When I woke up on the morning of the math test, she was already awake, as usual. What struck me as noteworthy was the fact we were spooning when I distinctively remembered us facing each other when I fell asleep. Not that it was any worse, she still fit perfectly in my hold.

I gave her my good mornings, but she had an odd reaction.

“Violet dear, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re with a bit of a morning breath,” she told me, her nose slightly twisted.

I wondered out loud if it had to do with my mouth being as dry as cork since I had drunk all the water from my bedside bottle the previous night, and hadn’t gotten up so not to disturb her. She got very bothered by it, giving me hers and demanding me to rehydrate myself.

“Honestly Violet, I’m happy that you’re so considerate, but sometimes you take that to the extreme,” she scolded as I chugged the bottle content. “Just use mine if that happens again. I sleep the whole night straight, so I don’t really need it.”

I stretched myself to set the empty bottle on the bedside table, my body forcing hers to lean forward. I was a bit out of balance, so I forced a leg between hers. She immediately wrapped her foot around my shin, denying me from laying completely on my side, my body now slightly pressured against her by gravity.

“Mine now,” she said, rubbing her foot on me.

I giggled at her mischief and nuzzled close to her small ear. I asked her how she had slept, but she began giggling midway through her retelling of the dream she had of us having a picknick at the park.

“You’re tickling me,” she moaned, putting a hand over the one I had unconsciously running up and down her waist.

“Sorry,” I giggled back, profoundly amused by her reaction. She let out another cute laugh though.

“You talking to my ear like that also tickles.”

I knew she was sensitive around that part form our ear scratching sessions, I just didn’t know she was that sensitive. And that’s something I took note for future reference.

She squirmed about when I blew on her ear, pulling the hand belonging to the arm that was serving as her pillow to play with its fingers.

“What time is it?” I asked, wondering how long we could stay… I guess the word is “flirting”? It was flirting what we were doing, right?

“We’ve got ten more minutes before the alarm goes off,” she informed me after checking my phone.

“Haah, only ten more minutes?” I grumbled, pressing my face on her neck, her reaction being another tiny laugh and pulling her shoulder up.

“What? Would you prefer to stay in bed with me?”

Her hair tickling my face, her scent filling my nose, her body heat, the softness of holding her close, and the fuzzy feeling in my chest as I experienced all that. In a word…

“…Yes.”

She twisted her neck and kissed me on the nose. Her eyes were beaming with happiness, an abundance of affection and something else. Loneliness, I’d say.

That last feeling was like a knife twisting my heart. It yearned to connect with hers, to take that pain away, but I had no idea how to do that.

I closed my eyes and pressed our faces together as my hold on her tightened. I noticed how our breathings were at the same rhythm. The hand I had moved to caress her face and neck also informed me that our heartbeats were also matching.

The alarm rang, and she shut it off.

“It’s time,” she sighed.

“Yeah…”

Were it not for the tests we were having that day, I’d have told her right there and then that we’d be staying home, but unfortunately life wasn’t fair, and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy another moment of us deeply connecting until god knows when. The best I could do was letting my lips linger on her face to try and make up for that, and my cowardice.

“Let’s… let’s continue this after we return…” I suggested while we were changing.

“…Ok.”

I couldn’t determine what emotion she was feeling when she spoke, so I looked at her. She was bent over, pulling her uniform skirt up, so I looked away instantly. I had grown used to dressing and undressing with her around, but for some reason I was starting to feel conscious of her all over again.

Arriving at school by car, thanks to her dad giving us a ride, felt like a luxury.

The bus was ok I guess. The one we usually took wasn’t too run down, but there was a smell of sweat and people there that I could never really get used to.

Mr. Will’s car had about ten years already, but you couldn’t be able to tell that just by looking at it. Well, perhaps if you were a car enthusiast capable of recognising the model you would, but I don’t think that’s the average person.

One thing the bus had the car beat was that the seats allowed Abby and I to hold hands with some semblance of secrecy, something I was needing for my nerves but couldn’t because her father had a clear view of us in the backseat.

“Ready to rock?” she asked, bumping her hip on me. The confident smile she was giving me gave me some much-needed assurance, and I tried doing the same playful gesture, but somehow managed to almost trip myself.

“Pfft, ah-haha! What was that?” she asked, holding me up but not caring enough to not laugh at my clumsiness.

Would I really be ok after all?

“Miss Evergreen, you’ll be sitting here,” the missing link of humanity that we commonly knew as our math teacher told me as me and Abby walked in.

She gave a squeeze to my pinkie and offered me a wink, still holding a confident smile.

I sat where he told me and took what I’d need out of my bag, all the while with him looming over, making sure I wasn’t cheating in no way possible. He reminded me of a vulture, acting like that.

“Your cell phone?”

“I-it’s in the bag in airplane mode.”

“May I?” he asked, picking the bag before putting it away from me. I say “asked”, but that wasn’t a question as much as it was him exerting dominance over me. He wanted to show me he was in charge, and my goodness, he was succeeding.

Why can’t I just still be in bed with Abby, cuddling?

I looked at her again, trying not to attract his attention. Our eyes met briefly, but I seemed to somehow hear her thoughts in my head.

“Relax, you’ve got this.”

After some of the worst five minutes of my student life, he handed the question sheets and I gave the test an once-over.

I… I think I can do this…

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Some questions were hard, and at least two were trick questions, but… I had done similar stuff with Abby. And more importantly, I was only making small mistakes last time when I did them.

“I can do this,” I thought once I double checked to see if the first exercise was done correctly. It took me a bit, but I was following Abby’s advice:

Give an once-over to the whole test, divide the time in minutes by the number of questions and allocate time according to the complexity and value of the question and;

No rushing. Double checking on complex questions was fine as long as I didn’t overdo it.

I kept going slow and steady, solving the problems and detecting the traps he had set. Five minutes before the end was when I was confident that I had done everything as correctly as I possibly could, so I handed him the questions and answers sheets, took my back, and left the classroom. Outside, leaning on the wall right next to the door was Abby waiting for me.

“How did it go?” she asked, this time sounding a bit worried.

“I think I did it.”

“You answered every question?”

“Yes.”

“Double checked everything?”

“Yes, right after doing it and now at the end before giving him the papers.”

“…Did you remember to write him a nice message?”

“…Pfft, fufu, Abby.”

Hearing her cracking a joke lifted a weight off my chest. We had two more tests that day, but none were as critical for me as the math test, so from that point on, she didn’t have to look after my nerves.

The week passed by and, during the Sunday, we were lounging around my place. After so much time of us studying every day, we deserved it. I also didn’t have work because her mum was going to eat at the restaurant for both lunch and dinner. Must be nice not having to cook, but instead have someone else do it for you. Ah, the perks of being rich. It made me wonder why the adorable creature that was belly down on the couch and with her chin on my thigh decided she wanted to learn how to cook. I mean, I knew why, but… I guess since the meals she got from me were homemade—those that weren’t sweets, that is—she wanted to repay them in kind? Or maybe it was so I’d see her in a better light?

I could ask her about it, but I was feeling too lazy to strike up a conversation. Burying my fingers in her fluffy hair was all I could muster.

“Purr,” she said.

I wasn’t looking, but I knew just by the way she made that sound that she was feeling bored.

I pretended to be asleep. I’m aware it was stupid since I was petting her, but in my tired mind it made sense.

She purred again, but I still ignored her. Seeing I wasn’t biting, she hoisted her body up and began rubbing her nose close to my ear. Still, I said nothing.

But then, she gave me a lick on the neck that I had exposed since I had tied my hair into a ponytail.

“Eek! A-Abby, not my neck!”

“Then pay attention to me!”

“Haah, Abby, I’m tired. Can’t I have a moment of peace and quiet?” I told her, feeling exasperated at her persistence. “I’ll play with you later, just let me rest for now.”

“…You wouldn’t be so tired if you hadn’t come from work so late yesterday.”

“Was it that late?” I asked, pretending not to know when it was that I had arrived.

“You know very well that it was past midnight. And you also know it was the third night in a row this week. A week during which we had test to boot too.”

“If you’re so aware of that, then let me rest for goodness sake!”

I hated being mad at her. I specially felt like a jerk because while this argument started from her being needy, it had quickly turned to her being worried about me, and legitimately so.

“…Look Abby, I—”

“Shh!”

Her shushing me was painful, but that pain turned into confusion once she grabbed my shoulders and pulled me down, resting my head on her thighs and taking my glasses off. Rest, she told me, placing a hand over my forehead.

I think it was a first we were in that position.

“Erm… sorry for having gotten mad at you,” I said, still feeling a bit lost.

“It’s fine. I was just being too needy and stupid. And insensitive.”

It occurred to me then that she was too critical of herself. She was needy, there was no denying it, but “too needy”? Frankly, I wasn’t sure what quantified as such now. Back before when we had just met I’d call her that, but now?

“I like you being needy,” I told her, rubbing a finger right under an eye that seemed to be holding a tear. “And you weren’t being too needy. Or stupid. Or insensitive. Or whatever else you might think.”

“…If only that was true,” she lamented, grabbing my hand.

I pulled them close to my chest before continuing our conversation.

“Do you think you need to change yourself?”

“Yes… there are so many things I need to fix about myself that… never mind, I’m just spoiling the mood with things that don’t matter.”

“…You know, unlike me, I don’t think you need to change yourself. Only heal some wounds.”

“…But you changed, didn’t you?”

“Well, erm, yes, but… I needed that, otherwise I couldn’t have become this close to you. Unlike how I was a few months ago, you’re fine the way you are.”

“…You just say that because…”

“…”

“…Nothing. I don’t know what I was even going to say. See?”

What I saw was a stubborn girl that thought about “fixing” things that didn’t need fixing to begin with. And that irked me more than anything else she could do.

“Violet, rest!” she demanded as I tried to sit up.

“I can’t rest like this,” I told her, finally getting to sit.

I hugged her and let my back down on the couch slowly, draping her over me.

“Doesn’t it bother you having me on top like this?”

“It does not. In fact, I like it. I like it just the same way I like your needy side pulling at my heartstrings and making me want to play or pamper you. I’m happy this way, because… you are you. And if you were to stop being like this… well, I’d still like you, but… I’d feel like… like I had lost a precious part of my friend or something…”

I started out so strong, but as words went out of my mouth, so did my anger and confidence, the result being a pile of awkwardness left behind.

“…Were you always this unfair?”

“Erm, how… am I being unfair?”

She showed me her face, her eyes gleaming with tears.

“You didn’t use to be able to say these kinds of things so confidently.”

“I, erm… I just became like this from dealing with you, I guess… Although… I wouldn’t call this ‘being confident’.”

“…It’s way better than the best I can muster right now…” she moaned as she rested an ear on my chest.

“…Right now, later… later you just might. Give it time.”

“…Hmm.”

I couldn’t tell if I had convinced her or not, but I didn’t think that should have been my target. For now, the best I could do was to give her a different perspective for her to be able to think about and reach a conclusion by herself instead of just keep on tearing herself down.

The classroom grew stale once he walked in that Monday morning. His face told us everything we needed to know; he was very unpleased with our performance. That was a good omen to my side of the story in particular, and to the class in general. The man was the type of teacher who thought that having a high failure rate showed that he was a great teacher for being rigorous and demanding.

Abby bumped elbows with me, barely holding a cheeky smile, one that was contagious.

He gave us a small speech, nothing comparable to his previous ones before he started calling our names through alphabetical order according to our last names.

I was feeling a tad dizzy from all my anxiety and excitement. The way he paused and chewed his tongue before saying my name was like seeing someone trying to get a particularly sticky piece of candy unstuck from the teeth.

I dared not to look at the result until I was sitting again.

Abby was all over me, hopping on her chair despite not needing doing any of that to see what score I was given since my arms weighted a ton and I had them resting on the desk.

Like she had told me countless times, I had done it. I had scored no less than nineteen point three out of a max score of twenty. I was so relieved and happy that, weren’t it for her grabbing me, I’d have tumbled down from my chair to the floor. Instead, I sat, seeing only black and not hearing a thing for a few seconds. Thank goodness we sat at the back as I’d surely have brought a lot of attention and drama towards us.

She puppeteered my limp body into resting on the desk with my arms folded over it to go grab hers.

Not good, Violet Evergreen. Not good at all.

With our study sessions, I’d better get used to getting those kinds of scores, otherwise school could become fatal for me.