All Things Considered [🗸]

31. real/fake

i can't believe y'all forgot johnny from TQ when i mentioned him last chapter 😟 he was part of riya's skating group omg 😟

***

PAXTON AND I have been dancing around the whole "moving faster" thing. 

Sure, we kiss from time to time, go to gas stations at odd times in the morning, and Paxton flirts with me like it's second nature, but we still haven't decided on an official relationship. We're still in this in-between zone where we're essentially in a relationship but haven't labeled it as such.

And seeing as even after the wedding—which was when we were supposed to part ways—we've been together more often than not; we haven't paused or changed any rules or even fully talked about the nature of our relationship.

Ever since we got home from the wedding, we just continued doing everything we were doing directly before the wedding—like our midnight slushie runs. 

I've managed to slip out of the house without either of my moms seeing me. However, I've been caught by Thalia more often than not. She's usually downstairs at odd times in the morning to make hot chocolate for herself or grab a random-ass snack. Luckily, she doesn't give a shit, just watches me slip out with a slightly amused expression.

So, now, I'm figuring out how to ask Paxton out. Officially. I'm seated at the edge of my bed, my eyes resting on my guitar stand that stares back at me. 

A knocking on the door startles me out of my thoughts.

"Come in," I call out, Thalia making her way through the door, eyes flickering between the guitar and me.

She wades into the room, leaning against the wall across from me. "You working on Paxton's surprise?"

I nod, grabbing my notebook from the corner of my bed and flipping to the page where I wrote some lines this morning.

"Can I have a look?" she asks, already grasping for the notebook. I hand it over to her and she pours over it. Grabbing a pen from my bedside table, she makes a few scribbles, turning to the next page and narrating as she writes down advice on which chords I should use.

Thalia's a wiz at all that. She knows how to mix music together, the best way to overlap tracks and create seamless transitions. Ask her to play a guitar and she'll be lost, but when it comes to the technical components—she's an actual fucking genius. 

"This isn't that shitty." Thalia says once she's done scribbling advice and edits. "Look over the edits and I might even consider helping you record, seeing it was painful watching you the last time you tried to record everything," she says, passing the notebook over to me. 

"It wasn't that bad," I say, eyebrows knitted together.

Thalia's eyebrows fly upwards, as though visibly saying it definitely was. "Di, you didn't even know how to operate the software."