Starting Over / Shourtney

Chapter Nine: Bigger and Better

<Courtney POV>

The next few days passed slowly. Although I always complained about how much I needed a week off when we were working nonstop on our busy shooting schedule, lying around my house for the week was very unnerving. I was so used to going into the office every day that it felt weird to have nothing to do and nowhere to go.

I spoke with Ian on Monday night. We had a group skype chat with the rest of the squad and he told us that his first meeting with a potential parent company hadn't gone great. The company wouldn't be able to do what we needed it to do in order to get Smosh back on its feet. But he was still optimistic. He had a few more meetings lined up for the next week and he said he would let us know if something was happening.

Ian also updated us that Ryan wasn't coming in until Thursday. Which was a bit of a bummer for me because that meant I had nothing really to do until then. I hung out with my family on Sunday but they all had their own jobs to get to once the work week began and after another day home with nothing to do except take Jango for a walk, I ended up cleaning up my apartment. It was something that I hadn't done in a while, and I definitely needed to purge my wardrobe.

Feeling very adult, I finally flopped down on my couch on Tuesday night with 2 bags of garbage to dump and 2 bags of clothes packed up and ready to bring to the goodwill. On Wednesday morning, I texted Olivia to see if she wanted to come with me to drop my clothes off because I knew she had her own bag sitting around that she wanted to donate too.

As I waited for her to come pick me up, I found myself scrolling through old photos on my cell phone of the better days at Defy. I smiled to myself at a picture of me, Olivia and Shayne from a shoot day. Olivia was poking Shayne, he was making a crazy face, and I was laughing at their antics. It was an adorable picture and I selected it along with a few others to post on instagram. Even with all the problems I had with defy management, I missed the office already.

I got a notification that Olivia commented on my post, closely followed by a text message from her.

Olivia: Also, I'm outside bish

I grinned and quickly pulled on my shoes and grabbed by bags of clothes before rushing down the stairs to meet her. Olivia was looking down at her phone when I pulled open the door to her car and slid inside, awkwardly shoving the goodwill bags into the back seat.

"Hey! So, I'm dying for a coffee," Olivia exclaimed, as she looked up from her phone at me. "Starbucks?"

I readily agreed and we ended up picking up drinks from a drive through near my apartment complex. We had only just gotten our drinks and turned out of the lot when Olivia brought up the person who's been constantly on my mind for the past two weeks.

"So how did your talk with Shayne go?" She asked casually taking a sip of her drink. "We didn't really discuss it."

"It went good I guess."

"You don't sound very confident in that answer."

I sighed, shaking my head and settling back into the seat. "Our conversation was good... I guess I just don't know how I feel about it." I admitted. "We talked about how we weren't really expecting to kiss again and Shayne apologized to me."

"But didn't you initiate it?"

"Exactly!" I agreed, "I told him not to be an idiot and it was both our faults. And then basically I word barfed about how I really cared about him and didn't want to ruin our friendship, and that everything is just really crazy right now and I couldn't bare anything coming between us. And he agreed and said that he couldn't imagine losing me and that we needed to stick together. So, we decided that we would both just be ok."

"That's good though, right?" Olivia asked unsurely. "You guys are both on the same page and agreed that you wouldn't let anything ruin your friendship."

"I don't know Liv. I'm glad that we agreed and were able to put it behind us but I still don't know how I feel about it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean neither one of us spoke about how we felt about the kiss or why we even kissed to begin with, just that we should probably table it. We said we were upset, and we were drunk, but I was with lots of other friends those days and didn't feel the need to kiss any of them."

I took a breath, collecting my thoughts. To be honest at the time I was a little thankful that we didn't bring up feelings during our coffee house talk. After all I had been the one who had quickly said that we should ignore what happened for the sake of our friendship. Why did I do that?

I guess I didn't know what I really felt yet and analyzing our feelings would have made it more complicated, and more real. I was scared to dive into something I didn't understand with Shayne, and part of me was nervous to find out what he actually thought about it.

"That's true," Olivia agreed slowly. Her face looked unsure now and a little worried. I felt my own face heat up. Why did it bother me that me and Shayne had brushed our kiss under the rug? I wanted things to go back to normal, but I still felt confused about what had happened.

"Maybe I sort of regret pushing to ignore it. Am I being stupid?"

Olivia stared at me for a few moment's longer before finally saying, "Maybe you care about Shayne more than you realize."

We sat in silence as her words sank in. Did I like Shayne? Did I wish we were more than friends? My heart started beating faster as I thought of the possibility. I quickly shoved down my feelings.

"Anyway, enough about this," I said blushing as I pushed my hair behind me ears. "What have you been up to this week?"

"Well I went for an audition yesterday," Olivia said off handedly, her eyes still on the road in front of her.

"You did?" I asked, surprised at her productivity, given how I had basically spent the last three days inside my apartment.

"Yeah," she replied, as she checked her blind spot and switched lanes. "I got my manager to line up a few for me. They're mostly for indie films but I guess I'll see what happens."

We were pulling up in front of Good Will now and Olivia pulled over to the side of the road and threw her SUV into park. I felt a twinge in my gut. I was glad that Olivia had the opportunity now to audition for different roles, but part of me was upset that she had. It wasn't like all of us hadn't been doing auditions and side projects while we were still at Smosh. I mean look at Shayne, he's been a recurring character on the Goldbergs for a couple seasons. But I don't know, something about Olivia lining up auditions made my stomach hurt. Should I be doing that?

"That's really great Liv," I said out loud. On to bigger and better things, right?

She beamed at me. "I think so too."

It was a weird feeling that we could be moving on from this chapter of our lives. I was glad that we would be back to making videos tomorrow.

A/N: Who's excited to see dreamcatcher when it comes out?

So I know I haven't been super consistent in posting recently, as I've mentioned putting aside time to write has been a little tough, but don't worry I'm not going away, I'm just going to posting a little less frequently until I can't get back into it 😊

Also, I wanted to shout out my loyal consistent commenters on this story!

@bellishipper4567 @fatZebra123 @ScarlettScorpion13 @Autnmn @FFAddicted123 @Stemily4Life @LoveShayney @The4matt @Rebcac07 @NiXShadow23 @IShipShourtney @Fandom_Queen43va @SilvallyShourtney @OliviaDyson6

Damn there are a lot of you and I REALLY love hearing from all you guys and anyone else I missed. They make my day so really don't be afraid to spam my feed with comments lol