THE STICKY GOO of the green substance smeared across Reagan's face was slowly hardening into a plaster as she sat in a spa chair, cloaked in one of the fluffy hotel robes that Courtney seemed to be particular fond of. Courtney was beside her, engaging in her usual spout of rapid babbling and wearing a face mask identical to Reagan's.

From the time Reagan had been forced downstairs by Courtney's hand and into the spa, her independence had been almost entirely revoked. It would have normally pissed her off if it weren't for the way Courtney seemed to be so sincere in every decision that she made.

No matter how bossy she was, Reagan had to at least acknowledge the goodwill behind Courtney's gesture. Just as she'd been in New York, Courtney was thrilled to have Reagan with her. For her, Reagan was a girl in her life who wasn't looking to pick a fight with her or turn her nose up at her sometimes condescending-behavior. Courtney liked competition, but next to Reagan, there was none. They were more like equals rather than counterparts, strangely destined to be linked by their unexpected friendship.

It was beginning to feel impossible for Reagan to not like Kurt's fiancée no matter how many times the loud-mouthed front-woman overstepped her boundaries. Courtney reminded Reagan of the girls she'd once met back in Olympia, except that she was all around more genuine and honest than anyone else Reagan had ever met. She was unapologetic and transparent about every utterance that left her mouth. Even if it was somewhat grudgingly, Reagan really did like Courtney.

"It's crazy to think that I'm actually growing a kid in there," Courtney said, eyeing her stomach with giddy amazement.

"You never really get used to the idea," Reagan said. She barely moved her lips as she spoke — her perfectly spread face mask was at risk of cracking if she did.

"It's so nice to talk to someone who fucking gets it," Courtney said as she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. "I'm tired of everyone having a gross, negative perspective about the whole thing."

Reagan knew what Courtney was referring to, mostly because of what Dave had already told her. Upon everyone finding out that Courtney was pregnant, many people had assumed that the baby would suffer abnormalities due to her drug use, Reagan included. Courtney had stood strongly against that theory.

"You better be on my side," Courtney said irritably, peering at Reagan sideways with rigid expectancy.

"I believe you. But what else did you think would happen?" Reagan asked. "Everyone knew what was going on. Kurt sucked at hiding that secret. Of course people are concerned about you both and the baby."

"Are you really giving me shit right now?" Courtney demanded.

"Yes," Reagan shot back. A flash of hurt reflected in Courtney's eyes and regretfully, Reagan sighed. "Don't you want me to be honest with you? Everyone is looking out for you and Kurt, Courtney."

Reagan couldn't find it within herself to be scared of Courtney, especially when she sought her out constantly friendship. For Reagan, she recognized in Courtney the same tough exterior that Kimberly had worn for years but recently shed in intervals. They were women who could appear as bullies for their hardened ways, but somewhere beneath that fortitude existed a weakness. It didn't take away from Courtney's rawness in character, but it left her as an acquired taste for most.

And besides — Reagan had taken enough shit off of Kimberly for years. She was friends with Courtney, but there was no way she would permit a pattern of abuse like that to continue.

"Ganging up on someone is wrong and that's what they're doing to me," Courtney said. "They're not just worried about the baby. They're insinuating that Kurt and I won't be good parents."

"If you get off the drugs, maybe you will be."

"Jesus," Courtney exclaimed, slapping her hands down on the arm rests of her spa chair. "Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning, Reagan? That was fucking harsh."

"Honesty is key in any friendship," Reagan replied brazenly.

"I need you to be my friend, not a cold-hearted bitch. What do you think Kurt would say to you if he heard you saying that?"

"Sorry. I'm moody. Hormonal from the pregnancy and all that."

"If you weren't pregnant, I probably would have knocked your teeth out for that last comment."

"You're on. As soon as we're both not pregnant, we'll owe each other a physical fight."

Courtney smiled wickedly, cracking small lines into the edges of her face mask. "Sometimes you make it so very hard not to like you."

"I can say the exact same thing about you," Reagan said. She smiled too, and when she did, she felt a faint sting across her cheeks. She raised her fingertips to her face to dab at the mask, but Courtney spluttered before she could feel it.

"Don't touch it!" Courtney cried. "Let it sit!"

"It's kind of burning," Reagan admitted. "Is that normal?"

"Yes," Courtney said resolutely. "Now stop talking. Let it dry."

Somehow, Reagan did not believe that the green tea detoxing mud mask that Courtney had selected for her was meant to burn. As soon as they had walked into the hotel's spa, Courtney had taken her usual charge, rattling off the treatments that she wanted done for them both. Reagan had said nothing, presuming that Courtney must have known all things pampering if she could dictate their regimens for the appointment.

Before the mask had been applied in globs across her face, Reagan had sat getting her nails and toes buffed, shined and painted by the spa's employees. They gushed over her pregnant belly and upon hearing their compliments, Courtney had predictably inserted into the conversation that she was pregnant too. It hadn't bothered Reagan in the least bit. Courtney could have the limelight all she wanted; the attention for Reagan was almost crippling.

Throughout the administering of the mask, the spa technician had hovered over Reagan's face and assured her that the magic ingredients in it would do wonders for her. The fact that she was pregnant only seemed to enhance the predictability that the mask's effects would be extraordinary. Reagan, who had never done a face mask in her whole life, had simply sat and nodded, smiling awkwardly every now and then. She'd thought about Dave, wishing that she could have been with him instead.

A few minutes of silence passed. Reagan noticed that Courtney had closed her eyes and lolled her head back, embracing the relaxing atmosphere of the spa. There were only several other clients inside, making it rather quiet. Reagan couldn't seem to mimic Courtney and shut her eyes. As the mask on her face dried, the burning sensation she felt only seemed to intensify.

"Courtney," Reagan said. She went to touch her face again, this time pressing her fingers into the mask and feeling how thick and caked it had become. "I don't think it's supposed to be burning me like this."

"The burning means that it's working on your skin," Courtney explained, keeping her eyes shut. "It makes it fresh and whatnot."

"Are you sure? How do you know?" Reagan demanded. The biting burn was only getting worse, causing her eyes to water.

"Because I just do. Haven't you heard the phrase 'beauty is pain' before?"

"Haven't you heard that a face is essential to a body? Because I'm pretty sure that mine is about to melt off."

One of the women who had worked over Courtney approached them, reaching her hand out and announcing that it was time for Courtney to rinse off her mask. Happily, Courtney got out of her chair.

"Wait," Reagan said anxiously. "Can I wash mine off too?"

"You have ten more minutes until yours is ready to come off," the spa tech explained kindly.

"I think it needs to come off now," Reagan retorted. In only a matter of seconds, the pain of the mask had heightened. It was becoming hard for Reagan to even keep her eyes open through all the smarting and stinging. The feeling was comparable to being stuck with a hot needle across every facet of her face repeatedly.

"Just a little longer," the tech replied, unaware of the panic in Reagan's voice. She led Courtney out of sight and into another room, leaving Reagan alone in her chair.

"Fuck," Reagan muttered as she winced. More than anything, she wanted to turn her hands over and claw the mask off with her fingernails. She imagined herself being left with permanent burn scars on her face, or worse, a reality in which the mud mask never  actually came off.

She blinked rapidly and tried to focus on her feet. It was an effort that proved to be too hard. The pain was intense enough that she felt like crying. It suctioned to her face and exuded hot ripples of fiery heat, feeling more like a solar flare blast than a treatment for relaxation. With one sharp inhale, Reagan realized she was going to have to make a run for it.

She looked around the spa, recollecting where she had left her clothes. She remembered that they were placed in another room, separate from the main one that she was in, and cursed. All she had on was her bra and underwear beneath her robe, leaving her to wonder how angry the spa's workers would be if she ran off with it. She supposed that she was about to find out.

Quietly, she removed her feet from the pedicure bowl in front of her and placed them on the tiled floor. She gathered her robe in her hands and crept away from the seat, clenching her jaw against the scathing pain that she was sure was close to ruining her face. After a few back-and-forth whips of her head to make sure no one was watching, Reagan scurried through the spa and out through its exit, wishing fiercely that she'd brought her shoes with her to the chair.

A few scattered gatherings of people lingered outside of the spa, though Reagan bowed her head and ignored them as she took off for the elevators that would carry her back to her room where she intended on plunging her head face first into a sink full of water.

She briefly thought about Courtney and how pissed she would be to see that she'd left without saying anything, but she didn't dwell on it too long. Courtney would have to understand what had been at stake. For Reagan, it had become a matter of keeping the skin on her face versus enjoying a girl's spa day. She didn't think it was her fault to prefer the former option.

There was no way for her to know if people's eyes followed her as she speed-walked through the halls, keeping her eyes trained on the ground. She resisted the urge to whimper chants of 'ow' as she walked — not even the cool, air-conditioned breeze of the hotel could soothe the burning. The mask had fully hardened, feeling stuck to Reagan's skin like dried concrete. As she kept to the right side of the hall, grimacing down a her bare, polished feet, she heard someone say her name.

"Reagan? What the fuck?"

She skidded to a stop and glanced up to see Shelli, squinting at her in confusion with her hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans. When she was certain that the green-faced monster standing in front of her was indeed Reagan, her eyes widened and her jaw fell open.

"Help me," Reagan squeaked. She fanned her face hurriedly, almost sure that her face was sizzling right off the bone.

"Jesus, what happened?" Shelli cried, grabbing Reagan by the hand and herding her down the hall in the direction that she'd been walking from.

"A spa day happened," Reagan said. "Courtney took me down there and picked this damn mask for me and I swear Shelli, it's cooking my face off."

"I should have known," Shelli growled. "If this doesn't have Courtney written all over it . . ."

"It's not her fault," Reagan added, remembering Shelli and Courtney's blatant dislike for one another. "She didn't know that this would happen."

"Who cares? She's evil anyways. We've got to get that shit off of your face."

"Where's Dave?"

"In my room, hanging out with Krist. Let's go get him. You'll probably want him there if it turns out that we have to surgically remove that thing."

Shelli brought Reagan straight to Dave, delivering her to him with a stern look in her eyes. Reagan knew that she was boiling over Courtney's role in the whole debacle, though the last thing that Reagan wanted was to point any fingers. The first and only order on her agenda was being able to actually see the natural color of her face again.

Dave choked on his own spit when he saw her being ushered into the room by Shelli like an escaped convict hiding from the police. Reagan could have curled up into the terry cloth of her white robe and died of sheer embarrassment.

"That is not my wife," Dave said, barely holding back his increasing laughter. 

"Yes the fuck it is!" Reagan exploded. Her patience had suddenly run thin. "Now help me get this off!"

"No," Dave chortled, continuing to double over laughing. "It's the Wicked Witch of the West."

"Auntie Em, Auntie Em," Krist sang in a falsetto from the room's couch, doing his best impression of a frightened Dorothy.

"She is from Washington state, so technically the 'west' part fits," Shelli added, biting her lip to fight a smile.

"I hate all of you!" Reagan shouted. She was near tears and under the peak of her pain, barely able to think straight. "I'm leaving."

She stalked out of the room and into the hallway, not bothering to shut the door on the way out. She could hear them all laughing as she left.

"Wait, don't go!" Krist called. "We don't want anyone with a big net to find you."

Angrily, Reagan ignored their jeering, disappearing down another corner of the hall and praying that she didn't run into anyone else. It wasn't until she was almost at her room that she heard footsteps behind her and a familiar, muted giggling.

"Go away," she snapped, patting down her robe in search of her room key.

"Oh yeah? How else are you going to get in there?" Dave said, nudging Reagan aside and holding up his own key, produced straight from the pocket of his jeans.

"I hate you," Reagan huffed, averting her eyes so that she didn't have to stare at the amused look on his face.

"I love you," he replied simply as he opened the door. Reagan darted into the room and flipped on the lights, ripping apart the knotted loop of her robe's belt. She dropped it to the floor and went into the bathroom, feeling her face yearn for a cold splash of water.

"I'm sorry for laughing," Dave said. He followed Reagan, watching as she turned on the sink knobs and dipped her hands under the stream of water. She splashed her face and gasped in relief.

"I don't even care anymore," she said. "I just want this mask off of my face."

He leaned against the bathroom's door frame and observed as Reagan began to scrub in circles, frantically trying to remove the green muck from her skin. She teared up in frustration when she noticed that her attempts weren't working.

"Nothing's happening!" she moaned, holding her hands out defeatedly.

"Get up on the counter," Dave instructed. "I'll help."

She wanted to be stubborn and ignore him. That would have been hard, but it also would have satisfied the rotten mood she was in. Reluctantly, she chose to listen, hopping up on the counter edge in silence.

Dave grabbed one of the small washcloths hanging by the shower and adjusted the sink's knobs to hot. He held the cloth quietly under the water until it was properly soaked in his hands.

"I'm going to have to really get in there for this one," he said warily. With his free hand he gripped Reagan's chin and with the other began to rub the wet washcloth along her face, mopping away traces of the mask. Reagan squeezed her eyes shut and frowned. Between the pain of the mask and the rough feeling of the cloth, she felt that her face had endured enough already.

"Are you going to talk to me?" Dave asked, twisting Reagan's head gently as he worked.

"I don't know. Are you going to make any more Wizard of Oz jokes?"

"Only if you promise not to steal my ruby slippers."

Reagan scoffed and jerked away, though Dave clutched her chin again and gently laid the cloth back to her cheek.

"That one was kind of funny. Admit it," he said.

"Funny if you're a middle-aged, suburban dad," Reagan rebutted sassily.

"I'm going to be that one day though, aren't I?" he asked. He drew his hand away from her chin and glided it down from her neck to her side, caressing the slope of her exposed stomach.

Reagan paused before she grudgingly spoke. "No. You'll never be suburban. Middle-aged, yes. There's no arguing that."

"I can take eventually being middle-aged one day," Dave chuckled. "As long as I get to be middle-aged with you."

She felt her irritation dim and finally stumbled across the need to look into his eyes as he cleaned her face. When she glanced up, he was staring at her tenderly, like she was the only thing worth looking at for the rest of forever.

"I . . . I'm sorry," she sighed.

"You don't have to be sorry."

"But I am. I was mean to you."

"And I was mean to you too. It happens."

"Married life," Reagan grumbled. "This is what it's all about."

"You're very funny today," Dave grinned. "It's been a real barrel of laughs hanging out with you."

"I'm glad I could be of service. Now can you please tell me if my face is back to normal?"

Dave held up the wash cloth, showing the streaks of muddy green on it. "I think I got it all."

She turned and faced the mirror, relieved to not see a single trace of green, though her face shined bright red. The mask had left its mark on her skin, giving her the appearance of someone suffering from a horrible sunburn. She hoped that it would be gone by the next morning.

"So what the hell even happened?" Dave asked as he wrung the cloth out. "Did you have an allergic reaction or something?"

"I don't know," Reagan said. "Courtney picked the mask out, they put it on me and a few minutes later I was basically on fire. I have no idea what was in it."

"Courtney picked it out?"

"Yes, but don't get all weird about it. She had no idea. I told Shelli the same thing."

"You're pregnant, Reagan," Dave said indignantly. "What if something bad had happened?"

"I might have believed it two seconds ago, but I don't think a face mask would have killed me," Reagan replied.

"Does Courtney know what happened?"

"No. I ran out of there after she went to have her mask taken off. She's probably still wondering where the hell I went."

"Yeah, without your clothes and everything," Dave snickered.

"Oh well. Maybe she'll think I fell down the drain to the pedicure tub," Reagan shrugged, massaging her fingers into her warm cheeks.

"Are you still going to go to the show tonight?" Dave questioned. "We have to leave in an hour."

"I'll go," Reagan assured him. "I might just have to wear one of your hats. I don't think anyone wants to see this. But I guess I fit the whole Hawaiian-tourist-who-doesn't-know-how-to-use-sunscreen look."

"I'll get you a hat. But . . ."

"But what?"

Dave placed his hands on Reagan's hips and pulled her down lightly from the bathroom counter. She remembered that she was almost naked, which explained the mischievous expression on his face as his hands curved down her backside.

"We have an hour, like I said," Dave told her casually. "I thought I'd at least ask if you wanted to pick up where we left off earlier. You know, before Courtney came here, stole you and painted you green."

As sure as her emotions had already flipped interchangeably that day, Reagan immediately felt a stir of longing in her stomach at his proposal. She didn't think that she'd ever become used to her mood swings, always oscillating from angry to sad, from sad to happy and from happy to lusting after Dave for the millionth time. It was a downside to being pregnant, but it also didn't matter when she was forgiven so readily for her unpredictable attitude.

"Where we left off, or are we starting fresh?" she said, testing him. He kissed her softly, once, twice, as he wound his hand through her hair.

"Let's start fresh," he said against her lips. He un-snapped the clasp of her bra swiftly and tightened his hand around her neck, keeping their faces close. Giving her an impish smile, the same one that brought her back into the realism of their youth, he turned her around in his embrace so that her back was against his chest. He left a path of kisses and nicks of his teeth up her shoulder before posing his idea of something fresh into her ear.

"Bend over."