I arrived right when Abby got outside. I called out to her and felt amusement by seeing her perk up and look around. When she saw me, she formed a beaming smile and started hopping and waving as she too walked towards me, both of us ignoring other people's reactions and stares.

“Violet! Hehe!” she laughed as she dove right into my arms, rubbing her face on my chest. “What are you doing here? Is it a surprise?”

“Fufu, yeah. I thought we could go eat something sweet.”

“…”

“…Abby? Is everything all right?”

“You smell nice,” she said with a deep sigh. “In fact…”

She paused and pulled away, looking me up and down, no doubt catching on each and every bit of effort I put into getting ready for our surprise date.

“Hehe, you worked hard, didn’t you? How nice.”

I got a bit more bashful than I had expected, much to her delight.

Smiling ear to ear, she grabbed my hand and stood by my side, giving her belly a few taps.

“I can keep you company, but my stomach isn’t too happy from that bit of milk I had.”

In my excitement I had forgotten the spoiled milk she had drunk. She didn’t seem too afflicted by it though, fortunately enough.

We walked so much that, by the time we got back to her place, my feet were sore and I even had to apply a second layer of sunblock while we were out. My jaws were aching too from laughing and smiling so much, me thinking that would be an issue when eating lunch.

She opened the door and stepped in slowly, turning around a bit confused.

“What’s that doing there?” she asked, pointing at the box.

I told her what happened while I was getting ready. She teased me a bit, asking if I wanted her to kiss my toes to make the pain go away, me telling her I wouldn’t have her mouth anywhere near my sweaty feet, before she picked up the box, asking if I’d be ok if they weren’t sweaty. I didn’t answer because I was more interested in understanding what was going on in her mind as she stared at the lid and twisted her mouth side to side.

“You know… I think it’s time for me to face this.”

“…If you think so,” I said, a bit surprised with how calm she was sounding.

“…You wanna watch me… transform, or do you prefer to see the end product?”

I decided to stay both for emotional support and because I was curious to see her “transform” as she put it. It wasn’t an exaggeration at all.

I watched her strip from her short-sleeved button-up white shirt, denim shorts and shoes with ankle length socks to put on a green, short and skintight dress, with a pencil skirt that made her walk weird, high-heels that gave her a fair amount of extra hight and make-up that went from “ok, that actually looks nice” to “is she a cheap something I was too well raised to say”. I don’t think it was as much the make-up, it was the whole package as a whole that made her give off that vibe. It was mindboggling how it didn’t match her at all.

She also told me the story behind it all, explaining why she’d keep something she associated with so many bad memories.

That dress, those shoes, that make-up kit, they had been given to her by that horrible woman at a time Abby still wished for her approval. It had been one of the few times Abby got a compliment. It really was a shame because the story I was told was beautiful but incredibly sad in her context. I’d have loved having my mother take me to a store to get me a dress, teach me about make-up and in the end say how beautiful I looked.

Still, even if you thought she looked better like that than at her natural state, there could only be one way to describe what I felt as I looked at my dear girlfriend.

“I hate it,” I told her as I took a wet tissue to wash away all the stuff she placed on her face.

“Pfft, hehe. Good to hear that,” she said, with a sad giggle.

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Abby shut her eyes and let me clean her false face, slowly revealing her true one. When I was done, she opened her eyes, wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me for a kiss. I didn’t like them, but those high-heels were being kinda useful now.

“Will you also take off the dress?” she asked deviously.

Some time later, I was staring at the ceiling, rubbing Abby’s belly while she played with my other hand. She looked deep in thought despite me sometimes accidently brushing a ticklish spot and giving her goosebumps. I was letting her mull over whatever it was on her mind, waiting patiently until she’d say something.

“All right then,” she spoke, putting both my hands aside.

I looked at her, expecting to hear her thoughts, but instead, she kissed my cheek before getting out of bed.

I watched, a bit confused, while she picked her dress that I had previously tossed aside with no care whatsoever. I thought maybe she’d fold it and put it back inside the box, but that wasn’t what she did.

With a yank to opposite sides, she began tearing apart the fabric, only stopping once it was little more than a multitude of pieces of rags, she turned her attention to the shoes. She broke their heels and tore out the straps with the same lack of mercy.

Next was the make-up kit. She grabbed it and gave me a thoughtful look.

“…I guess we can play around with it a bit,” she said with a shrug. “Could be fun and you never tried it before, right?”

Having satisfied her destructive impulses, she tossed the wrecks into the box and got back inside the bed with me, snuggling her head close to my neck.

“Sorry, you must be thinking I’m a deranged menace right now.”

“N-no, erm… You were just letting out pent up emotions.”

“You can bet I was. Haah, that was cathartic. And therapeutical. Way more than all these months of talking with the doctor.”

I got on my side to better hold her, Abby letting out a moany sigh as I tightened my hold on her. I could only guess by her happy sounds and tone of voice, but it was as she said, that experience was something very healing for her soul.

To my eyes, her tearing that dress was Abby letting go of a lot of hurt and nostalgia for a time that never existed, a good memory so minuscule in comparison with everything bad from before and after, it was as if it had never happened.

“Hey babe? Have you decided anything about the party?”

“The party? Erm, no. Why? Do you want to go?”

“Yeah… Mum might be there. I want to show her how happy I am now.”

That sounded like an extremely dangerous enterprise. Her mother was a violent woman who terrorised and controlled Abby for all her life. It was an awful idea.

“She also cares a lot about what others think of her,” Abby pointed as a counter argument. “Besides, you’ll also be there, so I won’t be scared.”

True, if she goes, I go, and if I go, she goes. If her mother tried anything, she’d have to go through me first, and I sure as hell won’t let her touch even a strand of hair that belonged to Abby.

“Oh, and by that,” Abby started as she pushed her head up to look me in the eye. “I don’t mean it for you to throw fisty-cups with her. Seriously, don’t.”

“I-I won’t!”

“Hmm, I wonder about that. You’re kind of a dragon when it’s about people causing me trouble.”

“I-I’m not that violent!”

“That so?” she said with a raised eyebrow. “Didn’t you punch Marcus?”

“H-he stalked you! That didn’t count!”

“Pfft, ah-haha! You’re right, it didn’t count!”

To see her laugh while we talked about things that would throw her into a panic attack. She really had grown.

Oh… she’s shaking…

She was still cared after all, only, she wasn’t letting that affect her.

“Jokes aside, I’d also like to talk with him if he goes too… I should have told him the truth when he came to talk with me at school.”

She wanted to talk with that disgusting person? Why? He’d harass her anytime he could! What she should do was—

“Babe, calm down,” she told me while placing her index between my furrowed eyebrows. “He did a lot of wrong towards me, but I still would like to make things right on my end. You can understand that, can’t you?”

I could, yes. Abby was by far a better person than I am.

I still wouldn’t forgive him, though. Not me, not ever. He caused her so much hurt and distraught, how could I?

“Pfft, see? You really are a dragon if it’s about me” she laughed, resting her head back on my chest after I put out my feelings about the matter. “I wonder… would I be able to joke around like this if you weren’t here?”

I gave her a nice squeeze and told her it didn’t matter because I’m with her. I even added a joke about worrying over hypotheticals being my job, not hers.

“You say that, but only those with some hope can worry about stuff like that.”

That’s… actually, that’s a very good point she made. If there’s no hope for tomorrow, what’s the point in imagining what it could be if this or that was different? Certainly, there were many times I felt like things were hopeless, but even then, I could still see some light at the end of the tunnel.

She rolled us on my back and used the back of her hands as a rest for her chin to look at my face. That was all she was doing now, laying on top of me and staring until I asked her what that was about.

“I just like watching you in deep thought,” she told me with a shrug. “What I just said was quite deep, was it not?”

It was, but I had my stomach starting to growl, telling me it was close to lunchtime, so thinking about anything other than what we’d eat had to wait. And if I was starting to feel hungry, she’d most likely be starving.

“Yup, my stomach settled ever since we got back and it’s been asking for food since then,” she told me with an ominous smile, refusing to get off me while I sat up, her heels coming around and touching my buttocks.

“…Aren’t you moving?”

“Nope.”

“…Why?”

“Guess.”

“…Abby, I’m not edible.”

Her smile grew wider and she nodded before giving my nose a tiny lick with the tip of her tongue. Still, you’re quite sweet, she hummed as she started nibbling my chin.

Somehow, I managed to get us both out of bed, but she was still refusing to let go of me. Nothing that tickling her sides didn’t solve, but she still resisted for a record amount of time.

It was then, while laughing to my heart’s content, that I remembered my aching jaw muscles. Being with her was too much fun at times.