Beauty and the Brendan

Epilogue | Brendan

Stop glaring at the mirror, my cousin had said. Well, it was hard not to when I had an unqualified hairdresser trim my hair short while another girl stood in front of me, analysing me, and whining when things didn't go the way she planned.

Honestly, this was hell.

Only one girl didn't bother me. "Trust me, Brendan, you look better this way," she told me, although her soothing voice did nothing to help. The girl with dyed brown hair and eyes the colour of onyx orbs. Penny.

Thinking of her sent a funny chill down my spine. It was a new feeling that I had yet to become accustomed to. We hadn't announced that we were a thing until I came back from America, and when we did, it was pandemonium.

Well, I had expected it. I mean, the last time everyone checked, Penny and I were at each other's throats. We absolutely loathed each other. And now we could actually tolerate being in each other's company.

Don't get me wrong, I still hated her. There were things I still resented her for as the Beast. But there were parts of her that I liked as Randy, and I saw more of those parts the longer I got to know her better.

Although I couldn't deny that I was seething with anger - half aimed at myself - when I'd found the pendant I'd given her in my pocket. As usual, she'd found a way to get under my skin. After all, she was still the Penny that I'd known as the Beast, whether we both liked it or not.

I'd gotten her back for it, though, when she'd found the pendant around her own neck many days later, when she'd accidentally fallen asleep on my shoulder while we were sitting on a bench together in the park. She hadn't removed it since, and resting against her beating heart was where the pendant still lay.

Penny's friends would not stop judging her for days. Well, Jas didn't seem to have a problem with it, but Penny's twin sister Hannah would not stop berating me, saying that I had to treat her well or she'd come along and kick my ass.

Then Cailyn had said that she would kick Hannah's ass if that ever happened, because if I screwed up somehow, I would have a damn well good reason for it. I would never admit this out loud, but I was glad we were cousins. The guys that Penny hung out with, Evan and Hudson, they were a bigger problem than the girls. I mean, Evan took it well, since his... 'girlfriend' Kameron was fine with it. I had suspected that Kameron had realised that Randy and I were the same guy, and I had been right. When Penny confronted Kameron via a video call, Kameron confessed that she'd known ever since she'd seen me with Linny at the airport. She'd avoided telling Penny outfront because she had wanted her friend to find out herself.

The Japanese girl was sneaky, I had to give her that.

Hudson, on the other hand, delivered the typical 'You hurt her, and I'll kill you' threats, just like Hannah. They had sounded so in unison together that I had assumed they were an item, but Penny had told me that her sister and Hudson had this like/hate friendship, and it was strictly only a friendship, since Hudson was gay.

"I reckon the guy's bisexual," I had said. "Because I can totally see him hooking up with her." I gestured to Hannah and Hudson, who had been having a swordfight with their forks at the time.

Penny had slapped me. "Hey, that's my sister you're talking about!"

The hardest thing had been coming clean to Hans, the closest friend I'd ever had, about my relationship with his all time crush. Saying that he had been pissed over it was an understatement. He'd refused to speak to me for about as long as Hudson and Hannah continued giving me death glares on a minutely basis - which was to say, a while.

While he was off nursing his poor broken heart (I meant this in a sincere way - I think), I had spent time with Penny's group. By the time I had returned from America, school was already out for the year, so my relationship with Penny was not too public - yet. I knew how fast gossip could travel, and Jas did not seem like the type of person who could keep her mouth shut.