comfort {complete}

43

"God, quality fanfiction is so hard to find," Lois grumbles, scrolling through her phone and sighing. "All I want is some solid Stydia fics, but no."

I roll my eyes at her and flop backwards onto my bed. She wasn't in the mood to hang out with Noah, and I wasn't in the mood to argue with her, so we're in my room. The goal was to come up with something epic to do this summer, but neither of us are very epic; we're both on our phones now, ignoring each other, essentially.

"Oh my God, have you seen the Lady Midnight postcards on Cassie's Tumblr?" I gasp, sitting up and scooting to the end of the bed, where she's sitting.

"Ooh," she coos, leaning closer and snatching my phone from me. "Whoa, these people are hot."

"Duh. They're Shadowhunters."

"Right, I forgot."

"Here, you can—Steph?"

I lift my eyes from my phone screen to Becca. She's standing in the doorway, Dana behind her, and they're both peering at me curiously. Their matching brown gazes fall from mine to Lois's, and then they both blush and look at me again.

"Um, we'll go to Kathy's room," Becca says, grabbing Dana's shoulders and steering her across the hall. "Bye, Steph."

I've never heard Becca say um in my presence. She's always been insanely comfortable around me, maybe because we've shared a room our entire lives or maybe because we both liked boys a lot, but either way, she's never said um. She's clear and precise and completely um-less. Always.

I glance down at the almost-entire-gone bruises on my arms and legs, a hopefully-gone-soon reminder of him, and I wonder if anyone who knew me before will ever be able to really look at me the way they used to.

a/n: i have "stacy's mom" in my head and it's great.