Chapter Twenty-Two

"When I said girls night at yours before you move out, I wasn't imagining it would be a girls night dedicated to helping you move out," Biana complained as she put one of Sophie's notebooks from when she was attending Foxfire into a small box filled with other notebooks. 

Sophie sighed. "I'm sorry, I thought I would be done with packing by the time you came and Keefe is coming by early tomorrow to help me move in." She took the box and taped it up. "But this is the last of it. Thank you so much guys!" Everyone followed her downstairs where a few drinks and some snacks sat in the kitchen, all of which they started to take advantage of. 

"So how does it feel knowing tomorrow you're going to be living a boy for the rest of your life?" Biana questioned. 

"It feels weird," Sophie stated. "I mean... I know I wanted this move to happen quick, but I didn't imagine I'd be moving so soon."

"So, are you guys going to look for any houses or just stay in the apartment?" Linh asked. 

"We're going to wait to buy a house for when we have children," Sophie answered. "And we're going to wait until we've been married a while to think about those."

"How soon until the wedding?" Marella cut in. "Have you figured any of that out yet?"

Sophie shook her head. "No, but we're pretty settled on everything anyways. You're all, obviously, going to be my bridesmaids." She looked to Syden, who was standing awkwardly around the girls eating mallowmelt. "Even you, Syden. I know we haven't known each other long but Tam is like a brother to me which automatically makes you like a sister."

"Thanks, Sophie," Syden replied, smiling. 

"Are you going to have a maid-of-honor?" Briana asked in anticipation. "No pressure or anything."

"No, I don't want to pick between you guys." Sophie grinned at the girls standing in front of her. "Except, Marella I was wondering if you wouldn't mind walking down the flower girl."

"Who's the flowergirl?" 

"Wylie's daughter, Cosi. We already talked to him about it." Sophie sighed. "But, she's still a baby so even when in time for the wedding we don't know how well she'll walk so we thought it best we had someone to walk with her down the aisle so I was wondering if you could do that."

"Of course!" Marella squealed. "I love Cosi."

"Who's going to be the ringbearer?" Syden asked. 

"Keefe has a friend whose son is around four and he wants him to be the ringbearer and who am I to tell him no." Sophie shrugged, taking a sip out of the drink in her hand. "Some guy that buys a lot of Keefe's work, so they became friends over time." 

"That's pretty cool," Biana said, a smile on her face. "Obviously I'm in charge of your wedding rings, so you guys need to come into my store soon to tell me exactly what you want."

"I'm pretty free tomorrow, do you want me to help you move in?" Linh looked to Sophie. 

"No, I'm obviously not taking everything out of this house just yet. Only the essentials plus some old school stuff that's been cluttering my room. We're not going to fully move all my stuff out of here until we buy a house which shouldn't be for another few years." She sighed. "Moving is more complicated than I thought it would be."

"I hear you sister, when Fitz and I moved into our place my parents made this big deal about it," Biana replied. "They were like 'why are you two going to move out and live together when you were living together here anyways?' and I don't think they understood we just wanted our sense of independency." She rolled her eyes. "And they forced us to keep some stuff at their house just incase we'd miss them so we could visit. I guess after Alvar, they just really wished we hadn't moved out so soon."

"My parents aren't my problem," Sophie replied. "They thought I would move out a long time ago when everyone else did."

"Then what makes it complicated?" Marella asked. "I still haven't moved out and I can't see myself moving out for a long time, but I don't think it would be too complicated if I did."

"What's complicated is me, I think." She shrugged. "My life has been a back and forth of change and I guess one thing that's been pretty solid since I was twelve is knowing that I had a home right here to always go back to. But now I'm moving out of it and it feels like I'm going into an unknown." 

"Aww, Soph." Biana looked at her sadly. "I promise that you might be thinking this now, but the second you move in with Keefe while he'll probably get on your nerves for the first month or two, you're going to be wondering why you hadn't moved in with him sooner." 

"Why would he get on my nerves?" Sophie questioned. 

"Boys are gross," Linh replied, laughing. "You've never had to live with one before."

"It's true," Biana added. "They don't take care of themselves and think it's an attractive quality." She looked to Linh. "I don't know what you see in my brother, but good luck living with him in the future."

"I've lived with Tam all my life." She turned to Syden. "Good luck to you."

"I don't know, have you guys met Keefe? The guy takes too much time taking care of himself."

"Hair," Biana corrected. "He takes too much time taking care of his hair."

"I'm not going to argue with that," Sophie replied. "He takes more time on his hair than I take on mine, and I have plenty more than him."

"Yet he still wears pretty much the same hairstyle everyday," Linh replied. "You'd think he'd know how to do it quicker by now." 

They all started to laugh at Keefe's expense. "Oh my gosh! I just remembered!" Biana squealed and turned to Sophie. "Remember that time Fitz got all dressed up to impress you?" 

Linh laughed. "I remember that! The good old times where everyone was in love with Sophie." She frowned. "Well, everyone but Tam." 

"Who was Tam in love with if he wasn't in love with Sophie?" Biana asked, confused. 

"Do you not remember?" Sophie asked, eyes wide. Biana shook her head. "I'm more into brunettes," Sophie tried to imitate Tam. 

"Oh my god!" Biana started to laugh. "I totally forgot! I used to totally like him, too. Wow I can't believe it's been so long that I actually forgot for a moment." 

"You guys are all insane," Syden commented. "Did you all just... Switch boyfriends?"

"I mean... Not technically." Biana shrugged. "When we were younger everyone but Tam was in love with Sophie. Then Dex and Sophie kissed and it became really awkward because they realized how sibling-like they really were. So that was over." 

"So then it became like this weird battle between Keefe and Fitz for a while. Sophie was oblivious," Linh added. 

"But also when they weren't in love with me, they were in love with Linh," Sophie added. "Well, at least Fitz and Dex. I used to see the way they looked at you." 

"Remember my childhood crush on Keefe?" Biana asked. 

"I remember when Keefe told me that you guys kissed and I got so jealous," Sophie replied. 

"You and Keefe kissed?" Linh's eyes widened. "I never heard about that."

"It was a game of truth or dare I think." Biana frowned. "We were playing with my brother. It was just a peck, but I was totally in love with him afterwards." 

"Wait, Sophie, who did you have a crush on?" Syden asked, interested. 

"Fitz," Marella replied immediately. "Literally everyone knew."

Sophie gasped. "What?" 

"It was pretty obvious you were in love with my brother," Biana added on. "He's the one who brought you here and everything." 

"You guys are so tangled together," Syden stated. "How are you all still friends? This feels like it would make everything really dramatic."

"There was a lot of unstated tension when we were younger, but with all the Neverseen and Black Swan stuff going on, this was all side drama to the real issue at hand," Marella explained. "I was added pretty late into the actual problem, so mostly I was just in on the relationships and crushes problem."

Sophie looked at Marella with a frown before agreeing, saying, "Yeah, honestly most of this was in the back of our minds. We were all best friends and that always came first." 

"If we weren't as close as we are I don't know how we would have survived," Biana replied. "Especially Sophie. She was a mess." 

"But you were our mess," Linh added, hugging her friend. 

"Shut up," Sophie said, laughing. 

"Memory lane is fun, we haven't gone down it in a while," Biana stated. "Want to talk about that time Sophie almost blew up the school? The first time."

"And we're done here." Everyone started to laugh. 

---

hey y'all this chappie is a little late sorry about that 

i just want to mention i love dan reynolds from imagine dragons so? much? and he deserves all the world and beyond no offense. 

alsO i have four days left of school but if you count exam days then i technically only have two so i'm stressed i hate taking exams. My idiot self has decided to take 3/4 when i had the option to take 2/4. but tbh taking that third exam is like a nice break at this point. I'm really stressed about my trig exam though. But after this it's senior year and stressing over college applications. I already took my SAT so let's hope i got a good score and i don't need to retake it for a better one. 

chapter questions:

1. do you think adding chapter questions takes away from the chapter itself?

2. what do you think of the chapter and 'memory lane'? 

3. prediction time: now that you have a better sense of how the story is moving: what chapter do you really think they're going to get married?