A/N: I realized I have only touched on the subject of Lilly's parents getting their divorce in my other missing moments, so I thought the subject deserved its own one shot. I would have to put this sometime at, or even after, the end of the first season. And, while the plot device of one friend sneaking into another's room in the middle of the night seems to be overly used in teen dramas, I think it works for Lilly and Oliver.
Split
It was after eleven o'clock on a Sunday night and Oliver Oken had just finished taking a shower and telling his mother he would see her in the morning when he walked in on the sight of a blond girl attempting to climb into his bedroom window in the pouring rain. A blond girl in pajamas who lived next door and who was normally in bed by now. Her slip-on sneaker caught on the edge of his window sill and she tumbled to the floor in a not so graceful heap. He paused in the middle of his attempt to dry his hair with the towel clutched in his hand.
"What was that?" Nancy Oken asked Oliver from just down the hall, on her way to her own bed. She could not actually see into his room from her current angle and Oliver was grateful.
The girl gave a slight "eep!" as she tried to stand up and found herself entangled in a blue and white print quilt that had been hanging off the side of the mattress. She tossed her arms around, trying to regain her footing.
"I tripped. Knocked over my garbage can." Oliver nodded his head, quickly adding, "Night mom" before shutting his door behind him. He almost did knock over his garbage can as he stepped on the hem of the sweat pants that were just a little too long for him. "Lilly, what are you doing?" he hissed in the direction of the blond girl. "We have a front door. I know you know how to use it. You're over here almost everyday."
She poked her head up at him from the area of the floor on the other side of his bed where she fell and mumbled, "I didn't want to bother your parents." Her eyes were red and the flesh on her arm was raised from either the rain outside or coolness of the room, most likely a combination of the two.
"Here," he tossed the towel he had been using to dry his hair in her direction. She was always cold when she came over, and since she just climbed up the side of his house against what was probably a fast moving waterfall coming from his roof, he figured she probably needed it more than he did. "You're making a small lake on my carpet."
"Sorry," Lilly muttered while she tried to dry off her limbs. "I forgot it was raining when I climbed out my window."
"Forgot?" Oliver was apparently talking to himself, since she never answered him.
Privately, Lilly was thinking that rain always accompanied the worst days of her life. The day her favorite grandparent was hit by a school bus? Raining. The day her father told her she was going to be a big sister? Raining. The first time Joanie Palumbo walked in to her second grade class? That day they might as well have been caught in a monsoon. Most of that day had been spent huddled in the cafeteria with a bunch of other students playing the "quiet game" until the storm advisories passed. The week her parents told her they were separating had been full of scattered showers. She despised rain storms.
Oliver walked over next to her and shut the window carefully, not wanting to make too much noise. Unfortunately, carefully meant slowly, which meant the rain continued to pour into his room. When he turned to Lilly, the front of his Seaview Middle tee shirt was splattered with drops of water.
"What are you doing here?" He said the words quietly and just as carefully as he had closed the window, not wanting to upset her, since it was evident she was not having a very good night based on the way she was angrily pulling at her hair with the towel now.
"I didn't want to stay there anymore." There was a rumble of thunder after her words and Oliver glanced back outside.
"What did you do? Climb down the drain pipe? Are you nuts? Lilly, there's lightning out there." He found himself silently thanking whatever gods were keeping an eye on his best friend for her Spiderman-like climbing skills. Otherwise, he would have been dealing with the wrath of Lilly's mother when her daughter fell off the side of the house, his or hers, it did not really matter which. Kind of like that time he jumped off the roof to see if he could glide from one to another like Batman, forgetting that he did not have the same tools as the caped crusader. Mrs. Oken had not been amused when he broke his left arm in three places, but Lilly had thought he was hilarious. In her defense, they were only six.
She shrugged her shoulders in response to the question he almost forgot he asked. Holding the towel in front of her, Lilly crossed her arms and just looked at him. She was wearing a thin black tank top and a pair of small blue flannel shorts, not the ideal clothing for a late night climb in the rain. Oliver sighed and, kneeling down, opened the bottom drawer of his dresser. After a few minutes he emerged with an old pair of grey basketball shorts and an even older white cotton tee depicting a list of names who attended an Oken Family Reunion three years earlier. He shoved the items into her hands.
"I can't believe you climbed out of your window in a storm," he muttered, again, mainly to himself.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" She asked him incredulously. "And how big is this shirt? This is too big even for you." She held the shirt in front of him. They probably both could have fit in the shirt, with room to spare.
"It was the last size they had when we got to the reunion that year. My mom stopped and talked to every cop she saw about the crime rate in the area on our drive from the airport, so we were the last people to get there." Oliver snatched it back from her hands. "Hang on," he muttered as he rummaged around in the drawer again. This time he came up with another white tee shirt with yellow words across the chest proclaiming "May the force be with you." He handed it to Lilly and she giggled, momentarily distracted from her own problems by Oliver being the dork he usually was.
He tried to scowl at her response, but could not really make himself angry when she looked like she had been crying before he found her falling through his window.
"Really, why are you giving me clothes?" she asked.
"So you can put them on. You're cold, right? I don't want you to freeze." He shrugged, and she took the offered clothing from his hand.
It took her a moment to realize that he was not telling her she needed to go home and that he had stopped criticizing her for scaling the building, but then she understood what he was asking. And he was right. Her skin was like ice. "Umm…"
"Oh, right." Oliver took the towel from her and walked to the other side of the room where he threw it over the back of his desk char. Turning to stare at a wall, he quickly said, "I won't look." Because he was facing the other way, Lilly could not see the shade of red that had flooded his face.
She changed with lightning speed and set her clothes on top of the damp spot her shoes had left on his carpet, hoping they would dry.
"Thanks," Lilly told him quietly. She was looking at those shoes where she had placed them next to her clothes when he turned around, biting her lip as though she did not know what else to say.
"So, I guess you're staying here then?" He asked, not wanting to push her, but his curiosity was going to get the better of him shortly if she did not explain herself.
"Oliver," came a voice from outside his door. "I thought you were going to bed. You've got school tomorrow!"
The doorknob started to turn and Lilly dropped to the floor, making considerably less nose than the last time. She grabbed her clothing, pulling it under the bed with her, just as Nancy Oken opened the door.
Oliver stood frozen in the middle of the room, not really knowing what to do. The last time Lilly snuck into his room in the middle of the night, his mom figured out she was there in a matter of minutes and sent her to the guest room, making sure to call the Truscotts and let them know that Lilly was okay. Of course, that time, Mrs. Truscott had also discovered Lilly was not in her bed when she tried to check on her. It was the night Lilly found out her parents were splitting up, and had been more than six months ago. Other than that, even though he was a fourteen-year-old boy, he was not all that familiar with the concept of hiding a girl under his bed.
"Oliver?"
"I am," he told his mom after recovering his voice. "I was just trying to figure out what goes better with my cargo pants. The blue polo or the red? What do you think mom?" He pointed to the first things he saw in his open closet, then quickly turned his hiccup into a cough.
"I think you should go to sleep and not worry so much about your clothes," she scolded. Shaking her head, she flipped his light switch off as she closed the door behind her. "Teenagers," he heard her mutter as she walked away from the door. Oliver waited a moment to be sure his mom was gone, and then for his eyes to adjust to the dark.
"Lilly?" he whispered.
She rolled out from under his bed, furiously running her hands through her blond hair. It had already started to tangle from being in the rain, but apparently the trip underneath his mattress did even less for it.
"Ugh. Don't you ever clean under there?"
"Sometimes. I'm not used to having people under there," he snapped back at her.
Lilly climbed on to his bed and sat Indian style, still trying to get all of the dust bunnies from her hair. Oliver tried not to stare at her when lightning flashed outside, illuminating his room.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing," was what came out of his mouth, but his head was screaming at him that Lilly Truscott was on his bed wearing his clothes in the middle of the night. Lilly Truscott was his best friend, he reminded himself. She was not a girl to be ogled. But the thought that his best friend was wearing his clothes because she had snuck out of her house and into his room during a thunder storm, and was now sitting on his bed, in the middle of the night, would not go away.
The thoughts also crossed his mind that she looked pretty when her hair was a mess and that his clothes did not look as good on him as they did on her. Of course, he already knew that last part since she had made a habit out of stealing his favorite tee shirts from him since they were about eight. He briefly wondered if she still had the two Batman shirts she "borrowed" from his closet in the seventh grade, or if she even kept the UCLA shirt his cousin had originally given to him that Lilly then stole over Spring Break when she was ten. Oliver's eyes wandered when she stretched her arms above her head, and he forced himself to focus. He pushed all thoughts of how amazing his best friend looked out of his mind and instead focused on why she was there. His thoughts of questioning her were also pushed aside when she opened her mouth.
"I'm sorry," Lilly told him again.
"What? For what?"
"For bothering you in the middle of the night." She sighed, placing her hands in her lap. Her right was now picking at the nail polish on her left. "I know I should go home, but I really don't want to. She's there."
Confusion crossed Oliver's face again and he moved to sit next to Lilly. "Who's there?"
"My mom," Lilly told him as though it was obvious.
"Oh. What did she do?" When Lilly and her mother fought, Oliver had learned a long time ago to always assume it was Heather Truscott's fault.
"Nothing. She just let him go." Lilly threw her hands up and fell backwards on to the comforter.
"Lilly, I'm gonna need you to start at the beginning cause I have no idea what you're talking about." Oliver turned around on the bed and watched her carefully. He could not be sure since it was so dark in his room now, but he thought that she might be ready to cry, which was going to be a major concern, because for almost as long as he could remember, Lilly Truscott did not cry. She yelled and she threatened revenge, occasionally threw things at you, but she did not cry. At least, not in front of him, and not unless she broke a bone.
Lilly took a deep breath and Oliver tried not to watch the rise and fall of his shirt on his best friend. "They signed all the paper work. It's done. They aren't married anymore." Her voice was flat and she was staring at his ceiling where he still had a single glow in the dark star from his brief obsession with the solar system in the third grade. She thought he had managed to scrape them all from the painted surface, but there was still one left.
Oliver waited, knowing that if he interrupted now she probably would not be able to finish the story.
"She didn't actually tell us at first. I saw the stack of papers sitting on the counter after dinner. I waited until after my brother went to bed before I asked her about them. Three long hours of me wanting to say something. All she said was 'oh, yeah, we finished everything.' And then she told me that my dad was going to be picking up the rest of his stuff this weekend." Lilly's voice finally broke and she rolled on to her side, facing away from Oliver. Her breath hitched when she tried to keep going. "When I got mad, she yelled at me. Yelled. Like I'm not supposed to be mad. She doesn't even care. How can you be married to someone for fourteen years and then just not care when they leave?" Her voice was a whisper and Oliver could hear her trying to control her voice, but he knew the tears were there.
He let her go for a few minutes, but he hated hearing her cry. He only managed to catch a few words that sounded like "stupid" and "horrible." It seemed like stupid was being repeated a lot, but Oliver was unsure if Lilly was referring to her mother or herself.
"Lilly…" He sighed, then grabbed her arm to turn her back to face him. It showed just how upset she was that she did not even fight it. Lilly always fought him. "It's gonna be okay. I know it sucks, but you know, you can still go see him."
"No, you don't know." Lilly sat up now, facing him. There was an angry edge to her voice. "You're parents are so happy. They're crazy and they don't look like they would work, but they're perfect for each other. My parents hate each other."
"I'm sorry," Oliver said softly. "I didn't mean I know, like, I get it, I just meant…"
"I know what you meant." Lilly deflated a little bit, wiping the tears from her cheeks that she wished would just disappear. She desperately wanted to stop crying, but it was like there was no end to it.
"Lilly," Oliver tried again, "would you really want him to stay if they aren't happy?"
"No. No, I know they aren't happy. I don't think they were ever happy together. I almost wonder why they even got married in the first place." Oliver started at her words. "I just wish… I wish they were more like your parents," she said to her lap.
"No you don't." Oliver laughed a little. "Have you forgotten about my mom's man voice? Or that she made me take off my pants in the school parking lot? Or that my dad likes to pretend he's John Travolta when he chaperones school dances? Or…"
"I get it," Lilly told him giggling through her tears when she brought her eyes up to meet his. "Your parents are embarrassing. But they're fun." She shrugged her shoulders. She was too amused picturing Oliver and his mother arguing in the school parking lot over the state of his pants to be too upset that she was crying in front of him right now. He always knew how to distract her. She looked away from him and her eyes lighted on a shape above his bed. "Remember this?" She shifted to her knees and lifted a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap from the post on his head board. There was a long tear down one side of the cap.
"Of course I remember. It was my first baseball game ever and I had to share my cotton candy with you. I was so mad." Oliver shook his head as he thought about it.
"It was a Father's Day game, and my dad and I went with you and your parents. Your mom went into labor in the fourth inning and your parents didn't want to leave until it was over." She grinned, poking her finger through the slit in the cap.
"Yep, my little brother was almost born in a baseball stadium. My dad decided it was time to leave when my mom almost ripped the cap he bought me in half while she was trying to sit still. And I got to go home with you and your Dad until my parents said I was allowed to come to the hospital, which wasn't until the next afternoon." Oliver chuckled at the memory and Lilly smiled again.
Her smile fell though when she said, "when my mom had my little brother, she went to the hospital two days early. She had everything all planned out, down to the minute he would be born." She went back to scratching at the nail polish on her fingers, the cap sitting on one of her knees.
"I remember that too. You spent that whole weekend with your mom's parents. Your mom didn't want you to stay here because… I think it was because you kicked Chad in the shin for me at recess one day." Oliver nodded his head in satisfaction at the memory. Even though he had not been able to see his best friend for a few days, when they went back to school on Monday, Chad had a Lilly-sized shoe print on his leg in a lovely shade of purple.
"Yeah, she thought you were a bad influence. My dad had to convince her to let me see you outside of school the next week." Lilly shook her head in disbelief.
"Obviously, they didn't know you were the one corrupting me," Oliver said cheekily.
"Oh, obviously. Cause it was my idea to sneak into all those Hannah Montana shows last year and all."
Lilly managed another small smile. Her tears were finally spent and the rain was slowing as well. They had not noticed any thunder since Oliver sat down on the bed, but neither of them were really paying attention either.
They did, however, hear a floorboard creak from down the hall when the conversation paused. Lilly's eyes widened and she prepared to dive under the bed again, throwing the cap on to the side table next to the bed, but Oliver grabbed her arm to hold her still. After a few minutes they did not hear anything else. They let out identical sighs of relief.
"It's getting late, and my mom doesn't appreciate it when people break and enter."
"I didn't break anything," Lilly informed him. "And it would serve you right since you never lock your window anyway. But, you're right, I should probably go." Lilly stood up and headed for her pile of pajamas, but Oliver grabbed her arm again.
"I just meant we should go to sleep. You can stay here. You just have to go home before your mom gets up." He was not entirely comfortable with the idea of Lilly spending the night in his room. In fact, he was pretty sure he would not be sleeping at all knowing she was there.
"Oh." Lilly hovered indecisively over the edge of the bed, as if she did not know whether to accept the invitation or not.
Oliver stood up, pulled one of the pillows off his bed, threw it to the floor, and began to do the same with a blanket.
"What are you doing?" Lilly asked him, her hands on her hips as she stood up to her full height.
"Sleeping on the floor."
"Why?"
Oliver looked at Lilly as though she were from another planet.
"So you can sleep in the bed."
"Oliver, I'm not going to kick you out of your own bed," she informed him. "What kind of friend do you think I am?"
"A friend who's a girl. I'm not letting you sleep on the floor. My mom would kill me if she knew I made you sleep on the floor." Oliver pulled the blanket closer to him, trying to dislodge it from the sheets on his bed. Lilly grabbed the other end and held on.
"Would your mom have to arrest herself if she did that?" Lilly tried to tease him, but he did not look like he was going to budge. She groaned. "You wouldn't be making me sleep anywhere. I'm offering. And your mom is not supposed to know that I'm sleeping here, remember?" She tugged the blanket in her direction.
"Lilly, stop it," he hissed at her, trying to pull it back toward him.
"Don't be a doughnut," she hissed back.
He stopped pulling on the blanket, momentarily surprised. "I thought I was always a doughnut."
"Not tonight." She held the fabric firmly in her hands.
"You are not sleeping on the floor," he repeated, but he was smiling now. Lilly saying he was not a doughnut tonight was her way of buttering him up, and it was working, kind of. He realized that it was a little ridiculous to be having a tug-of-war over his bed with his best friend in the middle of the night, so he made a decision. His cheeks colored when he told her, "We'll just share."
"Share what? Your bed?" Her voice was a little higher than normal and her cheeks colored as well when he nodded. "We haven't slept in the same bed since…"
"Since you started wearing a bra," he finished blandly. "I remember the conversation with my mother very well. Can we please not talk about it? It was bad enough the first time."
In spite of her discomfort, Lilly laughed along with him, remembering his mother's "Lilly, you're growing up now…" speech and let go of the blanket.
"Sleepovers have never been the same," she remarked shaking her head. She laid down on the side of the bed closest to the window and her clothing, just in case she had to make a break for it in the middle of the night, and Oliver set his alarm for just before sunrise so she would have a chance to get home before anyone else woke up.
"Just make sure you use the door when you go home," he told her as he climbed into bed.
"No way. I might wake someone up."
Oliver groaned, imagining Lilly trying to climb out of his window before the sun came up when everything would still be wet from the rain. It was enough that she had managed to do it once, but twice would be pushing her luck.
They lay on their backs for a few minutes, not saying anything, as far from one another as they could be in Oliver's bed. He knew he suggested going to sleep, but he was too wired to shut his eyes now and the whole thing was more awkward that he would have expected. It's just Lilly, he tried to remind himself. But again, his boy brain had turned on him and his mind was screaming at him that Lilly Truscott was wearing his clothes and was in his bed with him, but now, he did not really have anything else to focus on to take his mind away from that. Not that he was unhappy that she stopped crying. A crying Lilly was never a good thing. He thought back to her earlier rant about her mother and something occurred to Oliver that he had to know the answer to.
"Lilly?"
"Hmm?"
"Your dad still has that apartment in L. A. right?" He turned on his side so he could see her face.
"Yeah, why?" Her tone was a little confused, but Oliver sighed in relief.
When Lilly's father moved out, he signed a lease for a one bedroom apartment closer to the accounting firm he worked for. One bedroom. As in, not enough space for Lilly and her brother to move in.
"It's just… you're staying with your mom, right?"
Lilly rolled over to face him in surprise. "Of course. We didn't really get a choice. And, my dad wanted us to stay in the same schools and everything."
"What if you had a choice?" Oliver whispered. His eyes searched hers in the dark.
"What do you mean?" Lilly stared right back at him, not understanding where this was coming from.
"If your dad had a bigger place and he could switch you to another school district, would you go? Or would you stay with your mom?" And me, was silently added in his head.
"I never really thought about it." Lilly closed her eyes for a minute and Oliver thought that was all the answer he was going to get. "I'd stay with my mom," she mumbled softly. Her eyes were open again but she was no longer looking at him. She pulled the sheets up to her chin, unconsciously shifting closer to him.
"Good." The word came out before Oliver registered that he was even thinking it and a grin snaked its way across Lilly's face.
"What's the matter, Ollie? Did you think I would abandon you and you'd have to help Miley with her schemes all alone?"
She had been teasing, but Oliver was serious when he responded, "the thought crossed my mind." He did not even add the customary "don't call me Ollie" that Lilly was used to.
"Nah. I can't leave. Where am I ever going to find a doughnut who's as much fun to hang out with as you?" She poked him in the stomach to get him to smile.
"I thought you said I wasn't a doughnut tonight," he remarked, trying to catch her hand so she would stop poking him.
"Right. How about… a danish?" Her hand stilled in the middle of the bed.
"What?"
"A cheese danish," she clarified. "Fantastic pastry on the outside, but full of cheese."
Oliver sighed, dropping his own hand next to hers. "I know I should be insulted, but I think that's better than being a doughnut."
Lilly giggled and shut her eyes. "Goodnight, Oliver."
"Night." He fell asleep a long time after she did though. He spent most of his night just watching her sleep, hoping that she did not change her mind.
When Oliver awoke to the sound of his alarm clock buzzing in his ear, he immediately hit the snooze button and moved to nudge Lilly awake, but she was no longer in his bed. There was a moment of panic as he looked around his room trying to see if her clothes were still there, but they were not. His first thought was that his mom found her and freaked, but he would have heard something like that. He got up to turn on the light and saw a piece of paper folded over the brim of his baseball cap.
O-
Thanks for letting me stay with you. Don't worry, I used the back door, not the window. I'm not going to be Spiderman on a regular basis. I don't like spiders. By the way, if my mom catches me, I'm making you go to boarding school with me. And you should wear the blue shirt. The red one's ugly.
-L
P.S. Thanks for the new clothes.
Oliver shook his head as he realized he had lost two more articles of clothing to the girl next door, and this time she had not even had to steal them. Oh, well, he reasoned with himself, this time was definitely worth it.