Borrowed Time

Chapter 168

Laying with Esme was the best stress relief that Juliette could ever have - it was especially nice after a long cheerleading practice that had left her body aching from how many times she'd been dropped because she'd been tasked with helping Katherine with a shaky hold despite the season almost being over. She'd seemed to have made it her mission to concuss Juliette before the practice was over, but she hadn't succeeded, all she'd done was make her bones ache... But Esme made that better.

They made everything better when they held her and mumbled words of affirmation and praise against the back of her head as she laid in their arms, her back against their chest, feeling their heartbeat against her shoulder blade.

"Hey." Juliette shook herself back into the conversation as she cleared her throat, not wanting her voice to be too raspy when she responded to what Esme was asking.

"What's up?" She was sure ig was just a question about her day yesterday because they hadn't actually talked much about it, but if it was something else, she wanted to make sure that she was speaking clearly.

"How was the read through yesterday, you never told me." Esme said, stroking their fingers through her hair as they spoke. Juliette frowned slightly, shaking her head as she sighed. She wasn't sure if she wanted to subject Esme to stories about that - it wasn't as if it was something bad happened or like she had some sort of horror story about how terrible everything was, it was mostly just mundane... Well, aside from Iris, but her encounter with Ingrid in the week prior seemed to be enough to shake her to the point that she wasn't saying anything anymore.

"I mean, I mostly didn't say anything because it was pretty boring... We read the script and discussed rehearsal schedules, and that was pretty much it." She explained, hearing Esme let out a little sound of recognition, just to show that they were listening and engaged, which Juliette did appreciate; sometimes she worried that she was boring Esme to tears with her very existence, and she didn't want to do that to the person that she loved more than life itself, that felt mean as fuck.

"When do rehearsals really start?" They asked, and Juliette shrugged, linking her fingers with Esme's free hand as she moved their hand back and forth, looking at the way that their fingers linked together with a soft smile. She liked how they fit together, it made her heart feel full and warm in a way that almost nothing else in the entire world had ever been able to do... But that wasn't important right now, right now Esme was asking about scheduling, probably to figure out if they could give her rides home or not.

They didn't need to, Becky had offered and that would make sense considering they were at the same thing. It'd also save Esme a lot of money on gas, and that was something that Juliette saw as a huge win considering how expensive it could be.

"March 5th." That was a significant week - it marked the first week of Juliette's freedom from years of cheerleading, the first time that she could finally stop being identified as the captain of the cheerleading team, which she'd been looking forward to for years... She wasn't sure if Esme would remember that, because she was pretty sure it was just significant to her.

Why would they have to remember something that was just significant to her, right? That felt rather selfish if she was being honest with herself, and the last thing that she wanted to do was be selfish to the person that she loved.

"Ah, so the week after cheerleading ends, right?" They asked, and Juliette blinked... Oh. Right. This was Esme - of course Esme would remember that, of course Esme would care and would ask and would think about her things as being as important as their own, when had they ever not done that.

God, that made her heart flutter - if it was possible to make her fall further in love with one single statement, Esme had succeeded in doing that. Obviously, her heart already belonged to them, but it felt like it belonged to them even more in this moment - like she'd just become even more infatuated and in love with them than she'd been before.