Dedicated to a_colorful_dreamer because as of thirty seconds ago, I think we might've just become best friends.

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             A week later, and suddenly the date of Gram’s exhibit had drawn so close that I began to wonder what consuming entity the days had vanished into. The final few days had, as predicted, reduced her to a bundle of pent-up energy, and the techno music had been going strong for as many as six straight hours a day. I hardly noticed it now; it was almost like I was building up some kind of immunity to the electronic beat, so that the constant vibration of my bedroom walls had become just background noise. In fact, it seemed stranger now to awaken to a quietness throughout the cottage, silence like gentle waves breaking on the shore, instead of the daily tsunami of obnoxiously loud music.

            Today, a Thursday, was the final day before the opening. Gram was rushing around so wildly, ten different paintbrushes clutched in her fist at any given time, that I was kind of scared to venture any further than the bottom stair. So instead, when Daniel had showed up at the front door to hang out as planned, we’d come to a mutual decision that retreating upstairs and leaving her to it was probably safest.

            “Hey,” he said later, when the both of us were settled sideways on my bed. He was beside me, close enough to let our arms brush with every movement, our legs somehow still tangled together whilst dangling off the end of the frame. “It’s today your sister’s coming down to Walden, right?”

            The anticipation of seeing Nora again was growing; I nodded a little more forcefully than I should’ve. Though I’d adjusted to life without her, the passive consciousness of her absence was always there, like I was missing an unessential but noticeable part of myself. “I’m not sure when she said they were aiming to get here, though.”

            “I’m sure you’ll know about it when she does,” he commented, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. “She was with you on the day you first came into the shop, right? The, uh… heavily pregnant one?”

            The memory, at least, had some comedic value; I couldn’t help but think of Nora in her third trimester, and how ridiculous she’d looked having to waddle everywhere she went. “Yeah. That’s her. Except she’s not so heavily pregnant anymore.”

            “Oh, yeah.” He chuckled. “Right.”

            Daniel shifted in his spot, whilst I tried not to dwell on the way the skin-to-skin contact sent tingles coursing through my every nerve. “I can’t believe you remember that,” I said. “That first day in the ice cream shop. The day we first met.”

            “Are you joking? How could I forget?” The smirk was already materialising across his face. “I chased you all the way down the street to give you your change.”

            The initial details of the scene emerged slowly, the rest of it following soon after in one big rush: a tidal wave crashing across my mind. The summer that now lay behind us seemed to have stretched into forever; surely it had to have been close to years long, rather than a mere few weeks? It felt impossible that it wasn’t longer since I’d met Daniel on that first day in Walden, impossible that it had only taken us this long to fast-forward through everything we’d been through. A laugh bubbled up inside me before I had the chance to stop it. “Oh, I remember.”

            “Of course you do,” he replied easily. “I mean, you were so blown away by my breathtaking good looks that you let your ice cream melt all over your hand.”

            I opened my mouth, hoping a witty retort would form in my throat somewhere in the process, but the hot flush of embarrassment beat me to it, creeping up my neck and spreading rapidly across my freckled cheeks. Instead, I settled for ducking my head, letting a curtain of brown curls shield my face.

            “You don’t need to be embarrassed.” He reached over and placed a finger under my chin, slowly forcing me to meet his hazel-eyed gaze. “Look, I’ll even tell you a secret.”

            The blush only intensified when he leaned in, his face so close I could feel his warm breath tickling my ear. “I thought you were pretty too.”

            The simple sentence sent my heart into a fluttering frenzy, my face breaking out into a smile, but I swatted him away. “You are so just saying that,” I countered. “You felt sorry for me because I was hopelessly awkward and incapable of social interaction.”

            “Well…” His pause was drawn-out, a false display of deep thought. “There was that too.”

            I took the opportunity to shove him playfully, my hand colliding with his upper arm a little harder than I had intended. My attack obviously caught him off guard because he fell sideways, landing onto a cushion of soft duvet, before losing his balance completely and rolling off the edge of the bed with a spectacular display of clumsiness. For a moment, I just stared back at his newfound position on the floor, his arms sprawled awkwardly around him. The shock rendered me motionless, but the laughter pushed through its barrier eventually. I was giggling like an idiot, unable to control myself as Daniel let out a low groan and pulled himself into a sitting position.

            “Okay, that was brutal,” he said, rubbing exaggeratedly at his head. “I didn’t realise I had such a violent girlfriend.”

            Girlfriend. Such a simple, ten-letter word. Yet it was able to send a jolt of excitement through me, coupled with a subsequent burst of happiness that seemed to spread through my every fibre. It hadn’t been officially discussed, but it seemed like he’d taken our considerably couple-like behaviour over the past week as sufficient permission. Not only had he been holding my hand at every available opportunity, we’d exchanged a fair few kisses – although they tended to lean towards gentle pecks goodbye rather than any heated snogs. Still, it wasn’t as if I minded. Just being with Daniel was almost as if someone had flicked a switch for constant sunshine over my world, no matter how stubbornly overcast the weather remained outside.

            “Sorry,” I said. My hand rose to cover my mouth, but I was failing miserably at letting the giggles subside.

            “Well, I guess I can forgive you,” he sighed. “I mean, I—” The next statement was cut suddenly short, his attention drawn towards something he seemed to have spotted under my bed. “Hey, what’s this?”

            I couldn’t see exactly what he was so intrigued by, but it didn’t take me long to realise once he’d stuck his hand under the bed, it surfacing with the corner of a large sheet of paper held between his fingers. The onset of recognition was almost instantaneous; a tsunami-like wave of dread crashed over my insides, forcing my heart to the pit of my stomach.

            “Oh my God,” Daniel was exclaiming, while I leapt to my feet at lightning speed.

            “Don’t look at that!” I cried a little too forcefully, prising the picture from his hands. Still, it wasn’t like that would do much; he’d already seen it, and the damage was done.

            “Holy shit, Flo, did you draw that?”

            He was staring down at the sheet in my hands – the one that hadn’t seen daylight since I’d drawn it a week ago – with almost entrancement. It was too big to slip inside my sketchbook, the usual repository for anything my pencil had touched. Instead, intending for it to remain strictly unseen, it had ended up beneath the frame of my bed: a place I was sure nobody would be looking. “It’s amazing.”

            “It’s nothing,” I insisted. More than anything I wanted to turn away, move the angels somewhere out of sight, but seeing them out in the open for a second time had rendered me strangely motionless. I couldn’t move my feet even if I wanted to, and as a result, the pair of us stayed staring down at the drawing as if it were physically impossible to tear our eyes away.

            “It’s… it’s…” He seemed to be struggling to find the right word. “Jesus Christ, why is something like that under your bed?”

            “I… I don’t know.”

            But I did know. Those two-dimensional figures were the closest thing I had to my mum and dad, regardless of the fact they were composed of little more than pencil strokes. That drawing came into being in a moment of weakness: a moment when I felt so compelled to create that I thought my head might explode if I didn’t pour the contents of my mind onto the page. I didn’t need it on display; my innermost thoughts were meant to stay just that, locked away under my outer expression. Not for everyone to see.

            Daniel wasn’t the whole world, but he may as well have been.

            “Holy shit,” he said again, the rest of his vocabulary seeming to have floated out of his left ear. “Why isn’t this in a gallery or something? You know, it’s easily good enough to be. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

            “I don’t—”

            “Hey, what about the place your gran’s having her exhibition at? Surely she could put in a good word for you or something down there? I mean, they’re not exactly going to turn something like this down, are they? It’s unfrickingbelievable.”

            “No,” I interjected, a little too quickly. Daniel’s brow was already creasing, a questioning frown weighing down his features. To him, I suppose, it was simple. I had a talent for drawing, and I should want people to see that. But the pictures meant more than that; their sentimental values ran much deeper. It just wasn’t something that translated as easily into any words, let alone spoken ones. “I mean, that’d be way too embarrassing. I just couldn’t…”

            He looked down at me, his speckled eyes wide and unblinking, at a distance I could paint them from. “You really don’t see it, do you?” he asked softly, and I was struck by the odd thought that if his voice were an object, it’d be a warm blanket on a cold day.

            My eyes trailed upward to meet his. “See what?”

            “How amazing you are.” His hands moved to enclose my own at the picture’s edges, our skin brushing. We were standing much too close now, so close that one of us really should’ve moved away, but neither seemed to really want to. “I don’t know how you don’t see this incredible talent, Flo, but I promise you: it’s there.”

            Even in the circumstances, the corners of my lips were curling, the sincerity of Daniel’s expression folding my face into a smile. “Thank you.”

            “Just as long as you know that. Even if you still refuse to show it to anybody else. Which, I’ll add, is a very bad idea. I’m telling you, you could have filthy rich art dealers lining up to get a load of this picture, and you’re probably missing out on being a millionaire right now—”

            “Daniel,” I cut in softly, grinning.

            He stopped long enough to blink back at me. “Yeah?”

            “Shut up and kiss me, will you?”

            For a moment he just stared back at me, evidently taken aback by my newfound boldness. It didn’t take him long, though, to regain his composure, obeying my instructions without need for any further encouragement. He leaned in to meet me halfway, and soon enough our lips were once again connected, sending a tingling mixture of nerves and excitement through every inch of me. My legs seemed to weaken, as if the bone had spontaneously turned to jelly, about the same time as my fingers lost all grip on the sheet of paper. It fluttered to the floor beside me as I felt Daniel’s hands snaking around my waist, tugging me gently closer, and I found my subconscious hooking my arms around his neck.

            I was getting better at this kissing thing, I concluded. At least now it felt considerably easier than the awkward fumble on the beach some weeks ago, which I had to take as a good sign. My lips seemed now capable of matching Daniel’s without a great deal of thought, although the action was still enough to reduce me to a jittery mess, with a heart rate similar to that after running a marathon. But there was something about this kiss, right now, that was different; it was considerably more heated, and after a while I found myself debating the merits of risking oxygen deprivation just so I wouldn’t have to break away.

            The decision was made for me, however, when the sound of the door banging open, swinging with so much force it collided with the wall behind it, jolted us apart like a shot of electricity.

            “Oh shit, sorry,” a familiar loud voice echoed through the room, sending my already excitable heart into overdrive. “Probably should’ve knocked.”

            “Nora?”

            Daniel was hastily removing his hands from the small of my back; my arms dropped back to my sides soon afterwards, but it was obvious to even the most naïve onlooker what we’d been doing. Even Summer, cradled in Nora’s arms, probably could’ve made a pretty educated guess.

            And anyway, even if mine and Daniel’s extreme proximity had been miraculously overlooked, the way my cheeks had burst into flames was enough of a second giveaway to mean we were never going to avoid what happened next.

            “Oh. My. God.” Nora was already gushing. She barged right across the threshold, deeming herself evidently too important to wait for an invitation. “Wait, are you guys official now?”

            “I…”

            The sound of my voice prompted her eyes to swivel specifically toward me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whined, the words already spilling from her lips so fast I could barely keep up. “Come on, I completely missed the opportunity to act like the embarrassing parent. You know, I could reel off a ten-minute-long speech about using protection from the top of my head. You’ve got to admit that’s pretty impressive. Although I suppose I could manage to squeeze that in sometime while I’m here…”

            “Nora,” I cut her off, wondering if there was a metaphorical fire extinguisher around to cool my burning cheeks. “Please stop talking.”

            “So how long has this been going on?” Completely ignoring my request, she continued, barely pausing to inhale. My last hope was that she’d run out of oxygen at some point and be forced to stop to breathe. “Because I swear, Flo, if it’s been any longer than a week and you haven’t even thought to pick up the phone and tell me you’ve got a ridiculously cute boyfriend, we’re going to have some problems.”

            “Hi, I’m Daniel.” Nora’s rambling was mercifully cut off by a third voice; I looked over to see he’d taken a step towards her, offering an extended hand to match his expertly charming smile. The conversation didn’t seem to have fazed him in the slightest, although I did wonder if part of the reason behind his grin was my sister’s choice of adjective. “We met before. At the ice cream shop?”

            “Of course!” Her attention diverted from embarrassing me, she was now shaking his hand enthusiastically, while still somehow managing to cradle Summer. “I mean, I’m pretty sure I weigh a lot less now this thing’s out of me, but yeah, it’s me.”

            “Summer, right?” he asked, peering down at the baby in her arms.

            Distracted by the shock of Nora’s arrival, it occurred to me that I’d completely forgotten to even acknowledge the fact she was accompanied by my little niece. She was swaddled in a badly tie-dyed blanket – clearly one of Lenny’s bright ideas – and I wondered whether it was my imagination, or if she really had grown about three times her size since the last time I’d seen her. Tufts of dark hair already stuck out from the top of her head, seemingly a paternal donation, but the wide blue eyes that gazed up at her onlookers were unmistakably my sister’s.

            “Yeah,” she said. “Well, Summer Moonbeam, to be precise. We finally decided on a middle name.”

            I inhaled so sharply I almost choked on air. “Moonbeam?”

            “Uh huh.” She was nodding fervently, her blonde ponytail bouncing up and down. “It’s sweet, isn’t it? I was a bit wary of Lenny having free reign on picking the middle name, especially considering some of the suggestions he was coming up with before she was born. But then he mentioned Moonbeam, and I thought it was actually pretty cute. Original, don’t you think?”

            “Yeah,” I murmured, and then, under my breath, “that’s one word for it.”

            But she seemed oblivious to my apprehensiveness, shifting the newborn in her arms and readjusting the brightly-coloured blanket around the edges. Summer, on the other hand, didn’t seem happy with the new arrangement; her face was already crinkling in agitation, preparing her lungs for a full-blown crying fit.

            And when the noise broke, I couldn’t say I’d heard anything like it.

            “Oh, sweetie,” Nora cooed, though there was absolutely nothing ‘sweet’ about the noise that was emanating from her daughter’s mouth. “Look, let’s go find Daddy, okay? He’s downstairs somewhere. He’s probably got your dummy as well.”

            With a fleeting call of “We’ll have to catch up later, okay?”, she was turning to leave as swiftly as she’d arrived. She hugged the screaming Summer closer to her chest as she set off for the staircase, leaving the door wide open in the process of her exit.

            “Well,” I said, once I was sure she’d gotten far enough away to clear the edge of earshot, “that was arguably one of the most awkward experiences of my life.”

            “I think she’s funny.” I felt Daniel’s presence behind me, his arms finding their way around my waist and tugging me slightly backwards, my back pressing against his strong torso.

            “Yeah, well. You weren’t the one she was intent on embarrassing into the next century.”

            “True.” He leaned in, placing his lips so close to my ear that an involuntary shiver of electricity was sent jolting through my body, all the way to the ground. “But it’s worth it to see you blush.”

            I prised myself from his gentle grip, spinning around to face him. “You’re just saying that,” I said, but a grin I couldn’t keep at bay was creeping onto my face. “You get some kind of sick pleasure from my discomfort, don’t you?”

            “Well… that too.”

            For a second time, I moved in for a playful shove, but Daniel’s brain seemed to be one step ahead of mine. Before my hands could even make contact, I found myself caught up in his arms, held against his front with only the sound of our steady breathing for company. We stared back at each other for what felt like an eternity, suddenly very aware of how close we were.

            “You think she’s downstairs?” Daniel asked softly, his voice gently edging through the quiet room.

            I paused, listening intently for any audible sign of Nora hovering on the landing. “I think we’re safe.”

            The corners of his lips curled into the slightest smile. “Good.”

            This breathy answer was my cue, it seemed, to let my eyes flutter closed, preparing myself for what was about to happen. With my heart hammering in my chest, I forced the tension from my muscles, and let myself relax into the fact it was happening again.

            This time, uninterrupted.

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I actually really, really like this chapter. Two Flaniel snogs and Nora -- what more could you want, right? And I hope it makes up for the slightly boring filler chapter I posted last week, although on the whole you guys seemed to like it. One thing I have  to ask, though: how on earth did some of you get the idea Erin was pregnant?! I thought the fact she was buying tampons made it obvious enough, haha. She's not. Just saying.

It's something of a miracle that I even managed to write this this week, what with all the schoolwork I've got to do. Just as a heads up, I might not be able to fit writing in as the exams get closer, so please don't take the Friday updates as set in stone. It honestly depends on whether I've got the next chapter written. Just bear with me through exam time haha :) Love you all!