what felt like too long of a silence for it to be anyone else's. 

“Are you sure you want this?” 

Colette forces out a laugh. “Every tattoo on my arm relates to him in some way, you know that. You put them all there. The book with the sun, the solo cup, the wheel of fortune. Might as well finish it off with how we feel about each other.” 

Eleni takes in a deep breath, getting Colette ready for her tattoo. “I don’t get why you two aren’t together.”

Colette sighs. “I fucked up. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fix it. Not in a way that matters, anyway.” Eleni gives her a sad look, Colette shaking her head and waving it off. “Besides, just because you think you’re ‘meant to be’ with someone, doesn’t mean you’ll actually ‘be.’” 

[legstheoctomobster]

I made this when Flipside came out, but now that the pilot is out I’m jsut gonna release my Jecka agere propaganda >:3

Jecka Agere Headcanons

(Warning: Implied Emotional & Physical Abuse; Implied Grooming/Predatory Behavior/Abuse of power from an authority figure; Alcohol/Substances; Mentions of Violence. None of these things are glorified nor placed in for jokes.)

Involuntary regressor. Definitely a symptom of her PTSD (both from the mall cop and from her father.) Certain triggers like yelling or threats of violence can send her into this headspace, but sometimes it just happens when sick or hungover

Learned about regression from Ms. Ames, who actually supported it and helped her get more comfortable with that idea. Also helped her look at some… past experiences with Mr. Katz in a new context.

Has an age range of 5-9, but can sometimes go lower or higher given the situation.

Nicole is her caregiver! Nicole herself has an inkling of an idea on what Jecka’s going through, but still does a lot of trial and error while looking after her. She’s more like a babysitter/nanny.

Very sweet when regressed, but can get sensitive when she feels like someone is mad at her. Can burst into tears at the drop of a hat.

Prone to tantrums when regressed younger, and usually has them when slipping. During the first bits of her regression, Nicole has sent her to some makeshift timeout chair until she got better at calming the little girl down. Now what she usually does is give her a pillow or stuffie to hug (or beat up.)

Loves decorating everything with stickers. Enables herself by grabbing a few packs of them as well. Also loves those small makeup/eyeshadow kits for kids, and has done both her and Nicole’s makeup with them.

Has a baby blanket that she uses to comfort herself, even at her older states. It’s a crocheted blue and pink blanket that she carries around.

Just gets to heal and get a happy ending :]

Poor baby tapeworm :(

[ros3ybabe]

Daily Check-in: May 20, 2024 🎀

omg it'd almost the end of May, what the heck? I'm so excited, I leave to Colorado for my 8 weeks of work very soon and I can't wait! it's going to be such a cool experience being in a new place for a while!

Monday was a good day. My dad and my boyfriend both think I overdid it on the physical exertion a bit, and I agree. I took a long walk, outside, in 95 degree heat, with no sunscreen. Which is why they said I overdid it because my chest and shoulders are sooooo sunburnt. But Monday was amazing! Started off strong, ended not as strong but still good!

🩷 What I Accomplished:

~13k+ steps for the day

took an hour and a half long walk outside(it was amazing, I loved it, I stayed hydrated ans soaked up all the sunlight and fresh air)

completed a 30 min beginner pilates workout from Move with Nicole

did my morning journaling and gratitude

wrote down a positive quote of the day and read through my journal where I wrote down some things that I want to read daily

read and "annotated" 14 pages of Atomic Habits

took a 20 minute power nap

worked a ~6.5 hour shift

drank at least ~80oz of water (that's pretty good given I used to drink like 20oz a day and wonder why I never felt good)

took my two medications + vitamin D supplement

took a cool shower and washed my hair at the end of the day

went to sleep early!

💞 Good Things That Happened

my friend and a supervisor im close with complimented my appearance in a way that gave me a confidence/motivational boost

my other friend and I decided we're probably getting our nails done together next week

that same friend ^ and I are going to go shopping next week as well

my work is going to schedule me where I can still go to brunch with my dad on Friday!

my man starts his first day of work on Tuesday (I'm so excited for him! It's gonna suck not being able to text him all day, but I'm so proud of him for getting this job and all the progress he's made)

got complimented on how efficient I was at work by the night shift supervisor

ate goods that made me happy without feeling guilty or anxiety about it

💔 What Could've Gone Better

I over ate a bit at night after work and felt kind of bloated and sick when I went to bed. it's okay tho, things happen, and Tuesday is a new day <3

super sunburnt!!!! my chest and shoulders are bright, bright red! and I'm a naturally pretty tan person, so seeing my skin that red, yep, I'm definitely super burnt! need to wear sunscreen and protective clothes when I take a shorter walk on tuesday

I definitely overdid it on that walk. got too overzealous and pushed myself a lot. my legs were hurting so bad by the end of the day and that's not good. as much as I enjoyed the walk, I need to be so much more kinder to and thoughtful of my body. it does a lot for me, and I need to treat it right <3

💗 Stuff For Tuesday

take a shorter walk outside in the morning

read more of Atomic Habits (and annotate)

begin studying Spanish some more (fell off the habit but I have a lesson next Tuesday the 28th, so I need to be prepared!)

do some gentle morning and night skincare (my face is a little red from yesterday but not too bad since I wore a hat during my walk)

do my morning beginner pilates and gratitude journaling (I've already done these as of right now, but I struggled with the so-called "beginner" pilates video from IsaWelly. practice makes perfect, tho so I've got to keep consistent!)

book nail appointments with my friend for next week (hopefully the nail tech/nail salon I go to has availability for her and I to go together! I also need to pick the design i want!)

budget for this upcoming paycheck and what I need to save vs what I'm going to spend (and need to buy)

work a ~5 hour shift

talk to my man over video call at the end of the day to see how work/training went for him (it's his first day of work, but it's a hands on training kind of day for him as well)

💕 Song of The Day: aespa - Supernova

what an absolutely amazing song omg. aespa literally never misses with their music. I almost put Spicy, but I've been obsessed with Supernove since it dropped. I love it so much <3

That's all for Monday, like I said, it was a beautiful start to the week for me! And here's to Tuesday being a good day as well <3 I hope everyone here has a wonderful beginning of their week!

til next time lovelies 🩷

[harrisonstories]

Above: A current photo of the Row Barge Pub in Henley, Inbetween: George Harrison smiling in a pub in 1978 (whether it's the Row Barge or not is unknown) Photo by: Olivia Harrison, Below: George and Olivia Harrison with Dot Mitchell and her husband Norman at the Remenham Club in Henley, mid-1970s.

George Harrison + The Row Barge Pub

"We [Palin, Eric Idle, and George Harrison] all walked down to the local pub -- where we drank Brakspear’s Henley Ales and played darts." - Michael Palin, Oct. 1975, Diaries 1969-1979

"George heard that it was the birthday of Dot Mitchell, then the landlady at The Row Barge, his local public house. He called her to one side and, teasingly, told her to hold out her hand and close her eyes. Then, he dropped three perfect, impossibly valuable rubies into her hand. ‘Have a nice birthday,’ he told her.” - Eric Idle (1978)

"There’s a photo of George on the wall with Edward Heath -- he signed it to the guy who owns the place, 'To Norman, a little fellow everybody likes -- George and little Eddie'. They have a D. Horse sticker on the counter. A bit later this older couple came in, Phyllis & Tom. We went over and sat with them all night [...] They said that after Dhani was born George came in a lot and was so happy and proud and was telling everyone about him [...] [Phyllis] said she saw George just before Xmas carrying a Christmas tree on his back up the hill to F. Park -- some Hindu! [...] George had this hat on once and she said she liked it, and he gave it to her! She has a photo of her dancing with him that she said she’d show us next time we came." - WALH fanzine issue #25 (1979) [x]

"George and I had gone down to the pub that night to relax and get a little drunk. It turned out to be Norman’s birthday, so he closed the bar a little early to celebrate, and we stayed along with a few of Norman’s friends. After a few rounds, someone produced a guitar, gave it to George, and George proceeded to play every Beatles song he could remember." - Neil Larsen, Circus Weekly (April 1979) [x]

“George himself was a generous and intelligent man who suffered no fools, and he was always very private. He used to enjoy a drink at the Row Barge pub in Henley but he didn’t go into the town as much after John Lennon was shot.” - George Rob (Friar Park stonemason) [x]

"So my friend Nicole told me a story of how she used to work in the pub where George Harrison would bike to regularly and how one christmas instead of tipping all of the waitresses there like usual he bought every single one of them a small diamond necklace. They were all so stunned and thankful and oh my god so happy and he hugged them all and he said his wife helped him pick them out. And oh my god how can you not love this man." - niceboulder [x]

"I was in the pub one night [in 1986/87] -- as you do -- I got talking to the landlady behind the bar, and I go, 'Is that George Harrison's house across the road?' She goes 'Yeah. Oh, he does come in here occasionally.' I'm just [sarcastically] yeah 'course he does, kind of thing.

So I was talking, and some of the people I was with were talking, and suddenly this bloke comes in. Bit scruffy-looking at first. I looked at him and thought, 'I know him. I know him. I really do know him.' He was polite. He acknowledged everybody. He just said something like, 'Good evening, all,' and he walked into the room in the back. Now this room at the back, nobody else could go in. It was a private room.

So I looked at the landlady, and she goes, 'Yeah that was George Harrison,' and I go, 'What, really?' She goes 'Yeah'.

Then many years later after George had died, apparently, he left some money in his will -- I don't know how true this story is, but I think he left something in his will to the landlady of this pub because she kept that room at the back just for him. Nobody else could go in. People with him could go in, but members of the public couldn't. I think it was like George's little hideaway where he could just be himself, and obviously having to go across the road to the pub sort of thing probably made him feel a bit more normal? If that's the right word." - Beatle Dave [x]

[bratshaws]

through the hourglass 249. brb x oc

a/n: OHHOHOHO(comments and reblogs are super welcome and encouraged!)

pairing: plus size!oc x rooster

warnings: none uwu

goodness gracious (pls read this one to know more what this fic is about!!)

chapter

1/

/210/211/212/213/214/215/216/217/218/219/220/221/222/223/224

/225/226/227/228/229/230/231/232/233/234/235/236/237/238

/239/240/241/242/243/244/245/246/247/248

(pls let me know if you want to be added to the taglist! )

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@peachiicherries @mak-32 @lizziespidiepridie @roosterswifey @ollyoxenfrees @piceous21 @sqrlgrl22 @hofficoffi @lexhalstead3 @lorilane33 @legendarydreamersharkparty @luckyladycreator2

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-

Beatrice knocked first, interlacing her hands above her womb while Rooster kept one of his on her lower back and the other was busy keeping Nicole close to them. Their oldest daughter was going to turn one in a matter of weeks but she was already moving like she was a teenager.

It wasn’t her fault, Nicole was curious from the second she was born and she wanted to know about the tiny gnomes and crystals all over her great aunt’s garden. The bucket hat she wore fell a bit over her eyes but she quickly pushed it up, “Papa!” Rooster immediately looked down at her, only to see her pointing at a huge plant close by, ‘Geen!” 

“Yeah it is green, baby girl.”

“Pant geen.” followed by a long paragraph of babbling that only made her giggle before Rooster picked her up, “Pu-Pu.” and she points to the large lavender flowers swaying with the wind, her body twisting on his grasp.

“Your daughter knows her colors.”

Beatrice smiles, “My daughter?”

“Baby I can barely figure out tones.” he mutters, swiping some dirt that was on Nicole’s cheek with his thumb, then fixing her hat on her head, “I know the basic colors but I damn well know I couldn’t say half of these when I was Nicole’s age.”

“Oh don’t sell yourself short,Roos.” She tried to hide her bouncing leg by moving her hip to the side, eventually making it stop moving, so she could lean into him, “You know and you have a lot of colors in mind.” her eyes flicked to the door, wondering why her aunt was taking so long to answer it.

After all, she knew she was home.

“Yeah…I do love lilac.” he smirks, slowly lowering those brown eyes down the length of her body, the second she noticed what he was doing her cheeks went bright red and she elbowed his arm as gently as she could, “I know you do too–”

Their conversation was cut short because Martha finally showed up. Her long black hair now had silver streaks on it but she still looked the same as the first time. She had a mug with steaming liquid insite and her glasses were on the bridge of her nose, “Bradley,Beatrice, little sunshine, oh–” she sets the mug aside and cups her niece’s cheeks, then her nephew in law and finally her grand niece, in the order, to press kisses on their forehead, “What a wonderful day for a visit, please, please, come in.”

"Thank you for having us, Aunt Martha," Beatrice said  as she walked past the threshold with Rooster right behind - and Nicole immediately gasped at how many things were there for her to see. "Sorry for it being so sudden though.”

Martha chuckled, her laugh rich and warm. "As if I’d deny you two from coming over.” she puts her glasses on top of her head and tilts it towards them, “Are you two hungry? I know it’s almost time for you to have something to eat,” she points over at Rooster, winking, “I know you just got back from work too, something special must've happened for you two to come here so soon.”

Rooster smiled, albeit a bit bashfully. "We couldn't resist the opportunity to see you, Martha," he replied. "And well, something...interesting did happen."

Beatrice nodded in agreement, following Martha as she walked, more like floated, to the kitchen "Yes, something quite unexpected," she added. "But we'd love to have a meal with you, if you don't mind."

Martha's eyes twinkled with curiosity as she ushered them further into her home. "Of course, my dears," she said. "I'll whip up something special for you. In the meantime, make yourselves comfortable. Nicole looks like she's ready to explore."

Rooster chuckled as he set Nicole down on the floor, her tiny legs immediately propelling her forward in her quest to investigate her great aunt's kitchen. "You know her well," he remarked.

Martha watched with a fond smile as Nicole toddled around the living room, her eyes bright with curiosity. "Children have a way of bringing so much joy and energy into a home," she said. "It's a delight to have her here." she smiles more, “She also reminds me of Beatrice.”

Beatrice blinked, “Me? Really?”

“Of course you were…” she sighs, “Overly protected by your parents and siblings, but you’d explore as much as you could. You were a very, very special child. Even your cousins could agree to it.” she says softly, her long flowy dress moves like the wind as she walks into the kitchen, “Would you two like some tea?”

“Iced tea?” 

Martha smiled fondly at Rooster’s voice, then nodded,”Of course my dear. Iced tea. With honey?”

Rooster and Beatrice exchanged a glance, both appreciative of Martha's thoughtfulness. "Iced tea with honey sounds wonderful," Beatrice replied with a warm smile. "Thank you, zia Martha."

Martha nodded and began preparing the iced tea, her movements graceful and deliberate as she went about her task. Rooster and Beatrice took a seat in the cozy kitchen, keeping their eyes on Nicole as she wobbled a bit

As they waited for their iced tea, Nicole continued her exploration, her curious eyes taking in the various decorations and trinkets that adorned the space. She occasionally babbled excitedly, her tiny hands reaching out to touch anything within her reach.

It caught Martha’s attention when she noticed the dried herbs hanging on the wall, the older woman couldn’t help but hum appreciatively at the sight, “She is very alert, isn’t she?” she asks, the sloshing of the ice cubes hitting the tea adding to the sounds around them.

Rooster watched their daughter with affection. "She's quite the adventurer," he remarked, his eyes never leaving Nicole.

Beatrice nodded in agreement, "She definitely takes after both of us," she replied with a chuckle. "Curiosity runs in the family."

Martha turned towards them with a tray carrying three glasses of iced tea, each one garnished with a thin slice of lemon. She set the tray on the table and took a seat across from Rooster and Beatrice.

"There you go, my dears," Martha said, her eyes sparkling with warmth as she watched Nicole's antics. "I hope you enjoy it."

"Thank you, Martha," Rooster said as he took a sip of his iced tea. The cool, sweet beverage was refreshing, especially after a long day at work. "This is delicious."

Beatrice also took a sip and nodded in agreement. "It's perfect, zia Martha," she added with a smile. "You always know how to make everything feel so welcoming."

Martha's soft chuckle was the reply. "You're too kind, my dear," she replied. "It warms my heart to have you here." Her gaze shifted to Nicole, who was now attempting to climb onto a cushioned chair with a determined expression. "And little Nicole is an absolute delight."

Rooster quickly lifted Nicole from the chair with one arm while the other was busy holding the glass close to his lips, settling her on his lap. "She sure is and she is also a little spider monkey, yes you are.” and he tickled her tummy, earning a gurgled laugh from the little baby girl.

Martha observed the young family with a soft smile, then moved her gaze to Beatrice who looked like the air around her was covered with hearts and her gaze was so soft it was adorable. “You two look a bit tense,however.” she says softly, earning a look from both of them, “What is bothering you two,hm?”

Beatrice and Rooster exchanged a glance, Rooster still had his glass against his lips. It was true that they had been harboring concerns and uncertainties, but they hadn't expected Martha to pick up on it so easily.

But then again.

It’s Martha.

Rooster took a deep breath, his gaze shifting from Bea to Martha. "You have a keen eye, zia Martha," he admitted. "There have been some...unusual developments lately."

Beatrice nodded in agreement, her fingers gently tracing the rim of her iced tea glass. "We received an invitation from…neighbors." she added. "And it's left us with some questions and concerns."

Martha listened attentively, her hands propping under her chin. "I see," she said softly. "Would you like to share more about this invitation?"

Rooster exchanged another glance with Beatrice before nodding. "It came from Miranda Halton," he explained. "She's the wife of Mark Halton, one of my colleagues at work. But the strange thing is, they are…strange. And I know we shouldn’t judge, but they act weird around us.”

Martha's brows furrowed slightly as she absorbed the information. She had a thoughtful expression as she considered what Rooster had just shared. "The Haltons," she mused, her voice soft and contemplative. "I don’t think I’ve known that name, did they just move to your neighborhood?"

Beatrice nodded in response. "Yes, they have," she confirmed. "But we've never really interacted with them much. Well…they mainly interacted with us you know? They just pop out of nowhere too.”

Rooster leaned forward, his fingers tapping on the glass. "It's not just that," he added. "There's something...off about the way they approached us. They mentioned that they wanted us to join them for dinner, and they seemed overly enthusiastic about it. It just didn't feel right."

Martha regarded them both with a knowing look. "You trust your instincts," she said, her tone serious. "That's important. If something feels off, it's best to be cautious."

Beatrice sighed, her fingers gripping the glass of iced tea a bit tighter. "We want to go," she admitted. "But mainly because  we want to understand what's going on. It's not just about the dinner invitation. Rooster's promotion at work is at stake, and there might be a connection between the two."

Martha's gaze sharpened as she absorbed the additional piece of information. "I see," she said, her voice tinged with concern as she turns to Rooster, “Is that true?”

Rooster nodded in agreement. "Too much coincidence ends up becoming a fact." he assured her. "But we don’t know, not really, that’s why we want to go there and deal with this already."

“Are you taking Nicole?”

Beatrice leaned back in her chair, her fingers finally relaxing their grip on the glass. "No, she’s staying with Shells, my friend, you remember her,right?," 

Martha's smile widened. "Ah, the Kylie Minogue girl, yes I remember her." she replied. "She has a good heart,I’m glad she’s staying with Nicole.” she says while drinking her own tea, her eyes sharpening towards Rooster, “But there’s something else bothering you, bambino.”

Damn.

Caught again.

Rooster inhales, adjusting Nicole on his grasp, “Well I–” he clears his throat, “I might’ve…seen some things uhhh early today.”

Martha's brows furrowed with concern as she leaned forward, her gaze locked onto Rooster. "What kind of things, Rooster?" she asked, her voice gentle but insistent.

Rooster hesitated for a moment, his eyes darting between Beatrice and Martha. He knew he couldn't keep the strange incident in the nursery a secret any longer. "I thought I saw someone," he finally admitted, his voice low. "In the nursery, with Beatrice and Nicole. But they disappeared when I entered the room."

"It was really strange, zia," she added. "I didn't see anyone there, but Roos seemed certain."

Martha's expression remained serious as she absorbed the information. She leaned back in her chair, her fingers steepled in front of her. "Seeing someone who isn't there," she mused. "That's an unusual experience, Rooster. Do you think it might be related to what's been going on with the Haltons?"

Rooster shrugged, with a soft laugh  "I can't say for sure," he replied. “I mean,I’m stressed but I don’t think that could be it.”

Martha nodded thoughtfully. "Did you see what the figure looked like?”

Rooster pondered for a second, wracking his brain. It was so quick and brief he was having a hard time remembering the details, his eyes clenched shut, trying to relive what had happened hours before, “...tall. I think it was a man? Looked like one. I couldn’t see the face though…am I going crazy?”

Martha regarded Rooster with a thoughtful expression, her fingers tapping lightly on the table as she contemplated his words. "You're not going crazy, Rooster," she finally replied, her tone soft and reassuring. "Sometimes, our minds can play tricks on us, especially when we're under stress or dealing with unusual situations."

Rooster let out a sigh of relief, grateful for their understanding. "You're right," he admitted, running a hand through his hair. "I guess I've just got a lot on my mind with work, the twins, and now this dinner with the Haltons. It's probably nothing."

Martha gave him a warm smile. "However-”

“Oh?”

She smiles more, interlacing her fingers together and titling her head at him, “I think that some of the Schiavoni gene is spreading onto you.” her eyes squint when she grins, creating creases on the sides, “Perhaps this is someone who must want to talk to you again, see how you are, how things are.”

Rooster stares at her in silence, then questions,  “...like my dad?”

Martha's expression softened immediately."It's possible," Martha replied, her voice gentle. "Sometimes, our loved ones find ways to let us know they're watching over us, especially during significant moments in our lives. It could be a way for your father to reassure you or offer his guidance."

Rooster's eyes shimmered with emotion as he absorbed Martha's words. He had missed his father every day since his passing, and the idea that he might be trying to reach out to him touched his heart.

After all, he did see him during their wedding.

Beatrice reached out to place a hand on Rooster's, offering him support and comfort. "Roos?" she asked softly. "A sign that your dad is with us?"

“I…” he clears his throat, “I-I think I’m gonna go to the bathroom really quick,can you-” he hands Nicole over to Bea and stands up, disappearing from the two women’s sights before either of them could stop him.

“He’s going to be okay.” Marta says when Beatrice looks back to where Rooster disappeared, “The bambino needs to calm down a bit, his promotion and birthday is coming up,tesoro.” she smiles, “A lot of emotion is coming up.”

“Yeah…and Nikki’s birthday and–” she frowns, “How did you know about his promotion?” but her aunt’s smile turns wider as she brings the tea to her lips, winking at her niece, “...right,I forgot.”

“Do breathe,tesoro. You two will enter a new stage.”

“Huh?”

‘Thw twins are coming back, Bradley’s promotion will open doors…but it will also make you two climb some walls.” she says, crossing her arms on the table, “You are aware of that,no?”

Beatrice looks down at Nicole who was happily tapping her hands on the tablecloth, “...yes,I know.”

“Not to mention, your life. You personally.” and this time her aunt’s tone got serious, “Tesoro, do you still have the amulets I sent you?” Beatrice blinks in surprise but nods as soon as she says that, “Good…never lose that,hm? It’ll protect all of you.”

“...Zia,should I be worried?”

Martha’s serious façade dropped and she took another sip of her tea, “Why tesoro,” she grins, tilting her head to the side, “You two have each other. There’s nothing to be worried about. You two are stronger together than apart.” 

“...yeah…” she looks back at the bathroom door, a little smile on her face, “I agree.”

[possibly-in-wonderland]

here's that lesbian human x dragon poem (wrote technically as a song), I posted on all poetry last year (channeled hozier for this)

forged in a pyre of ash and dust

birthed from the flames of smoke and rust

grant me the strength to fight back

with the good shrouded in black

dare i say the time is right

to rise from ash and ignite

firebird’s child holds my soul

the soot and soil take their toll

forged in the pyre

desiring i am of her

in dire need of her love and grace

forged in the pyre

who am i to deny her

of my love and her sweet embrace

a dragon rider, she is not

but the dragon itself and her flame is hot

deep in the mountains, she resides

fangs of blades and cyanide

heed the warnings that are said

most men who find her often wind up dead

drop your sword off at her feet

god, she makes me so complete

i love her

hoarding her passions and her gold

grab me with your gentle paws

hold me as we once were

and love unto me uncontrolled

fuck these kings and their laws

forged in the pyre

desiring i am of her

in dire need of her love and grace

forged in the pyre

who am i to deny her

of my love and her sweet embrace

bonus poem/song (was listening to nicole dollanganger while writing this one):

i look into the night skies

and i see your eyes

looking deep into mine

what do i do?

you’re making me nervous

should i stand here? or should i carry on

singing this stupid love song

down the street i walk with a knife in my hand

going door to door like a door-to-door salesman

“excuse me miss, would you like to buy

some dream sand?”

she says sure

you come down and

grip my hand

and look into her eyes

she falls back

your eyes are pitch black

“come with me, my little fruit bat,

tonight i’ll make you mine at the drop of a hat,

i’ll hold you close and love you tight,

but remember i have to go away at night.”

he took me home and he laid me down

sand in my eyes, stars dancing around

hold me tight, don���t ever let me go

your spot next to me always feels so cold

when you're gone

i’ll come with you when you're doing your job

singing little babies off to sleep

and comforting insecure teens

i look into the night skies

and i see your eyes

looking deep into mine

i’ve loved you every second since i was a kid

and now i’ll carry on with this life i live

singing this pretty love song…to you

[lareinaforever-16x]

Rampage Song by Nicole Dollanganger

I hear him screaming like late-night white trash TV stations Black combat boots pacing in through the school building He's gonna fight the good fight, the noble war He's gonna fight the good fight, the noble war

Yeah, my baby has a baby, but it's not me It's an AK47 semi-automatic gun and He loves her more than he loves me

"I don't care what you say; if you ever touch him again, I will freakin' kill you" "I'm gonna pull out the goddamn shotgun and blow your damn head off" "Do you understand? You little worthless piece of crap!"

Gunslinger, black duster, delusions of a western He wears his hat on backwards, sets fire to his locker He's gonna fight the good fight, the noble war He's gonna fight the good fight, the noble war

Yeah, my baby has a baby, but it's not me It's an AK47 semi-automatic gun and He loves her more than he loves me

I'll bet you've never seen the smile Of a Savage-Springfield 67H With his blurry face and cracked voice Gone through VHS tapes

"Then you get guts all over the place, then somebody's gonna have to clean it up and the janitors get mad" "Uh, I think we'll just use my A.E.B-10 machine pistol on him, probably" "Maybe the rocket launcher"

Yeah, my baby has a baby, but it's not me

[pokepocketzine]

🌱guest spotlight: munespice🍀

introducing @munespice, our guest page artist!

🤏favorite tinys: smoliv, paras, budew

🤏intro: Hi, I’m Nicole! My art primarily features round creatures in magical botanical settings. I owe a lot of my inspiration to my lifelong love for Pokemon!

[ID: a graphic with a stained glass pattern in various shades of yellow. There are three translucent boxes with dotted white lines for borders. At the top is the title box stating “GUEST SPOTLIGHT: MUNESPICE” to the left of it is a magnifying glass with art of a frog wearing a hat. Below that is a box containing handles: twitter: munespice; instagram: munespice; tumblr: munespice. Under that reads underlined words "favorite tiny pokemon: smoliv, paras, budew! The centermost box has a picture of a little frog in a big pond. /END ID]

[godfrey-hath-forsaken-thee]

On Thin Ice

So... This was a little story I submitted to a writing competition at school, and it got second place! This little piece of no-plot fluff got SECOND PLACE in a writing contest!!

Brief summary of Whomst The Frick is in the story:

Samantha McDermott is, at this point in my lore for her, 20 years old. If I had to describe her in one word, it would be determined. Samantha is fairly intelligent, and though she tries to appear tough, she cares about people a lot. She's currently taking a gap year and travelling the world, and right now, in December, she finds herself in the Norwegian mountains, sharing a cabin with...

Nicole Saunders - Nicky for short to those who know her well. She's about the same age as Samantha, and she's bright, optimistic and outgoing. She was ✨single handedly✨ responsible for Samantha's Bisexual Awakening, and the two make for one heck of a couple.

Please let me know if you enjoy this, I love getting feedback from people!

Now, without further ado, let's get on with it...

The door of the quaint little mountain cabin swung open and hit the wall from the force of the gale outside. Two young women entered, and the snow blew in with them, taking the heat from the air. Samantha McDermott was the first to step onto the rug, not caring about the tracks her sodden boots left in their wake. She removed her brown overcoat and hat, revealing her light brown hair, windswept and messy, but she kept her blue scarf on, arranging it a little more neatly. Nicole Saunders followed her, shivering violently with her head bowed and immediately walking somewhat awkwardly into the living room.

The two of them had been ice skating on a frozen lake nearby, and had severely misjudged the thickness of the ice; Nicole had fallen though and gotten soaked. After about thirty seconds of utter panic, Samantha pulled Nicole by the arms out of the freezing water and helped her get out of her skates. It was then that they decided to simply walk back to the house and try and get her warm.

Samantha lit a fire in the living room, and set the mug of hot chocolate she'd made for Nicole on the table. Nicole reached for the cup, drinking deeply from it and giving a shaky sigh. She continued holding the mug, clutching it like a sort of lifeline, coveting the warmth it gave. Samantha bustled out of the room, getting a thick tartan blanket from upstairs. She then came back into the living room and moved the couch a little closer to the fire, inviting Nicole to sit down. Nicole arranged the blanket around herself and gave another harsh shudder. "Don't move, Nicky," Samantha said softly, "I'll get your nightgown and pyjamas so you can get out of those wet clothes…" Nicole tried to answer, but could barely speak because her teeth were still chattering from the frigid conditions outside. She took off her jacket and boots, which were absolutely drenched. Samantha came back in and handed the silky pyjamas and fluffy lavender nightgown to Nicole, before leaving again for a few minutes so Nicole could get changed. When Samantha returned for the last time, she was in her nightdress and a tartan dressing gown. She took a sip from her own mug of hot chocolate, which was beginning to go cold.

"Are you alright after that, Nicky?" Samantha asked, "That was a hell of a fall you took." "I'm fine," Nicole said, a little shakily, "I just can't seem to get warm, is all…" "That's the last time I ever set foot on a frozen lake," Samantha muttered to herself, "Don't ever scare me like that again, okay?" "Noted," Nicole had to agree with Samantha, "But it was my own fault, really - I should've known better." "Don't blame yourself, lass," Samantha told her, "What matters is that you're okay now." "Well, I hope I am, anyway," Nicole began, "I still feel freezing, and I think I'm getting a headache…" Nicole raised a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes for a moment while she re-centered herself.

"Let me get a look at you, love," Samantha said. Nicole raised her head, looking up at Samantha, Her weary, out-of-focus brain struggled to take in Samantha's concerned expression; she looked even more anxious than usual. "Y-you're doing that thing with your hands again," Nicole pointed out, her voice breaking involuntarily. Samantha was tapping her fingers, the way she always did when she was nervous. She couldn't help it, it just happened. But Samantha Hortense McDermott knew when someone wasn't feeling their best - indeed, it was a feeling she herself knew all too well. When someone needed help, a softer side to Samantha emerged. She was usually so uptight and serious, but she cared about the people she loved an awful lot. And right now, Nicole was someone she really loved. She'd never felt this way before, but it wasn't entirely unwelcome.

"I think we should both get to bed," Samantha suggested, "The rest will do us good." She let Nicole lean on her shoulder as the two of them stood up, which was fortunate, because Nicole was a little unsteady on her feet. Samantha helped her walk up the stairs to their bedroom. There were two single beds there as opposed to a double - probably just as well, as Samantha couldn't sleep with someone next to her. And those beds had never looked quite as inviting as they did tonight. "Goodnight, Samantha," Nicole said through a yawn as she got comfortable under the covers. She fell asleep almost immediately. "Goodnight, my darling," Samantha smiled as she turned off the light, before fumbling her way through the darkened room and getting into her own bed.

It took her longer to fall asleep. Thoughts and feelings chased each other around her mind, some of them achingly familiar, others totally new. She'd never expected, when she and Nicole first crossed paths, to feel this way about her. And she certainly hadn't imagined that she would be quite so… fascinated by the sight of her in this situation. Samantha knew she was doing a good thing, helping her out, and maybe that fulfilment in itself was part of it, but there was something about the way NIcole looked at her as she pulled her out of the icy water, something about the way her hair, wet and limp, framed her face perfectly, something about how her voice cracked and wavered when she spoke, that for some reason Samantha found a little bit pleasing.

"Why do I feel like this?" Samantha asked herself, "I… I shouldn't feel this way…" She sighed. This was going to be a long night, wasn't it?

[eg-writtenthoughts]

While You're Waiting...

An intermediary post while I’m reading the next book... A plug for my favourite true crime podcast - True Crime and Cocktails. 

Produced by Art19, this podcast is hosted by Lauren Ash, most well known for her role as Dina in NBC’s hit show Superstore and her cousin/best friend Christy Oxborrow. 

What started out of a guest appearance on Lauren’s old podcast, became a lockdown passion project for the pair. Starting off with a running time around an hour and a half, the episodes got to the point much quicker than they do these days. Mainly, Christy researched the cases of Netflix's first season of the “new” Unsolved Mysteries. 

Now on their 132nd episode, the running time passes the two hour mark with at least one episode sitting at three hours. With enthusiasm and humour that’s made me snort in laughter a time or two, they discuss their lives and current or twenty year old pop culture to warm up their audience for half hour to forty-five minutes of the episode.

In my personal opinion, Christy Oxborrow might be the best researcher in audio media at the moment. I understand that on television shows or fancy network podcasts, like Dateline NBC or Crime Beat, their researchers must be more careful with what they say or where they look for details. Nobody wants to get sued. Christy however, will do an occasional social media search or a search of a town’s archives. It adds much more to the episodes, and gives credence to the moments when the pair essentially calls some of the suspects ‘idiots’ (in their own educated opinions).

Christy and Lauren are just as entertaining, even more revealing and connected to their invested listeners on their Patreon. True Crime and Cocktails is the first patreon I’ve ever subscribed to and I think it’s a worthy choice. They provide three tiers of content, all at different and reasonable prices. 

Many cases covered on the podcast are familiar, like Nicole Brown, Heaven’s Gate, or Whitey Bulger. A majority of the cases are a medium level familiarity for anyone who’s dabbled in true crime along with cases that are next to unknown. These tend to be Christy’s and Lauren’s specialty. A particular series I find unique is titled ‘Missing’. Christy presents Lauren and the audience with a range of cases with little information available. As there’s Unsolved Mysteries. 

Sticking to their roots, Lauren and Christy have covered the two newest seasons of Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries. 

At the end of an episode, Lauren (and when they occasionally reverse positions, Christy) goes over the diligent notes she’s taken, often with the loving interruption of one or multiple pets. The pair spend half an hour discussing the case and theories they’ve come up with for the unsolved episodes. Lauren often gives her “psychologist’s hat” opinion. As she reminds the listeners, she does not have a degree, only a history of true crime fascination.

In conclusion, True Crime and Cocktails is a podcast anyone can listen to if they’re interested in getting more true crime into their brains. In my opinion, you won’t be able to listen to any other true crime podcast without feeling like you’d rather hear it from your Canadian, quirky friends. The oldest episodes may be a little rougher to get into especially if those are the ones you chose to start with, but soon enough, the two get their stride and have grown a podcast that I anxiously wait for every Tuesday morning. 

[maddie-grove]

Speaking of my Fisher Price Little People, I still have nearly all of them. These are the adults of the Bluemonts, the wealthiest family in town. From left to right:

“Captain” Joseph Bluemont: kind of a Commodore Vanderbilt type. Essentially good-natured and tolerant.

Evelyn Bluemont: I didn’t actually acquire her until adulthood, so she played no role in my childhood games, but she looks affectionate yet nervous around these people. I think she’s married to the captain but refuses to live on his boat.

“Farmer” Fred Bluemont: Joseph and Evelyn’s son. Not actually a farmer. He owns a zoo but spends most of his working hours as a lifeguard. Constantly cheating on his wife. A fairly good father.

Caroline Bluemont: Fred’s wife, a banker. Very smart. Constantly cheating on her husband. A little pushy but otherwise a good mother.

Nell Bluemont: Fred’s sister. A lesbian and a train conductor. Madcap.

And these are Fred and Caroline’s children, from left to right:

Robbie: the most popular boy in school, but he’s too cool to care about that kind of thing. He wants to travel the world, and he works at the zoo part time. My brother’s favorite.

Nicole: a raucous party girl who doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks! She drives the school bus. We unfortunately called her Bitch Hat.

Tony: a hopeless romantic with middle-child syndrome.

Sandy: the “smart” triplet. Wants to go into finance.

Candy: the “fun” triplet. A party girl like Nicole, but less rebellious.

Mandy: the “sweet” triplet. Actually deeply interested in farming.

Timmy: the baby of the family. Also very sweet. Gay and in love with the troubled kid who always got locked in the grain silo.

[campingbagandstuff]

.22/9.33 {Part 2 of 12}; 16

The Yeah Yeahs heads will roll, The Veronicas hook me up, popular, lolita, take me on the floor, this love, Escape the sound let’s go, Lorn anvil, acid rain, VV Brown shark in the water, amerie why don't we fall in love?

Elliphant love you better, still getting younger, spoon me, (ft. MO one more), lean on, kamikaze, Grimes genesis, idoru, world princess, butterfly, california, (sade kiss of life, king of sorrow, moon & the sky, soldier of love, no ordinary love, everything but the girl missing)

delete forever, scream, Mia hungrigez hertz, MIA hombre, XR2, world town, jimmy, 10 dollar, 20 dollar, Wynter Gordon (ft. FloRida )sugar, stimela, levitate, believer, Diana “ woman, thank you, {{{shakira ft.>> }}}{{the weeknd}}{jennifer lopez}maluma {{{chantaje}}}{{hawai}}{pa'ti & lonely} corazon, procura, {nayer ft. pit bull & }mohombi{suave, }chocola

Men Without Hats safety dance, Sade soldier of love, paradise, cherish the day, the moon & the sky, kiss of life, The Third Realm dance like you wanna die, kiss of the scorpion, invitation to hell, (lady gaga just dance, judas, papparazzi, applause, rain on me, social repose filthy pride)

forever, IAMX stardust, Sirius neon dominion, Ludovico technique dead inside, absence, deeper into you, potential, heal my scars, beyond therapy, wasting, memory, shutting down, dead inside, Shiv-r devil’s night, alpha omega, Psychlon 9 parasitic, as you sleep, lorde magnets, royals, mamamoo ILLELLA, aze gag, Snotty Nose Rez Kids I Got Paid Today

Vanessa Hudgens sneakernight, baby come back, Lionbabe fire, Jetta electrify, ABRA fruit, Kilo Kish, The Internet girl, Doja Cat streets, Vegas, beautiful, nunchucks, Lola Munroe overtime, Exodus 23, you a jerk, Allie & AJ potential breakup song, like whoa, rush, new year's day joker, defame me, CL the baddest female

Ghost little sunshine, cirice, square hammer, he is, Lana Del Rey doin time, kill kill, venice bitch, chemtrails over the country club, hit & run, video game, black beauty, high by the beach, diet mountain dew, summer wine, swan song, say yes to heaven, blackest day, ride, summertime sadness, honeymoon, ultraviolence, carmen, this is what makes us girls, burning desire, off to the races, lolita, million dollar man,Marina & the Diamonds immortal, teen idle, the outsider, (after school BANG, ayu progress, poker face, boys & girls, trust, greatful days, ballad, butterfly, moments, don't look back, momentum, brillante, )

fear & loathing, valley of the dolls, I’m not a robot, mowgli’s trail, handmade heaven, blue, solitaire, family jewels, hermit the frog, superstar, happy, ancient dreams in a modern land, oh no, primadonna, how to be a heartbreaker, are you satisfied, girls, hollywood, valley of the dolls, electra heart, froot, lies,seventeen, just desserts, power & control, radioactive, bubblegum bitch, i am not a robot, can't pin me down, better than that, Mo Cheddah ko ma roll, Solange tony, losing you, cranes in the sky, girls' generation gee, oh!, boys, catch me if you can, galaxy supernova, utada hikaru merry christmas mr. lawrence, nichiyou no asa, tippy toes, poppin, the workout, apple & cinnamon, kremlin dusk, exodus

Tinashe aquarius, bet on it, cold sweat, bated breath, party favours, company, Beach Boys good vibrations, The Pretty Reckless you, miss nothing, medicine, Kalafina magia, sinachi waymaker, wretch 32 {ft. L Marshall} traktor

Birthday Massacre superstition, goodnight, blue, looking glass, Ayria gun song, Okilly Dokilly white wine spritzer, New Years’ Day gangsta [(Kehlani cover)], Nightclub show it to me, your addiction, Nuages dreams, Gunship dark all day, do as infinity inuyasha "poem of truth", nicole scherzinger your love, keri hilson{ft. kardinaloffishall} numba 1 (tide is high), Reol

Nicki Minaj your love, chun-li, barbie tings, pills & potions, superbass, right thru me, Madonna jump, (ft. MIA & Nicki Minaj )give me all your luvin’, la isla bonita, Charli XCX boom clap, you (ha ha ha), sza ice moon, bed, {yung lean ft. }fka twigs measure of a man , meta angel, pendullum, weak spot, water me, hours, hide, give up{, bliss}, 2 weeks, cover drive sparks, twilight, eminem mockingbird

[bratshaws]

through the hourglass 135. brb x oc

a/n:TUMBLR IS MAKING MY CHAPTERS APPEAR HALF FINISHED BUT I SWEAR IT'S NOT (reblogs and comments are supper encouraged <3)

pairing: plus size!oc x rooster

warnings: none. besides what every relationship should be like * sobs in single *

goodness gracious (pls read this one to know more what this fic is about!!)

chapter

1/

/100/101/102/103/104/105/106/107/108/109/110/111/112/113/114/115/116/117/118/119/120/121/122/123/124/125/126/127/128/129/130/131/132/133/134

(pls let me know if you want to be added to the taglist! )

taglist: @mirandastuckinthe80s @roosterschanelslut @wiipes @lcahwriter @novastories @gretagerwigsmuse @frenchtoastix

@lizzie-rdj @fanboyluvr @atarmychick007 @comebacktoearthpls

@peachiicherries @mak-32 @lizziespidiepridie @roosterswifey @ollyoxenfrees @piceous21 @sqrlgrl22 @hofficoffi @lexhalstead3 @lorilane33 @legendarydreamersharkparty @luckyladycreator2

@emilybradshaw @j-6o @louisahale @leobabbyyy @kulicny @winter-run @ktjmac @graciereads @bigpoppajes @taytaylala12

@caitsymichelle13 @becks-things @caatheeriinee07 @dhwanishah09 @jesfreedark @katiemcrae @lilmonstrjedi @hobiismyhopeu @teacupsandtopgun @insominac23 @gh0stsgoodgirl @mygyn @chavivaelisheva

-

Every day that passed there is living proof that Nicole had to be the best baby they ever met in their lives. Well, without meeting the twins that is.

She was calm and curious, she only cried the tiniest bit when her ears popped in the plane, quickly calming down when Beatrice pulled her close to herself. She was amazed by the window, she couldn’t stop looking during the first hours of the flight only falling asleep as they were halfway done and Beatrice had to change her clothes before they left for the car.

She looked adorable with her little puffer jacket and furry hoodie, her tiny face appearing even tinier when her mother slipped on the pink beanie over her head and tied the hoodie’s strings below her neck, “Oh my god you look like a little teddy bear!” she coos, having to keep her voice down because Nicole looked very sleepy now, her light eyes disappearing under her lids, ‘Okay, okay, let’s go meet dada.”

Beatrice walked out to meet Rooster, who was already settling everything in the car with the help of the airport staff, and that included the three massive dogs inside and the baby carrier. She looked up at the sky just to check if there was any snow coming now, there wasn’t but the wind was absolutely chilling.

She pulled her peruvian hat down and hugged Nicole closer - her daughter clearly wasn’t caring about the weather as much as Beatrice did, but she was snuggling closer to her mother. Beatrice hurried to Rooster’s side, he probably heard her coming because he immediately lifted his arm so she could shield herself from the cold as he checked something on his phone, “Everything is settled, just got a notification from the cabin.”

“Good,can we go?”

“Why? Are you cold?” she narrowed her eyes at him,clearly unamused and he chuckled, kissing the space of forehead that wasn’t covered by her peruvian hat, “Let’s settle Nikki down and then we can go.”

“Are the dogs okay?”

Bradley turned to face the car, Eleanor and Jack seemed agitated, but Jolene was happily snoozing on the backseat, ignoring her pups like any mother with teenage children would, after all they were just learning new things, “I latched the two in case they get too wild, they love car rides but they’ve never seen snow.” he says, opening the back door so Beatrice could put Nicole down, their daughter yawned and faced the opposite way in her slumber, allowing her mother to latch her up without worries, “Out like a light,huh?”

“A seven hours flight does that to you.” Beatrice smiles, petting and kissing the dogs so they could stay calm in the backseat. Once Rooster shut the back door, she rubbed her arms, “Okay, so, the cabin we got…is it like the one from before?”

“Hmmm…kind of.” he opens the passenger door for her, then walks to his own side to continue the conversation already seated and with the seatbelt on, “It’s different but not so much, it has the same…apparatuses. Warm floors and such.”

“Oh I love those floors.” she comments, looking out towards the sky with her lips pursed, “Lat time we came here…we arrived around, noon,right? I don’t think we were able to enjoy our first day.”

“Well we passed out on the bed.” he smirks, turning the car on and driving away, “And I honestly just remember waking up the very next day and then going to the cemetery.” he pauses, clearing his throat, “But I think you’ll like it, it’s a bit far from the location we were last time.”

“Oh?”

“Remember those cabins we saw up on the hills, far, faar away?” she nods, “It’s one of those.”

Beatrice stares at him for a few seconds, then parts her lips as she connects the dots, ‘Wait but those were huge!I thought- wait I saw the ones we looked into,they were nothing like that.”

“Yeah, well,” he has that boyish smile on his face, that ‘im up to no good but im too cute for you to be mad at me’ smile that always made her heart beat faster, “I figured that since we uh, got married,” he juts out his thumb, “Had a baby,” his index finger, “And, now we have two more on the way, I figured we could have something bigger…plus it wasn’t that expensive, it was just a few dollars extra. Nothing that’s going to hurt us financially.”

Beatrice wanted to kiss him but he had to pay attention on the road. She just laughed in disbelief, holding her face up by propping her elbow on the window to look out towards the horizon. They weren’t going to take too long there, she knew it, because she remembers the curves and corners until they were there.

Maybe she was more tired than she thought, because she just dropped her arm to her side and let her head thunk against the glass as Rooster turned the radio on. He hummed along to the song, it was quiet because he didn’t want to wake Beatrice nor Nicole - or the dogs - and he allowed himself to take everything in.

He was still nervous about visiting the cemetery tomorrow, it was before his mother’s birthday, but he figured that spending the New Years wasn’t bad. Plus, Nicole could enjoy the New Years with some snow, it’d be good for her.

He rolls his shoulders a bit, slowly exhaling through his mouth and then clicking his tongue against his teeth. He always get nervous when coming back here, it’s crazy to think about it - he shouldn’t, he grew up here after all, he knows everything that is to know about it and if he doesn’t he could easily figure it out…

But he wouldn’t live here again. He considered it back then, maybe getting a place here wouldn’t be so bad but after his mother died…he distanced himself the best he could, he was hurt and angry, too angry to enjoy it. He wouldn’t mind these quick visits, in fact they were better than living here, plus he had Bea and Nicole and the dogs.

And the twins, of course.

He sometimes remembers of the time when he was younger and without much to think of, without plans that involved people other than himself…and then times goes on, he has his hook ups here and there and Beatrice shows up and just snatches his heart in such a gentle way he couldn’t even handle it at first.

And he had to admit he was doing a good job.

He looks back at Nicole and the dogs, Jolene is the closest to Nicole with her head partially on the side of the carrier, Jack is on the floor and Eleanor is on Nicole’s opposite side, the three large dogs creating a massive wall of canines to protect her. He was happy, he really was happy and he couldn’t ask for anything better.

He just didn’t want to feel sad when he was surrounded by so much love.

He shakes his head, deciding that now wasn’t the best time to have these thoughts, instead he drove further on the road, turning the opposite side from last time and going up towards the large cabins. Bea was right, those were huge, and most of them were occupied already.

Now, theirs wasn’t on the top of the hill like the others but it was high enough that they could see the horizon if they so wanted. He saw the cabin coming into view and smiled, “Finally.” he looked back at Beatrice, gently nudging her shoulder, “Baby,wake up.”

“Hmm?”

“We’re here?”

“Wazzat?” she blinks her eyes open,blurry vision sharpening as she looked around. It was beautiful because they were surrounded by trees dusted with the tiniest bit of snow and the horizon was an amazing shade of blue that went from the lightest to darkest like a wave almost, “Oh wow.”

“Okay, I’ll step out to unlock the garage and then I’ll help you out.” he pecks her lips sweetly,chuckling against her mouth because she was still waking up and had no idea what was happening.

“...kay…” she yawns once he backs away, rubbing her eyes with her hands and instead of staying inside, she opens the door to step out and get some fresh air. What she didn’t expect was the massive structure that was in front of her. “Woah…is this real?”

Even if he was a few feet away he heard her, “Sure is, pretty cool huh?”

It was huge, much bigger than the one from before. Much like the past cabins, the doors and windows tinted when looked from the outside, there was a large balcony that overlooked the hill and she couldn’t wait to look at it up close, “Roos,this is beautiful!”

“Oh,gorgeous,” he clicks on the door, gently pushing it open, “Wait until you see the inside.”

Both of them hurried to pick up Nicole and let the dogs wander in. Their baby girl just whined but didn’t wake up yet, preferring to bury her face in her mother’s collar than to check what was going on. “Roos.” she laughs again, spreading her free arm as she spun in the middle of that immense living room, “This is enormous!You can fit the whole Hard Deck here.”

“You are thinking about inviting people over?” he closes the door after placing the last of their luggage by it, “I don’t mind it if you do.”

“Of course not but…wow..Wow!” she squeals, rushing to the kitchen,running her hands over the counter top, “This is amazing! Roos! I-”

“Go ahead.” he smirks, knowing there was only one thing more she wanted to see. So, she hurried up to the second floor - all the while keeping Nicole in her grasp, being careful as she walked up the staircase. He waits a few seconds, then hears her happy squealing from above, shrugging off his jacket with a smirk, “Fuck,she’s so cute.” he groans, rubbing his face, “I have to mentally prepare myself sometimes because I don’t think my heart can take it.”

‘Roos!’ she’s whisper yelling from the top of the stairs, ‘You have to see the room they prepared for Nikki!’

He doesn’t have to be told twice, turning on his heel and avoiding a sniffing Eleanor as she and her brother tried to figure out where the heck they were. He meets Beatrice on the top, letting her take his hand to the little nursery right next to the master bedroom.

Of course it wasn’t Nicole’s nursery, it didn’t have the decoration especially made for her by her mother, but it was cute. Neutral colors with tiny birds on the wall, oakwood as the main dark color and a large window that resembled the one they had at home, “Oh,this is nice!”

“And look!” Beatrice approaches the crib, which is round and completely different from any of the cribs he saw before, pulling one side enough to a popping sound to come out of it. It turned into a larger crib in a matter of seconds, “We can get this for the twins! It’s so nice! And looks so comfy and-oh I’m sorry Nikki.” their daughter complained in her sleep and Beatrice looked over to the changing table, “We might need to change her already.”

“That’s fine.” he steps closer to the crib, checking it’s sturdiness and nodding in approval “We can look something like this up. I’ll write it on my phone…do you need any help?”

“I’m fine.” she smiles, kissing his cheek, “I can wash her up…meet you downstairs?”

He smiles, pressing his forehead to hers, “You bet.”

-

Luckily Nicole was too tired to notice she wasn’t in her room back home and since they brought the monitor over they didn’t have to worry about her when they were downstairs. She walked out to the hallway and sighed happily, curling her toes on the warm floors as she walked towards the stairs. She sees the dogs all huddled together in front of the fireplace, her brows furrowing just a bit as she hears a melody playing, ever so quietly from the living room.

Beatrice bites her lower lip as she reaches the bottom,Rooster’s wide back is what she sees when she notices him, his arms moving and the obvious sound of something popping open makes her tilt her head “Wine?’

He turns around with one hand holding the bottle and the other the cork, “...pomegranate juice, actually.” he smirks, ‘You can’t have wine,baby.”

“Well, true.” she says, walking closer to him and laughing when he pours the dark liquid into wine glasses, “But you could have wine if you want to.”

“No,you know I hate having things you can’t have. It’s not right.” he hands her the glass, “Plus, I’ve been feeling like having pomegranate juice for a while.” he kisses her forehead, “And pomegranate is really good for the babies.”

“Really?”

“Really, I did my research very well.” he ends the sentence with a flick of his wrist, which makes the volume of the song rise just enough for her to hear what it was. Beatrice’s smile turns fond when she finds out it’s Dean Martin.

“You are just going to make me cry and we just got here!”

“I just want us to have a good time,we’ll be here the whole week,” he shrugs, “Let’s start strong.”

When he offers her his hand, she gently grabs it and he leads the two to the couch. When they sit down they stay apart for a few seconds, holding their glasses…then their bodies deflate and they heave out sighs. Rooster’s nape is leaning against the back of the couch while Beatrice’s head is on his peck, “I’m destroyed from that flight.” he murmurs,eyes closed and brows up, “Which says a lot.”

“You are human, you get tired.” she giggles, then looks up at him with her cheek rubbing on his warm shirt, “Plus, it’s not like you flew it. You were the one enjoying it.”

“I could if it wasn’t for the asshole kid behind me.” he murmurs, “I swear if it wasn’t for you and Nikki,I’d just make him back away from us.”

“Maybe if we see him when we come back, you can.”

“Really?”

“You sound way too hopeful.”

He chuckles darkly, “I don’t like stupid teenagers. My mom didn’t raise me to be a piece of shit.”

“Not everyone was as wonderful as she was.”

“Yeah…” he pauses, “...you are right.” she notices he goes silent after that, spinning the wine glass between his thumb and forefinger, the red juice inside sloshed gently against the curved surface. The silence takes a few more minutes, only the snoring coming from the dogs, the deep dulcet tones of Dean Martin and the crackling of the fire talk back to them.

She allows him to be silent, she knows there must be a lot in his mind,”...I was thinking of asking you to marry me, when we came to visit my mom.” it comes out of nowhere and it makes Beatrice look up at him in surprise, “I wanted them to meet you first…I wanted them to see how wonderful you were and…I don’t know, have their blessing in a way.”

“You did say you were planning on marrying me sooner.”

“Yeah…but I didn’t want to appear desperate.” he muttered, “I had a lot in my mind, but I couldn’t stop thinking about us being together forever. I love you, a lot, there’s not one day that goes by that I don’t remember how I made the right choice…you were my choice.”

“Roos…”

“My mom always said our choices matter when we are adults, I know that now…I made a choice to go to the Hard Deck that night and I met you…” he frowns. “God I wish they were here right now…to meet you, meet Nikki, know about the twins too.”

“I know.”

“I miss them so much sometimes, it hurts.” he sniffles, biting his lower lip hard, “I remember so little of my dad. I just…get whiffs of his cologne and his laugh, and the way he’d put me on his shoulders because it was the best feeling in the world. I’m scared I’ll forget it even more as I get older.” he says mournfully, “It’s not fair,Bea.”

“It’s not,I know it’s not.” she holds his hand and kisses his knuckles, “You aren’t going to forget about him,Roos.”

“I wish I had those vhs tapes.” he says quietly, “My…mom had them but I have no idea where they are now. I should’ve saved those.”

“Do you have any idea where they could be?’

“A storage unit? Most of the things my mom had I took, if it wasn’t me, my aunt and uncle did…but I doubt they’d have those saved up. Especially my aunt.” he groans, “I don’t know,I’m feeling emotional, that’s all.”

Beatrice furrows her brows, “And? That’s totally okay Roos.”

“Yeah,but…” a kiss to his lips makes him stop and a pleased hum makes it’s way out of his throat, “I don’t mind being interrupted like this.”

Beatrice giggles against his lips, then places their glasses on the coffee table in front of them to climb on his lap, his hands immediately cupping her asscheeks as she drapes her arms on his shoulders, “You are a sweet man,Roos.” she whispers, kissing the tip of his nose,”And…you get emotional, and that’s okay…hey,” she turns his face towards her when he tries to look away, “You’ll be okay, you know that,right?”

Rooster’s smile is small but clearly thankful, “Yeah…I know.”

“Now, let’s enjoy the rest of our pomegranate juice.”

“As long as you stay on my lap.” he smirks, nuzzling her neck, “...thanks babe.”

“You are welcome,Roos.’

[snowlessknitter]

The Masked Singer: S11 E1 (Season 11 Premiere, Rita Ora Joins the Judging Panel)

It’s time for a brand new season of The Masked Singer, and this season a new judge will be joining the panel. Rita Ora, who has judged on the British version of the show, will be taking over for Nicole Scherzinger this season as Nicole is doing a run in the revival of Sunset Boulevard in London’s West End.

It looks like this season will have the same format as the last few seasons. As always, I post before I see any unmaskings, so what you see here are my guesses, not spoilers.

Goldfish 🐠: Was an overnight sensation. Felt like she was living in a fishbowl. A jar of hearts. Two kisses 💋 and a glass slipper. Well, the “Jar of Hearts” could be a reference to the Christina Perri song of the same name. But she doesn’t sound like Christina Perri. The glass slipper could suggest she was in a movie adaptation of “Cinderella”, of which there’s been many. So it could be any of Lily James, Hilary Duff, Selena Gomez, Anna Kendrick, Drew Barrymore, and so on. The bonus clue is a gold record. But there has also been several theatrical productions based off of Cinderella, and one of the judges also brought up Carly Rae Jepsen, who was in a Broadway revival of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella and played the title character. “Overnight sensation” could refer to both her run on Canadian Idol (in which she finished in 3rd place in the show’s fifth season) and her hit single “Call Me Maybe” taking off seemingly overnight. And the kisses? She released an album called Kiss. I’m going with Carly Rae Jepsen for the moment.

Starfish ⭐️: Met Steve Martin and Whitney Houston. Four leaf clover, a Cabbage Patch-like doll. Might be a comedian. The voice is making me think of Jennifer Coolidge from Legally Blonde. Bonus clue: streamed over 50 billion minutes in a single year. Molly Shannon is also a good guess.

Ugly Sweater 🧶: Was wheeled in and may seemingly be an older man. A rabbit in a hat, and he had some hard times. A blue record. The bonus clue: a sweater reading “Featuring”. I’m a little bit stumped, but I think Verdine White from Earth, Wind & Fire may be the best guess here for now. The Flo Rida record Robin Thicke was referring to was “I Don’t Like It, I Love It”, which featured Verdine White on bass. While he’s not particularly as known for his vocals as his bandmates Maurice White (Verdine’s half-brother) and Philip Bailey were, he has performed vocals with the group.

Lovebird 🦜: Says he’s a hopeless romantic. A pink and yellow heart. A wedding cake topper with no bride. A watch with #1 on the face, a pair of dice that add up to 5. My guess is that he’s appeared on The Bachelor or one of its related shows. The bonus clue: a TV screen reading “Leading Man”. He sounds kind of young-ish, and I initially thought he was “Diver” last season (who turned out to be Tom Sandoval from Vanderpump Rules), but I’m going to go with this guess again: Nick Viall from The Bachelor.

Book 📖: He has stories for days and a really good vocabulary. A detective badge and a sign for an open mic night. His mom had a huge influence on him. A ghost, and he is covering a song by last season’s winner Ne-Yo and he wants to prank a friend. Just from the sound of his voice, this has to be Kevin Hart. And his friend? He was in The Real Husbands of Hollywood with both Robin Thicke and Nick Cannon. He’ll likely be the first one eliminated, and if he somehow survives elimination, he’ll unmask himself anyway. And the height of his costume from the soles of his feet to the top of his hat, he’s barely as tall as Nick Cannon! Great prank, sir!

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - COCO is ON. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 15 years of COCO Dance Festival. The struggles and the sacrifices have been real, and more continue to confront us. Why do I do it when there’s so little to show for it at the end of the day? I think it’s because my COCO colleagues Nicole Wesley, Nancy Jane Herrera, and Dave Williams and I all believe that the dance work that we do still matters in a world gone crazy with the self-absorption of social media, impending erasure by A.I., and territorial wars that affect the world psyche.

We have never, ever received even one third of the money that it really takes to produce this festival. While we have some sponsorship for which we are always grateful, we rely mainly on the kindness of the local dance community and on the willingness of the regional and international dance communities to make it happen every year. They fund themselves to participate in the festival, with little or (most often) no compensation. They contribute to the local tourism sector by paying for their own hotels, transportation, food, etc. For those of you who are producers, you know that that isn’t how it’s supposed to work. That’s not the way to build a robust creative sector.

I suppose our visitors do it because of a love of, and dedication to, their craft. Some of them are affiliated with academic institutions and this is part of their research. But they come, too, for the uniqueness of our twin-island republic (yes, some of them have found their way to Tobago also). They come because it’s cool to interact with dancers from a different culture, and we provide a space for that to happen.

We are in fact the largest annual contemporary dance festival in the English-speaking Caribbean, and certainly the longest-running. In a more developed arts economy that would actually mean something to the wider national society. But even though it doesn’t, we soldier on in our tiny neck of this urban island of big dreams and minuscule support for certain segments of the arts (especially those arts that don’t fit a particular narrative). But it’s becoming more and more of a burden to do so.

We’re charging $50TT for a show that’s worth ten times that. Why? Because we want to be inclusive and we want to fill the NAPA auditorium, and we know we can’t do that if we charged the actual cost. Even with sponsorship, we will likely barely break even, then we have to start the cycle of going, hat in hand, to the same organizations next year, and again falling short of the ability to build wealth for our tiny enterprise.

This proves once again that the basic buy low/sell high rules of capitalism are not easily applied to the arts. The arts need support in highly expansive, developmental ways. Again, why? Because, to quote Tony Hall, one of my beloved hero-mentors who is no longer with us, the arts are “civilizing”. They make us better people - higher versions of ourselves, towards being an evolved civilization. As humans, whose basic claim to fame is having a bigger brain than most other animals and an opposable thumb, being civilized should be what we strive for, in my humble opinion.

If you’ve never been to a dance show - for whatever reason - please consider attending our show this weekend. If you attend every dance show in town, please come to this one too. Either way, your support is greatly welcome. Tickets available at NAPA - 11am - 6pm every day.

[romcombc]

Book Review for Dear Roomie

I became a fan of Michelle Angelle’s when I read Hammer My Heart. Meaning to go back to the beginning of their collection, I was gifted the opportunity to read Dear Roomie. I am so happy I did! I will admit I am a little jealous I can’t be adopted by the Russo clan and participate in game night! Realization of this book being fictional aside, I think I actually broke a record on how quickly I finished it – I could NOT put it down. To even begin to explain how much I adored this family leaves me at a loss for words. Definitely intend to go back and read Gabe and Gloria’s stories (two out of the SEVEN siblings). You want a challenge. Try keeping all seven names straight. If you are looking for lots of laughter, an abundance of family love and support, and of course a swoon worthy love story, you are in for a treat with Dear Roomie.

Everyone has rules that they live by in life – don’t go to bed angry, never double dip your chip, wait three days after a date before calling, etc. For Ghita, her rules for dating were simple – don’t date your best friend’s brother. Well that and don’t date a guy who wears hats in his profile pic, furries – ok she has quite a few rules but the most important is not doing anything that would jeopardize her friendship with Nicole. Easy enough until Nicole and Gemma convince Ghita to rent a room to Nicole’s brother Logan in order to help with the costs of her home renovations. Having never met, seen, or engaged with Logan, she would prefer not to have a stranger in her home (even if it is Nicole’s brother) but her options are a roommate or a loan. Deciding on the lesser of two evils, Ghita is determined to focus on launching her new podcast and getting through this situation unscathed. What she wasn’t expecting was the drop dead gorgeous specimen that was going to be occupying her space. Not a problem – she can do this! She just needs to stick to her rules and keep her hands to herself. Trouble is Logan has other plans. Love struck the moment he met her, Logan knows he and Ghita are perfect together, he just has to prove that he is worth ditching the rules for. Good thing he loves a challenge and if the affections of his gorgeous roommate is the prize, he is all in!

I can’t wait to go back to the beginning and be introduced to the Russo clan. With Ghita’s story down and two more on deck (Gloria and Gabe from previous books), these authors have a family of gold on their hands and my complete attention for any new books down the line.

Check out the spoiler-free review in the Facebook Group - The Romantic Comedy Book Club or the full review on the main website: https://romcombc.com/book/dear-roomie/