Shimmy Shammy Shazam! Summary for Chappie 16: Cash invites herself to Shoe’s house where she has a good cry over her big bro Elvis, who is convinced she should hook up with Wolf. Shoe successfully gets Cash to think this is a bad idea for all parties involved. A jetlagged Shoe is love-burgled by a love-lagged Luka at four in the morning. Scones, clotted cream, and kissy mayhem ensue.

Chapter 17; In Which I Blank

The telly is on in the background, left on the Discovery Channel. There is an alligator mauling a gazelle, and there’s quite some blood, and the narrator is commenting on all this in such a bland manner that the whole scene becomes a disturbing paradox. It distracts me from my kiss with Luka. Even as my face, in horrified expression, turns away towards the screen he catches my chin and starts turning it back in his direction.

“Not finished with you yet,” he informs me, his nose pressed against my nose. I rotate my face so that my eyelashes brush his cheek, and feel him smile. His kisses run cheek, jaw, chin, throat, neck, shoulder, leaving a trail of shivers in me. My left hand is on his arm, pushing its way up the sleeve of his t-shirt. My right hand is in the back of his neck, braiding my fingers in and out of his long hair. Both of my hands are very enthusiastic about the opportunities presented to them now; there is still so much skin to discover on this boy. I want to claim every inch of him, stake him out with little flags, build my colonies all over his form. Poets and singers have spoken about it but now I finally understand the concept of my lover’s body as a landscape. His hand slips under my shirt and traces little circles on the fatty tissue of my lower back. My own girliness thinks, “eww gross, fat!” as girls are trained to think, and I am embarrassed that he can feel the fat of me.

“You’re so soft,” he says, and the tone of his voice reassures me at least now that this softness is a good thing, not a gross thing.

“You’re just too boney.” I parry, to hide my blush.

“You must mean I’ve got too many rock hard muscles.”

“That must have been what I meant,” I respond flatly and he bites me on the tip of my ear. I yelp in surprise more than pain, since he barely put teeth into it. “You bit me!” I exclaim.

He laughs. “Just like the crocodile on TV,” he says and grins toothily at me.

“It’s an alligator,” I say and then immediately lose confidence that it is indeed an alligator.

“You have no idea,” Luka says warmly, “it could be a penguin and you’d still call it an alligator!” and my hand that is up his t-shirt sleeve pinches him stealthily. He jerks away from me. “Shoe! You little villain,” he shakes my hand out of his sleeve.

“There, that was my ninja-lover attack. Just what you needed.”

“It’s a crocodile. Stop being such a child about it.”

One of the amazing things about being in love with someone while they are in love with you is the way in which your being-in-love-ness can increase when you spend time with them. Even though I had thought I could never be more in love with Luka than I already was to begin with, the more he kisses me, the more I get to kiss him, the more I get to be myself, limitlessly, around him; so I grow more in love with him than humanly possible. It’s like in Dragonball, where even when all the characters have already been proclaimed to be the most powerful creatures on their planet if not their galaxy, somehow they manage to upgrade themselves to a higher level each time there is a new threat. My love for Luka is at Super Saiyan Level 3, at the least. Freezer doesn’t stand a chance in hell (even though it is Trunks who defeats him in the end. Purple hair vs. purple body armor has to happen somewhere).

He and I are lounging on my couch. The Pimp, in turn, is lounging on Luka’s knee. Every time Luka turns or shifts to get a better angle at kissing or nuzzling me, he nearly throws the cat off his lap. The Pimp takes it in stride and applies his own super saiyan skills by digging his claws into Luka’s leg (Luka, mid-kiss, mumbles: “Holycraphisnailsaresharp”). I am curled next to Luka. We are both dressed in our pajamas and wrapped up in the froggy fleece blanket I keep by my sofa. The remains of our breakfast rest on the coffee table before us. He made some more tea a little while ago, and the steam of the tea pot plays in the light of the documentary. The gazelle has been eaten now and the alligator (crocodile) is sunning and getting his teeth cleaned by an apparently suicidal bird. The narrator does not seem any less uninterested.

“The scones were awesome,” I say. I ate all of them. Luka had enough after just one; he says the cream and the strawberries and the general sweetness of it all reminded him of Barbies and Tea Parties and other things I used to force him to play with me. I am in such a benevolent mood I decide not to fake-complain about how when I eat pizza I am reminded of all the times he made me play Ninja Turtles with him. Luckily for Luka he brought quiche, so he eats that instead and feels slightly less emasculated. Neither of us have class until later in the day –I have Sociology, he is going to Literature. Until then, we plan to be prone like vegetables in my living room –like love-struck lazy cuddle-junky vegetables. I feel so cozy I might never want to move again (if not for issues like toilet, boiling water for tea, answering the phone, showering and getting a degree). How can people still function when in love? I wonder. I certainly don’t feel the motivation necessary to get me to class by one pm. I groan into Luka’s boney –sorry, rock hard, muscled shoulder.

He nudges me. “What is it.”

“I don’t feel like going to class.”

“Neither do I. Not unless I get to carry you around and kiss you and ignore the class because I am too busy kissing you.”

I snort. “Sounds like it might just work.”

He snorts back. “They’d never notice.”

“What time is it?”

He narrows his eyes at the digital numbers on my DVD player. “A little past eight am. Want to sleep some more?”

I don’t reply at first. I do actually want to go back to sleep for a while, but what do I do with him then? Send him home? Let him watch alligators (crocodiles) eating less toothy (and therefore, in a Darwinian sense, less viable?) animals while I snooze?

Let him sleep with me?

I acknowledge that this is where my real anxiety lies. The thought of lying in my bed next to Luka is exhilarating and extraordinarily tempting. But what if an invitation like that makes him think I’m asking him to tear all the clothes off me? What if he enthusiastically strips down before my eyes and confronts me with some more rock hard muscles? What if he waggles his eyebrows suggestively at me, grabs my ass, says something rude about my boobs? I realize I’m getting carried away, to have started projecting Jeremy-esque actions on someone like Luka.

His arm slides around my waist and I realize he’s probably still waiting for an answer. I look up at him mutely. How do I discuss this with him when I can’t even rationally think about it myself?

“Do you want me to go home?” he offers quietly.

“No,” I answer without thinking. So much for subtlety. “But… what would you do if I went back to bed for a while?”

He smiles slowly. “I couldn’t sleep last night, for thinking of stuff,” he says.

“Stuff,” I quote.

“You know, just stuff. Thinking about this girl I really like and stuff.”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s why I came over here at half past four in the bloody morning. So hypothetically I could do with some more sleeping myself.”

I nod. We’re both silent as we watch each other and calculate what to say next, to approach carefully the following subject. I open my mind to the possibility of his sleeping beside me without instantly turning into a hormone-crazed pervert.

“I’ll sleep on the sofa,” he says presently.

“But you don’t actually fit on the sofa,” I remind him.

“Last time I slept on the sofa with you sleeping on top of me on the sofa,” he reminds me back.

I grow a little red at the memory. All that was barely a month ago, but I feel like a different person now; like that happened to someone else, just some friend of mine. “That was so embarrassing.”

He smirks at me, kisses me leisurely, draws back and smirks some more. “You must feel especially guilty for kicking me out and telling me you wouldn’t see me for a month.”

I squint at him. “You must feel especially guilty. I already liked you then and you didn’t have the grace to even like me back.”

“I like you back now,” he says, eyes dark.

“You’re,” I start bravely, tempted by those eyes. It really oughtn’t to be so hard as this. “You can, I mean, if you like, that is…” Break for air. “You could come and sleep next to me.”

His smile fades and he just looks at me now.

“But you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I say uncomfortably.

“Oh I want to,” he replies immediately and moves to kiss me. Halfway to my mouth he seems to have second thoughts, and fixes me with a wide-eyed look. “Only if you really want me to though.”

“I do,” I say, wishing he wouldn’t make this so big a deal.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You can kick me out of your bed if you decide you want to.”

“I will if you don’t stop talking.”

Feeling extremely self-conscious, I head into my bedroom. I hear Luka behind me, removing a severely insulted Pimp from his leg and moving to follow me. Oh God, was this the worst idea ever? My heart is beating in such a manner it must be tearing holes in my lung tissue; my breathing has gone all funny and shallow.

In my bedroom I am confronted with my bed, and stand still by it to contemplate any following actions. Luka joins me at my side. The bed is still as he made it before my arrival from Japan, the water I spilled on it the other day having dried up without a trace. There is some cat hair on it, though. I brush at it determinedly.

He catches my waist from behind. “Haven’t you slept in your bed yet since you were back?”

“I fell asleep on the sofa both nights,” I say, deciding not to tell him the reason belying my first night’s encampment there. Saying I thought that he’d had sex with Natalie here on my bed would probably not be a great thing to further help progress our budding romance.

“I suppose you fit on your couch well enough,” he sounds amused. His arms haven’t let go of my waist yet. My heart hasn’t stopped attacking the surrounding organs yet. I bend over to pull down the covers of the bed, aware too late of the view this must give Luka of my bottom –he lets go of my waist as if he too has realized how I am bending over. His hands brush my hips very lightly. I ignore this and climb into bed. My bare feet slide between the cold sheets and send a shiver up my limbs. “Oh, the bed’s cold!” The story of my life every winter: terrible cold beds take so much time to warm up! So many hours I could have spent sleeping, I have had to spend on warming my bed up instead! I want to start complaining immediately of these lost hours, but a nagging feeling tells me the mood isn’t right for me to begin high-tension rants on cold limbs.

“Hold your horses,” Luka says and gets into bed beside me. His warm feet join my cold feet and he shudders. “You’re cold-blooded,” he informs me, not looking my way. “Just like that crocodile.”

“It was an alligator,” I protest, not looking at him either, “and they’re not reptiles but amphibians.”

“I thought frogs were amphibians.”

“But dinosaurs are reptiles.”

“Dinosaursare extinct. And besides, both reptiles and amphibians are cold-blooded.”

“You mean ectothermic.”

“I mean shut up.”

I sigh and we laugh. I still can’t look at him, that’s how nervous I am. He turns to lie on his side and looks at me. I ignore him. He props himself up on an arm and leans over me, making me look to him. “Hey dinosaur.”

“I’m not extinct,” I object, eyes flitting across and away from his face.

“No, I don’t suppose you are,” he says pensively. “But you are beautiful, just like an ectotherm.”

I turn bright red and frown at him. “That was the worst compliment ever.”

He laughs and kisses me. He keeps kissing me and I keep kissing him back, nervous but addicted. It’s been a long time since I’ve kissed while lying down, and since I didn’t exactly gain experience from the first time, it takes me a while to get used to the dynamics involved. At first, when we kiss while lying facing each other my nose keeps getting pressed to his nose, so we can’t breathe anymore and have to break apart. After a while of this Luka shifts to lean over me, not letting his weight hurt me while he gently lowers his face to mine. Being kissed from above is admittedly more comfortable, and I let out a happy sigh. He smiles through the kiss –shall we ever get enough of the other’s mouth? –but doesn’t retreat until what seems ten minutes later, when he lowers himself beside me and groans that his shoulders hurt. He stretches luxuriously and then turns back to face me. The light from the window has barely gotten brighter in the hours since he got here, and soft sounds outside indicate rain. The gentle autumn that had been in the country must have left with me when I went to Japan. Luka’s face is more than handsome in the blue light; his eyes jade-opaque and his lips soft around the line of his mouth. His angular hand moves to cup my cheek and play in my hair.

I can’t believe he’s lying in my bed with me, but he doesn’t seem to be going through any disbelief. I narrow my eyes at him. “Are you sure you want me to be your girlfriend?”

He blinks at me. “Well…have I really been unconvincing so far?”

“No. But it’s kind of a too-good-to-be-true story. You didn’t like me. You wanted me to date other guys at first, remember?” Straight for the romantic jugular. I must be a romance vampire; I am good at killing romance! Hiss!

“It’s just how I was, Shoe. All I knew was that our friendship was real, and I didn’t want anything unreal to force it apart. And don’t say stuff like ‘too-good-to-be-true’ because I can’t live up to expectations like that.”

I glance up in surprise to hear how his voice has turned solemn. “Sure you can. I’m in love with you, remember? Even if I am a vampire.”

“What?” he asks, lost.

“I suck at romance,” I joke, poorly.

His expression is long-suffering. “Just repeat what you said. About you being in love with me.”

“I’m in love with you.” I say, but can’t help but make a Dracula sort of teeth-baring hiss at him.

He snickers but kisses me from above some more. My hands are twining in his hair, and I move to bite his neck, all in character. Then I notice, however, he is being careful in not letting his lower body touch mine, and just thinking about that gets me nervous. My attention to the kiss falters and when it loses momentum he reclines beside me again, looking my way. Me, I am looking at the ceiling, unsure whether to gather my scattered thoughts or scatter them further, so it will be like I never thought them. What to do.

“Shoe,” he says.

I glance at him. His eyes are terribly dark and deep. “Do. You want to have. Sex?” I ask haltingly.

The silence in my bed is hesitant. He stares at me and I decide not to look away. “What? What exactly are you asking me?”

I take a breath to talk and falter again. There have to be a million ways to breach this subject and I of course choose one of the most obscure.

He slides a hand onto my bare stomach and leaves it there, even though the tingling will drive me crazy. “Shoe,” he makes me meet his eyes. “You think we need to talk about sex right now?”

“We already are,” I say hoarsely.

“Look, Shoe. You’re my favorite girl in the whole world.” He says this very flatly. “I’m crazy for you, and you’re ridiculously attractive. So yes, I want to have sex with you. At some point in time.”

I nod apprehensively. Oh dear. This confession is somewhat less innocent than yesterday’s.

“But…” he turns my bright-red face so that my eyes meet his. “I don’t want to be the only one wanting sex. And I’m not so dense that I can’t tell you don’t want it yet.”

I splutter in protest immediately, the weight of his accusation heavy upon me.

He interrupts me. “I don’t care,” he says. “It’s not like I’m used to having regular sex right now –I was single up to the last twenty-four hours anyway. I used to have a girlfriend who I, who I slept with, but that ended when I came to university.”

“You’ve been sexually repressed ever since,” I can’t help saying.

He doesn’t seem to appreciate the remark, somehow. “Don’t avoid this.”

I roll onto my side, facing away from him. Without his face to distract me I am suddenly aware of his body heat and his presence right behind me. There is a boy lying behind me in my bed –the boy who is tall and has longish black hair and probably-blue eyes and a wide smile who I have known for so long that his presence is nearly as familiar to me as my own, more comfortable than my parents’ or girlfriends’ presences. Do I feel upset despite that? Or because of it, because of the enormity of my regard for him? What can I say to him about sex?

“I don’t like talking about it.”

“You’re the one who started talking about it.”

“So what.” Seemingly, I am the one turning out to be repressed.

“So if we’re going to be together, we have to be able to talk about everything. Shoe, look at me.”

Reluctantly I turn back to him. His eyes are very serious now and I don’t like meeting them. I feel like a dumb little kid. Why did I have to start talking about sex?

“Do you understand?” he asks. I don’t like his voice being all straight and serious, I don’t like him having the upper hand. “If we don’t talk about everything, anything that bothers us, even dumb or embarrassing stuff, we’ll just be endangering our relationship?”

A part of me feels knowledgeable about this: every Japanese drama series I’ve ever watched, thrives on its main characters’ reluctance to ever tell each other anything. My friends and I spent high school shouting, “You fool! You have to tell him!” at the naïve female leads.

“I understand,” I concede. “I just don’t like talking about stuff like sex.”

“You silly Asian.” He says fondly. “You’re so prudish.”

I snort. “Hey, maybe it’s my British side. You can’t know.”

“Stiff upper lip huh?”

“You said ‘stiff,’” I joke, like I tend to do to Cash.

He smacks my shoulder and then pinches it and then pulls my hand to his face and kisses my palm. “I am going to have to get used to some parts of you.”

“Aren’t you already used to me?”

“Not as my girlfriend, yet.”

“Do you find me annoying?” I ask, dreading the answer.

“What? No. I find you adorable if not admirably stubborn.”

“Hmmm.”

“Did something bad happen to you once? Sexually?” He suddenly asks.

I pull my hand out of his. “No.”

“Tell the truth.”

“Nothing bad happened.”

“Have you slept with a guy before?”

I let out an agitated sigh. “Does it matter?”

“Look,” he sits up and looks down at me. Seeing him so serious while in pajamas in my bed is just weird. His hair is all rumpled and for a moment he looks like one of the man-candy models that are featured in every Cosmo magazine. I resist congratulating myself. “It’s not like I was hoping that I’d be the one to rob you of your virginity or anything. I don’t care if you’ve already been with someone else. As long as you haven’t been traumatized by some asshole along the way. Like Jeremy,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Jeremy never did anything.” I say and pull Luka down beside me. “Now leave me alone and let’s sleep for a while. I promise you I was never sexually assaulted or anything terrible like that. I’ve been a lucky girl so far.”

He doesn’t look satisfied but nods to me and gives me a kiss. I kiss him back, but shyly now, with the weight of our talk in it. This will take some getting used to yet.

“You’re my best friend, you know that, right?” I tell him. One of his long arms settles comfortably over my abdomen.

“I know.” He says. “And you are mine.”

We don’t say anything after that and I hear his breathing change. Jealously, I realize that my own brain has refused to shut down, and with the soft rain outside and the unchanging grey of the sky, my thoughts scatter and fall about. Getting together with the guy I like would bring me many things, and one of them would be sex –this is something I could have foreseen. Somehow I had managed to avoid the subject successfully even within the unlimited fantastical resources of my own mind, and now the reality is as confronting as an alligator which may or may not be a crocodile, a reptile which may or may not be an amphibian, but which is definitely eating other animals.

“I can’t believe you and Luka finally got together,” Stan flushes excitedly. “Right after you get back from Japan, too! I knew it was just a matter of time before you’d melt his heart.”

When I saw Stan in class, before, there seemed to be no signs left of yesterday’s frustration and weariness. Her blond hair is in a chunky plait down the right side of her face and she’s wearing a flowery dress that would make her look about ten years old if she weren’t so tall. She’s beaming at me. I beam back.

We are seated at the counter at Monkies. The waitress that helped us yesterday is doing her round and ignoring us pointedly. I am enjoying what will probably be the last ice coffee I drink this year, in ritual mourning of the onset of cold weather. Stan has a glass mug of hot water filled with green leaves. The fresh smell of the mint tea is delightful, but it clashes with my own creamy coffee’s smell like having to listen to two different songs being sung at the same time.

I give her the details leading up to the Talk and the breakfast, trying to glaze over the part where she and Cash stormed out one after the other. She shakes her head self-consciously. I try to cut her off, really not wanting to hear an apology, but she gives me one anyway. “I know you guys were trying to help me with Wolf.”

“With that little sleep, you were even more jetlagged than me.”

She laughs. “Poor Cash, too. She went to bed broken last night.”

“Mm,” I remain non-committal. If Cash hasn’t talked to her about what happened yesterday, I don’t bet I should spill either. “Is she still joining us later? You messaged her, right?”

“She’ll be late, she was at the library. Said she was doing research.”

“For what paper?”

Stan gives me a conspiratorial smile. “I think she was referring to a hot guy. She said she was going to look for a living Norse god.”

“Oh well.” Cash bounces back so quick, I wonder why I even bother worrying about her. But it’s a relief she apparently isn’t giving herself a hard time about her habits.

“With all the drama going on, you still haven’t told me all your Japan stories,” she prods me. “My tea’s too hot to drink, so make it long.”

I laugh and tell her about my three-week stay. My best friends from high school took me to the clubs they frequented and introduced me to their newest friends. We spent hours in restaurants ordering familiar, and bizarre, food –Tokyo constantly has weird trends going in and out of vogue. It had been difficult for me to see that Tomomi and Yae had grown a lot closer to each other, while they had grown apart from me; unavoidable for friends living on different continents. The three of us still had chemistry, but they had details and a familiarity with each other which I had now developed with Stan and Cash instead. Here was again the knowledge that I had two homes and felt foreign in both places. I was reminded of how strange it had been to at last come back to Europe, for university. Europe where Luka was. But then my family was back in Japan… even though they liked coming over here… it was an eternal back-and-forth, fifty-fifty sort of deal.

I can’t be in two places at the same time, which is why I’m grateful my parents pay for things like plane tickets.

Stan smiles knowingly, and asks about my grandfather. She knows he and my grandmother are divorced, and his love for jazz amuses her. “Did you see him again too? Does your mother still see him?”

I shrug. My parents do still visit him, but my grandmother is very determinedly uninterested in ever seeing him again. “My grandma says she hopes she dies first so she can come back to haunt him. She says if he dies first, it’ll piss her off because she’ll have to pay respects and leave gifts at his grave or else his vengeful spirit will invade her house and drive her crazy with its dirty, lazy habits.”

“Adults aren’t necessarily more mature than we are,” Stan muses.

“I think they just give up after a while,” I agree.

She stares at her mug. “I think something like that may be going on with Wolf.”

“He’s stopped maturing?” I can’t resist the joke. But we’re in deeper water now.

She looks at me; the bangs hiding her eyebrows make her look extra scared. “His parents are maybe splitting up.”

“Oh. Crap. That’s really crap.” Yes, and so is my choice of words at a time like this. “Had you met his parents before?”

“No. Wolf never talks about his family.”

“Seriously? Not even to you?”

She shakes her head.

“I had thought you, as his girlfriend, knew everything by now. He seems so open…” my brain has blanked out in surprise at this. I thought I knew Wolf quite well. Luka never gave the impression that his friend was closed, either. “If he never talks about his family, how do you know his parents are having trouble?”

“I’m not sure,” she says hesitantly, “but sometimes he gets phone calls. I don’t understand the German… or Austrian… the language, he speaks when he’s on the phone. But he always sounds kind of upset. And when I ask him, he just says everyone back home is melodramatic.”

“Crap,” I say fruitlessly.

Stan stares at the counter top and listlessly stirs her tea. The big green leaves swirl around the mug. They look like they’re having fun, as if they were in a roller coaster or something.

“We should go to an amusement park sometime,” I think out loud. “It’d be good for us. We can do a triple-date. Cash can bring her living Norse God.”

Stan seems to like the idea. “What about Nathan? He’d feel left out.”

“We need an even number for the roller coaster though, otherwise someone would always have to sit alone.” I argue logically.

“I don’t think the boys would have a problem with that,” Stan offers. “And otherwise we can always tell Nathan to bring a girl. Or we could ask Elvis.”

“I wonder if Elvis does roller coasters,” I wonder. “He sure doesn’t do soda pop and hot dogs.”

“Then he can bring sandwiches,” Stan says cheerfully, flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder. “I think it’s a great idea, Shoe.”

I take a proud sip of my coffee and choke on the last bit as Cash flings her arms around me from behind.

“Miss me?!” she demands.

“NO” I gasp.

Stan laughs. “We were talking about going to an amusement park all together. Us, and invite Nathan and Elvis too. You could bring your living god.”

Something flashes in Cash’s eyes as she unties her scarf. “Then we should hurry if we want to go before the parks close for the winter.”

Stan and I gasp at each other. “They close for the winter!”

Cash seats herself to my right and orders a coffee. “And I don’t know if I’ll bring my Norse god. I might just have to keep him to myself.”

“Like you always do,” scoffs Stan.

Cash doesn’t react to that. “Do you want to know his name? It’s so cute!”

Stan starts guessing. “Lars? Nils? Sven? Bjørn? Borg? Baldur?”

“Legolas?” I try.

Cash’s eyes go flat at us. “Nice, you geeks. But it’s Tobias, and he’s gorgeous.”

I fight a laugh. “Where did you find him?”

“At the library, while I was studying,” she says innocently. Her coffee arrives and she thanks the waitress, who excuses herself without making eye contact. Cash raises an eyebrow at us. “More importantly, Shoe…does Luka know your one Secret Heart yet?”

I cock my head at her. “My what?”

She sighs. “Have you guys screwed each other’s brains out already?”

I flinch. “Not yet.”

“You disappoint me.”

“Well sorry.”

“How about Natalie then? Tell me at least that’s over and done with. What did Luka say about talking to her?”

I stare blankly at my lack of coffee.

“He did talk to her, right, Shoe?”

“I didn’t get to… we didn’t get around to talking about that. But I’m sure it’s alright.” I recover.

Stan looks at me worriedly, but Cash smirks and says, “I suppose it’s a good thing you didn’t get around to talking. Anyway, since I left you with the bill yesterday and since you haven’t gotten yourself aptly laid yet, let’s have some chocolate orgasms, huh?”

“Three cheers,” Stan and I agree enthusiastically. A day not Caked© is a day not lived, after all.

But I resolve to ask Luka later on, how he did solve the problem that is Gnat. Nothing to worry about, but a little closure would be nice nonetheless. And then I can propose going to an amusement park all together. It will definitely be fantastic.

A/N: yeah, my brain was hacked into by an alien who likes chick lit, so here’s an update way earlier than any of you expected. I hope you like the amount of L/S kissing it contains. As to Shoe’s anxiety in regard to sex, I hope none of you feel like she’s just some silly prude who wants to stay pure (as she said last chapter, she isn’t a virgin). There must be a reason, of course, for her less-than-willingness, but I’m also trying to ring some bells here. So much of what I read nowadays has young kids all knowledgeable and practicing as if it’s the simplest little pleasure in the world. And I know that it really isn’t. So I’m trying to regain some of the nervousness and sense of displacement that sex can instill in me sometimes. I know some of the readers are seasoned in bodily pleasure, but some are also still virgins, so I’m trying not to smooth over sex as if it is a given, and as if everyone should know how to behave about it, because it isn’t and we don’t. And I don’t want no one accusing me of being a dried-up old bat. I use moisturizer!

Next, I’d quickly like to tell you guys to check out the author Scenezz. She’s got a promising story up and running and deserves more attention than she’s been getting. So go with my blessing.

Thank-yous:

First off, another two communities added me, here they are, check them out!

Island of the Romanced

The Shiz Naz (that means this is the best, read it)

(I want to tell all the C2 people that you’re coming up with awesome names, by the way)

Next, thanks to those of you who want to screw Luka. One reviewer said she didn’t feel attracted to Luka, but more like happy for him and Shoe, and I really liked that too. Cool to hear people saying different things. Those of you who want more drama, you must know by now that for this story, there will be no obscene, explicit drama with public Jerry Springer fights. But there will still be drama –as much as a lazy pacifist like me can provide.

SLy –darkgurl92 –chic rebel –Kim Bell –Boo –noriepie –DSLuverGurl123 –White Rose Blossom –L-o-l-a –shadowgirl618 –atreyu love –thisnamecantpossiblybetaken –wandless –Serena –Saphimire Karishnikova –T! –Twinkle Star Bell –SecretHeart01 (I hope you don’t feel violated by your cameo!)

Krissy: falling in love with the best friend really is hell, isn’t it? Why am I writing this!?

Dancingqueen527: you’re sweet. Go ahead and change your name, I think your readers will forgive you! I think it’s a great nick.

Olivine: thanks for adding me to your C2! I don’t know if you read my response to your review in the last chapter, but yes, I know and love Diana Wynne Jones, and Ghibli films. It’s cool you picked up on that!

Katieee: your review was so awesome.

Shake Hips Not Fists: Elvis was wrong about Cash loving Wolf romantically. And your nick is so cool!

Tsed: thanks! I did make her brutal. I hope it’s not altogether normal, but we know people do weird stuff in the name of love…

Anneliese: your review was lovely. I wish I could write as fluently in Japanese, but English is the only language of my heart (how corny is that). I really like your name, is it your real name? It sounds Dutch or German.

A.K.A. Writer’s Block: whoo, someone who wants to nominate me for SKOW?! I should give you cookies but we might be on different continents. Thanks for your review :)

Hope I didn’t leave anyone out. See you next round!