It's nice not having Tally-wa around, thought Shay. She then tried her very hardest to push it from her mind. It wasn't bubbly to talk about your best friend that way, even if it was just to yourself, especially not when she was trapped in the wild with a bunch of tree-burning, meat-eating, sweater-wearing crazy people.

Still, it was hard not to think like that when she was curled up in a pleasure garden, head on someone's bare chest and fingers laced through his. The last time she'd been this close to another person wasn't all that long ago, but it had been stuck somewhere in the back of her memory right up until she was trying to stifle her screams so she didn't scare any sneaky uglies that were hiding in the garden. What was she thinking when she decided that it would be a good idea to do the same thing with him? He might have been the first person she'd slept with, but she knew he would be the worst. He was ugly and lopsided and always smelled like smoke and never really looked at her after Tally-wa showed up and... ew. There wasn't any other way to describe him. Even his name was ugly-making: David. David. It didn't even come with a last name, just sat by itself, being weird and old-fashioned.

Not like Zane. Zane had a last name, one that she couldn't quite remember. Zane was the bubbliest person she'd ever met, even if he did say things that she didn't quite understand. Like "millihelens." She never bothered to ask what he meant, though. It didn't matter, because everything he said was pretty-making and he asked enough questions for the both of them.

And when he touched her, Zane made sparks. Not real sparks, obviously, because the mansions and pleasure gardens would never stand for that, but the kind that the silly books she'd read in the Smoke had talked about. No one else had ever made sparks. Not Tachs, who'd crawled through her dorm window one night and taken her hoverboarding and almost gotten them both killed when he'd suggested they both try to fit on one board, who had almost-but-not-quite tried to stay an ugly with her. Not Croy, who'd lied to her and told her she was pretty before her surgery. Not David. Definitely not David.

Just Zane.

Zane, who took her on all of his bubbly-making adventures through New Pretty Town.

Zane, who looked at her.

Zane, who was all hers, no matter what the other girl Crims pinged to each other at bashes.

Zane, who was more than enough to fill the Tally-shaped hole in her heart. With him, Shay didn't need anyone else. Tally-wa could stay in the wild, for all she cared. She could live an ugly life with David and do ugly things in ugly places and have ugly, tricky babies.

But that wasn't a very bubbly thing to wish for your own best friend, so she closed her eyes and waited for Zane to whisper "I love you, Shay-la" into her hair.


AN: The last time I read the Uglies series was a few months ago, at the very least, but this popped into my head today and wouldn't go away. Thank you for reading and humouring my plot bunny!