Shooting Star and Swallow's Song

No Ragrets (yes, RAGRETS)

The time went fast, faster than Alex expected. Texting definitely helped and there was a lot of texting. A lot. Alex knew she wasn't bugging Steph, that she really meant what she said about wanting texts at work because if Alex let any lulls happen in their chatting, Steph was right there filling them in no time. It felt good to have someone that liked being around her, liked talking to her, even if it was torture too, given the circumstances.

In between texting, Alex practiced on her guitar. She kept the station playing low on her new phone in case Steph spoke again, which she did now and then. It was comforting to hear her voice. The room felt less empty, especially combined with the texts. Every time Steph's voice came on, Alex paused her practicing, even on the ads.

I think I would love hearing her read the ingredients on a cereal box.

Knowing objectively that she had heard other more melodic voices, Alex still now preferred Steph's over anyone else's. She was starting to become more aware of how infatuated she was, but it didn't seem to lesson the feeling. Alex chose to lean into it.

After playing mostly old pieces of songs, she started trying to come up with something new. Alex was thinking of Steph as she played and realized she was writing a song for her. The frequent text interruptions made it slow going for her, but Alex felt that she had a start.

Am I ever going to play this for her? I guess it depends on the lyrics. Friends write songs for each other. Right? But I don't want to write a friendship song. Yeah, I'll never play this for anyone else, especially her, but I'm still going to make it. Maybe that will get these feelings out.

She knew that was a lie though, so much that it almost sounded like a joke in her head. It would be the opposite. Alex just wanted to live in the feeling. The urge to finish up before Steph came back filled her. For some reason she thought that it would lead to her blabbing about writing a song for her. If Steph didn't see the guitar out, then she probably wouldn't ask about it and so Alex wouldn't have the opportunity to spill the beans. At least, that was how she thought of it.

At this point it was almost seven. Steph would be off soon. She had not texted for a little bit. Alex assumed the other was taking care of whatever duties she has for closing up. Restless with anticipation of her return, Alex tried to busy herself. She started browsing on her phone to occupy her mind.

Now with the power and potential of the internet back at her finger tips, Alex immediately had a notion of what to search.

She started typing into the search: How do you know if you're gay?

Before she entered it, Alex bit her inner lip and wondered if she should change 'gay' to 'a lesbian', or maybe 'queer'. She sighed and just hit enter. A row of articles came up.

This is stupid. Why am I even doing this? I know how I feel about Steph. But...that's not going anywhere, so maybe it's not stupid to figure myself out. Wait...now this is in my search history...or what if she put software on it to track my history! The phone was opened already...

She swiftly closed the browser tab and started looking frantically in settings for where to delete cookies, not sure if that would even help, but then stopped.

Steph wouldn't do that. What am I thinking...I mean, I'm still getting to know her, but come on, that'd be crazy.

Just as she was feeling guilty and insane for considering it, her phone rang and she nearly dropped it. She fixed her grip to look at the screen and saw it not only said Steph at the top, but had Steph's face with a raised eyebrow below. At this, she did drop the phone and exclaimed, "Oh shit!" and quickly bent down to pick it up. Taking one second to make sure there were no cracks, she slid it to accept the call.