It was only the oven that had been badly damaged in the fire, but that was fixed easily within a couple of days. I was still being looked at for starting the fire, but Brianna and my dad were both making sure that I wouldn’t get in trouble, and I couldn’t have thanked them enough for that.

My mom’s ring was still missing. I didn’t know where it possibly could have been, and I was getting more and more worried about it with every day that went by. Zach and I were going to get married soon and I didn’t even have my wedding ring. To make it worse, it had been my deceased mother’s…

I couldn’t have felt any more worse about everything that was happening.

“Can we go swimming in your pool, Maxynn?” was the first thing Kate asked when she walked into the house. It was the first time she had been out of the house without being pregnant, so I knew she wanted to do a lot of things she had been missing out on. “My mom has Allison and she said I could go out for as long as I want. I love my daughter to death, but it felt so great to breathe fresh air!”

I heard Logan snort from behind her, and I couldn’t help but laugh as well. All of us loved that little baby to death, but I knew we all missed hanging out like old times. But now that Kate was free, Zach and I had planned on everyone coming over to hang out.

“You know I hate swimming,” I told her now, even though that wasn’t really the truth. I still didn’t want anyone seeing my scars; Zach was bad enough.

Kate shrugged. “But we all want to go!”

I looked around at the rest of my friends to see them smiling at me like complete idiots. So I guess Kate was being serious. I was the only one that didn’t want to go swimming. But I guess since they all wanted to… “Fine, if you all want to go, then we’ll go.”

Kate smiled brightly. “Yay! Okay, we’re all already ready, so now we’ll just wait for you to change, Maxynn!”

Oh, no. Did they really think I’d go in the pool with them? I glanced at Zach, who seemed to be thinking the same thing as I was, and I couldn’t help but glare at him when I saw that he was indeed wearing his swim trunks.

“We’ll be in the pool when you come out,” Logan grinned at me as he went right by me, patting me on my shoulder before making his way out to the backyard with Kate. Both Johnny and Todd smiled at my sheepishly before following right after them, and Aveline only sneered at me before storming right out.

“It’ll be a lot of much fun, Maxynn,” Zach informed me, but I didn’t agree with him. “You really should get into the water with us. Without your clothes on.”

“What’s with you being a pervert all of a sudden?”

Zach’s face turned bright red. “That’s… that’s not what I meant! I meant that you should wear a swimsuit, not your clothes!”

I couldn’t help but coo at him as I reached up and pinched his red cheek. I really loved that I had the ability to embarrass him and make him blush. I’d sure put that to good use.

“You know I don’t want anyone seeing my scars,” I sighed once his face had cooled down. “They’re ugly, and I don’t want people making fun of me for it. Not that our friends would make fun of me, but… Aveline is out there, and you know she has a big mouth. For more reasons than one.”

“Who’s the perverted one now?”

I said nothing back to this, because I was only thinking about what would happen if Aveline saw my scars. She’d make fun of me and then tell everyone in the entire school about it. Then everyone would know that I was scarred and deformed.

“Are you ashamed?” Zach asked me now, and all I could do was stare right back at him at first. I honestly didn’t even know the answer to that. These scars were something I couldn’t control, and I was definitely embarrassed by them, but… ashamed?

“I think… what I’m more afraid of,” I began, not knowing how I was supposed to put this, “is that I’ll get made fun of for it. And I’m scared that you’ll get made fun of because it too, since you’re dating me. Aren’t you ashamed for dating an ugly freak?”

“Hey,” Zach nearly snapped, snatching my hand in his. “I’m not ashamed of you, and I never could be. I don’t care about your scars, Maxynn. They don’t matter to me. It’s just one part of your body, and I honestly wouldn’t even care if you were scarred in other places. I love you for you, Maxynn, scars in all.”

I rubbed at my eyes with the back of my hand, not wanting to be emotional over what he had said. But I couldn’t help myself as I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his neck, never wanting him to let go of me.

After a few minutes of just standing there and hugging, he let go of me and I went upstairs to change into my swimsuit. It would be the first time I had worn it since the fire, and I couldn’t help but feel a little naked in it.

But this was the start of something new. Zach didn’t care about my scars, so I shouldn’t have either. I shouldn’t have cared about what people said, because after we graduated, I wasn’t ever going to see most of them ever again. There was no point in hiding them anymore, so the best place to start showing them would be in front of my friends… and Aveline.

“Look who finally decided to come out!” Logan cried when he saw me, swimming right past. I couldn’t help but raise my nose into the air. Everyone outside but Zach seemed to freeze when they caught sight of my arm.

I said nothing, because I thought I would cry if I did. I looked at all of their faces, Aveline’s being the only one disgusted. The others were just shocked, and there was nothing I could say to them at that moment to make them all forget and just run back inside.

“That’s why…” Kate swallowed, and I could see tears forming in her eyes. I didn’t want her to start crying! “That’s why you’ve been wearing long sleeves! I thought you were just going through a phase or something, but… Oh, Maxynn!”

She hopped right out of the pool and hugged me tightly, getting me wet with the water from the pool. I hugged her back, and I bit the inside of my lip to stop myself from crying with her. I wanted to be strong, but this was not helping.

“You’ve been hiding that from us the entire time?” Johnny asked me now, and I only nodded once Kate and I pulled away from each other. “Why’d you do that? We’re your friends, Maxynn. We weren’t going to judge you.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat down. “I don’t know; I was just… scared.”

“Well, you should have been!” Aveline shouted now, and I rubbed my hand over my scars after she had done so. I knew that this was going to happen. “That’s disgusting! It makes you even uglier than you were before! You were right to hide it from everyone!”

“Aveline,” both Logan and Johnny snapped at the same time before Zach could, even though I could see that he was about to.

She pouted, but I said nothing back to her. I shouldn’t have cared about what Aveline had to say. We had never been friends, and I knew we never would be. We just weren’t the type of people that got along.

“Just ignore Aveline,” Kate told me now, smiling slightly.

I rolled my eyes at the bitchy girl in the water as she floated right by. I looked around at my friends, my eyes locking with Todd’s now. He had been the only one not to say anything, but I was expecting as much from him. He had never been much of a talker. He just smiled at me, that heartwarming smile he always gave me, and I smiled right back at him.

Before I even knew what was happening, a hand was suddenly grabbing onto my wrist and I was being pulled forward and right into the water of the pool.

“I’m going to kill you!” I shouted at Zach when I emerged from the water. “I was going to get in, you idiot, you just needed to give me some time!”

I then started to dunk Zach’s head under the water, but this only made it easier for him to throw me over his shoulder. My head was thankfully still above the water, but I kicked and hit, water splashing all over the place.

“We were all getting too sappy and emotional,” Zach shrugged, which moved my body up and down. “I needed to do something to get us all back to normal.”

Kate giggled. “Yeah, let’s save the sappy and emotional stuff for your wedding.”

I covered my burning face, for some reason embarrassed by what she had said. I always got so embarrassed when other people talked about us getting married, and I knew it was noticeable.

I then started fidgeting in Zach’s arms again, and he started laughing. “Oh, you want to be let go? Alright, whatever you want, Maxynn.”

My head hit the water before I could do anything, and I came up from the water coughing like crazy. “Hey! You could have killed me!”

Zach laughed, just like I knew he would. He would always laugh at moments like this, and it just made me love him even more. His laugh was just so… comforting. It made me feel safe.

We all played around in the pool for a little while longer until we started getting tired. After this, we forced ourselves out made our ways over to the table by the pool.

There weren’t enough chairs for all of us, so I was left standing while everyone else was sitting. Since I was closest to Kate and Zach, I knew I was going to have to make one of them move so I could sit down. But since Kate just had a baby, I wasn’t about to make her get up.

“Move,” I said, looking down at Zach.

He smirked up at me, saying, “Nope. Don’t feel like it.”

“Then scoot over,” I nearly growled now, but he shook his head and continued smirking.

“Nah, don’t feel like it.”

My eyebrows knitted together as I continued to stare down at him. “Fine, if you’re not going to move, then I guess I’ll just have to sit on you then!”

Before he could do or say anything, I sat right down on his lap. This shouldn’t have been a big deal or anything, since we were engaged and all, but I hadn’t ever sat on his lap before. It made butterflies erupt in my stomach, and by Zach’s reaction, I think he felt the same way, too.

My friends were smiling like idiots. I felt my cheeks burn just a little, but I pretended that I didn’t care that they were looking, even though I really felt like I was going to die of embarrassment.

“Close enough for you?” I asked when I looked back at Zach, whose eyes were wide from of my actions. After I had spoken, his muscles finally relaxed and he smirked like he always did.

I felt his arms wrap around my waist, pulling me toward him. I felt my cheeks heat up even more when he placed his chin on my shoulder and said, “Nah, I’d love to be much closer to you…”

Logan started snickering. “You two sure do look like a couple.”

I felt Zach chuckle. His chest vibrated against my back, causing my cheeks to turn even redder. I felt goose bumps on my stomach as Zach’s hands laid there. I was so close to him that I could feel him breathing.

I felt him absentmindedly tracing patterns on my stomach, giving me chills. My friends didn’t notice, and I didn’t even think Zach noticed either.

“Hey, let’s play poker!” Aveline said, pulling out a deck of cards. I wanted to ask where she had been hiding them, but I didn’t dare. “How does that sound? I think it sounds like fun!”

“Strip poker?” Zach smirked behind me, and I elbowed him in the gut. He chuckled. “Just kidding, Maxxy. Don’t worry, you’re the only one I want to see strip… again.”

“Z--Zach!” I stuttered, my cheeks on fire. “Don’t talk like that!”

My cheeks were even brighter when he and all my friends burst out laughing. I elbowed Zach in the stomach once more, harder this time. I stood up angrily, turning my back on all of them. I didn’t think I had ever felt this embarrassed in my entire life!

“I’m going back inside,” I snapped at them as I started toward the house. “You guys keep on playing.”

I said nothing else as I went back into the house, not even changing out of my swim suit before plopping down on the couch. I turned the TV on, but I was hardly paying any attention to it. I was too embarrassed and angry to do so.

I just couldn’t believe he actually said something like that in front of everyone! I hadn’t ever stripped for him in my laugh, but all my friends now thought that I had. Zach and I had yet to have sex yet, and it bothered me that people thought we were doing it when we really weren’t.

The back door opened, but I didn’t even bother looking from the TV screen.

“Maxynn,” the familiar voice said, but I snapped at him to go away before he could say anything else.

He let out a sigh, sitting right next to me on the couch. I said nothing to him, and he didn’t say anything back to me at first. I didn’t know if he was staying quiet because he didn’t know what to say or because I didn’t want to talk to him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d get so embarrassed,” he told me.

I tried not to get lost in his eyes when I looked straight at him, my serious face making him recoil a little. I never thought that I’d have this kind of effect on him, but I definitely liked it. I had him whipped, and it was an amazing feeling.

“I never stripped for you, Zach,” I told him, turning toward him even more now so he could see how upset that made him. I thought I saw him staring, in typical Zach fashion, at my chest for a moment, but I brushed it off, turning away from him afterwards. “And even if I did, I don’t want our friends knowing. What we do is private. What we haven’t done is private. Things like this make me not want to have sex with you.”

This made Zach blanch, and I wanted ever so much to call him by his nickname, but stopped myself from doing so. Now was not the right time.

“I didn’t think you’d get upset by this,” he sighed now, and I knew that he was telling the truth. He hadn’t meant to embarrass me; I knew Zach would never want to do anything like that to me. There was no point in being mad at him… “I’m sorry, Maxynn.”

I was the one to sigh now. “It’s fine, I guess. Just don’t go around telling people things we haven’t done. Or even things that we have done. That’s our business, Zach. The only time you’ve even ever seen me in a bra was when you first saw my scars and when those two goons kidnapped me.”

Zach grimaced at those memories. “Don’t remind me. You almost died both of those times.”

I shrugged, since he was right. It wasn’t something I wanted to remember, but I knew I was going to have to. It wasn’t over yet, and I didn’t know when it was going to be. I was going to have to deal with it sooner or later.

When one of the stairs squeaked, both Zach and I jumped almost right out of our skin. We turned to see Ethan standing there, a blank look on his face. Ever since he and Zach had talked after we came back from his hockey practice, everything was okay between the three of us. Ethan would still make comments to me now and then, but it wasn’t malicious like it used to be. It was different between us now, and it was still taking me some time to get used to.

“You were kidnapped?” he asked me now, and both Zach and I looked at each other like we had no idea what we were supposed to say to the eleven-year-old boy genius. “Do you know who did it?”

I only shook my head, still in too much of a shock to say anything to him. Ethan now stared at both Zach and me, looking at us like we were the children and he was the adult. We were sure used to that look from Ethan.

“Well, I want to help catch these people,” Ethan informed us now, and my jaw dropped without me even making it do so. He gave me a flat look, but that didn’t make me close my mouth. Finally, Zach had to reach over and close it for me.

“You really want to help?” Zach asked his brother now, and I thought he was crazy for actually considering this. Ethan was only eleven! He was just a kid! He might have been a little genius, but…

Wait! He was a little genius!

Maybe this was a good idea. Who knew what Ethan could do to help me?

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Yay! This chapter took me an hour, just like the last one! That makes me happy. ^_^

And then it takes me weeks to update the rest of my stories...

I'm going to try to update one more time before I go to Disneyland! And I'll also try to update my other two stories before I go, too. I'm about almost half done with the next Managing Boys chapter and I haven't even started the next Our Song chapter yet. For those of you who read Our Song and think it's over, it's not. I'm just busy.

Only six more chapters left! I'm actually really excited for the ending!

This is for the 2012 Watty Awards! Please COMMENT, VOTE, and SHARE! And don't forget to NOMINATE Ethan as Funniest Character! He's a good guy now! :)