Black Beauty- Steve HarringtonxOC

Chapter 18

The room feels sunny and bright, even with half of the lights turned off, just as Max had intended. The blue furniture feels like the ocean when paired with flowy, yellow curtains and seashell lampshades. It reminds her of the beach in California.

"I'm not sure about this, Max." Filly, sitting cross-legged on Max's bed, worries her lip between her teeth. Max had just scolded her for picking at the polish. They had spent much of the day together, and they had matched their nail colors. Both girls had blue finger and toenails to match their eyes, and their hair in twin braids. Teaching Filly how to braid hair had been surprisingly easy. "Do you think it will have the answers I seek?"

She continues to dig through the box she drags out from under her bed. "Trust me, this is what Cosmo was made for." She liked to lift the more adult issues from her mother's room when she wasn't around.

"Coz-mo?" The older girl tilts her head, the curtain of dark hair falling off her shoulders while she tries out the word on her lips. Max had been downright confused with her mannerisms and way of speaking, early on. It was much easier to understand now, knowing where the teen came from and her background. Though they only met a year ago, they had become fast friends. Max only wished it could be the same with Eleven. She doesn't have many female friends and she wasn't lying when she told Mike that El seemed super cool.

"It's a magazine. It's short for Cosmopolitan." She flips through comics, magazines, and books until she finds what she's looking for. "Superwoman, Tiger Beat, Red Sonya... Aha!" She finds the issue she's looking for wedged into the side of the box. Dusting it off before she opens it, she remembers this issue fondly.

"Is this how you knew that you loved Lucas?" Max looks up and Filly is smiling warmly at her. She blushes, nodding and busying herself with returning the box to whence it came, then planting her butt on the bed opposite Filly and mirroring her pose. She would lean against the headboard but she hates the way the rods press into the clip on her bra and irritate her back, so she scoots forward with the Cosmopolitan on her knee.

The redhead smiles confidently. Filly returns the look, both of their freckled cheeks rising high on their faces. "Okay, let's start. It's only nine questions." She cracks open the issue, finding the quiz page. Every question was a multiple choice of three answers, but Max had done it so many times with her friends in Cali that she could administer the test herself with short response answers. "When this person isn't around, do you think about them?"

"Yes." It's the first time she's seen Filly blush when Steve isn't around. She can't seem to meet Max's eyes. "I think often about what he would say if he were there, or how my choices may affect him, however accidental that may be."

"How would you feel if Ste-" Max closes her mouth before she can say it, catching the narrowed glimpse the older girl sends her. "If this person moved away and you lost touch?"

Her eyes seem colder than usual, frostier than a blizzard in Alaska. She speaks like she's holding back tears. "Lost and alone." Max doesn't think she ever considered this possibility.

The next question is almost the opposite of the last. "How do you feel when you're with him?"

Her big blue eyes hide behind her lids, the teen thinking about her answer with a small smile forming on her lips. "Like those little white, fluffy sweets that you liked to roast over the fire. Soft and warm and comfortable."

"Marshmallows?" She smiles when the other girl nods her head vigorously. Max clears her throat and returns to the magazine, consciously focusing on not calling this hypothetical person Steve. "Alright. You have a disagreement. How do you handle it?" No matter how obvious it is who this quiz is about, Filly hadn't said his name yet so she won't either. All she had said was that she needed to know whether she was in love with someone. Filly wasn't someone she wanted to push away, not when their friendship was still so new. Max treasures that friendship like a fragile yet beautiful shell, delicate and complex. Something about the group of boys seems to draw in only the coolest girls, and Filly has become someone she looks up to after that first awkward meeting.