A/N: If I owned Hannah Montana, there would have been a scene similar to this in the episode "Joanie B. Good." (So, obviously, set during that episode.)
Truce
Lilly stared out at the darkness from Miley's deck. It was almost one in the morning, and here she was, leaning against the wooden railing with Joanie Palumbo not two feet from her side. Joanie Palumbo, her nemesis since the second grade, was who she had been hanging out with for the last hour since Miley fell asleep on the living room floor. What was she thinking? Oh, right. To prevent Joanie from putting Miley's bra in the freezer, Lilly had spontaneously suggested a…
"I thought you wanted to have a spitting contest, Truscott. If we're not doing that, I could just go get Stewart's bra again."
Right, they were supposed to be seeing who could make their saliva go the furthest, but instead, Lilly was staring out into space, thinking about just why she had to hang out with Joanie Palumbo. Oliver Oken. It was all his fault. Everything was always his fault. Always. Stupid boy. Ugh. She wished she understood how he could do this to her. Did it have to be Joanie? Anybody but Joanie.
"You know, I tried to put my little brother's snake in your sleeping bag before you got here. Miley stopped me." She had no idea what made her say it. She just could not seem to stop herself. Once the words left her mouth, Lilly shot a swift glance at the other girl.
"Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel welcome." Joanie rolled her eyes, and Lilly found herself wondering just what it was that Oliver saw in this girl. Other than her being a sports fan, Lilly was unsure as to whether there were any redeeming qualities to be found.
"I don't like you," Lilly told the other girl bluntly. She really could not stop. What was wrong with her? She was supposed to be trying to be civil. She had been doing just fine until Miley had to go and fall asleep. She had even managed to watch that entire hockey match. Of course, hockey had provided a great distraction.
"Really? And all this time I thought you had some sort of crush on me," Joanie said sarcastically.
Lilly ignored the comment, but refused to turn to her left to look Joanie in the eye when she added, "but for some reason, Oliver does." There was a pregnant pause. Lilly swallowed and her eyes might as well have been boring holes into the hands she had strangling the deck railing. She gritted her teeth and awaited Joanie's response.
That threw Joanie. She was not expecting them to talk about Oliver. She did not really know what she had been expecting, but not that. In fact, pretty much anything but that. When Miley suggested they were all doing this for his benefit earlier, she and Lilly had almost killed one another with pillows. Pillows were not supposed to hit you that hard. She actually forgot that Lilly could hit that hard until now. The last few years, their fighting had been limited to verbal sparring and a few pranks, mainly because Miley and Oliver kept Lilly from actively trying to kill her when their paths crossed.
"Yeah, well, he's pretty cool," Joanie muttered quietly, a little embarrassed to be having this conversation with her new boyfriend's best friend.
That soft comment made Lilly's head snap in Joanie's direction so fast that she might have given herself whiplash. "He's not cool," Lilly told her fiercely.
"Way to be loyal to your best friend." Joanie raised her eyebrows a fraction at Lilly's outburst.
"No, that's not what I meant." She closed her eyes briefly and paused to take a breath. "I meant, he's not like other guys. Oliver's a dork. I mean, birthday cake is his favorite thing on the planet. He tries to be cool with the surfing and the skating, but you've seen him, he falls down a lot."
Joanie's eyebrows raised even further, but Lilly kept going. She had been unable to keep her mouth shut all night. There was no reason to try now.
"He usually spends his Friday nights watching Batman movies and keeping an eye on his little brother. He actually helps his parents with dinner on a regular basis. He's afraid of chewing gum and dogs bigger than twenty pounds and… raccoons, okay?"
Lilly's voice was picking up volume now, and Joanie was becoming a little concerned.
"He could quote every line of every Star Wars movie ever made to you, probably even the robot noises. He spends way too much time thinking about what he's going to wear in the morning. He honestly believes his pick up lines work. And he has an unhealthy obsession with his hair."
By the last sentence, she was almost yelling the words at Joanie. Lilly's cheeks were pink when she finished, and again, she had to look away from the other girl's green eyes.
"Are you telling me this because you're trying to scare me off?" Joanie took a step toward Lilly, a confused look on her face. "You should know by now, that I don't scare easy."
"No."
"Then what?"
Lilly turned completely back to the railing, bracing herself against it again, her knuckles starting to turn white, and stared out at the sky. She wished that it was not quite this dark. It would have made her feel a little more at ease if she could see the ocean. She always felt better watching the waves break. At the same time though, she did not want Joanie to be able to see her face any more clearly. She was unsure just what would be found there. Lilly opened her mouth to answer Joanie's question, but found that she did not know how. It was like her brain had finally caught up with her mouth. How could she possibly explain herself? The only thing she could think of was something she had never said out loud before, actually she had never even said it in her head before either, she always just pushed the thought away, and she was not about to admit it for the first time to her best friend's girlfriend. Unfortunately for her, Joanie came up with her own answer.
"Truscott… I mean… Lilly, are you jealous?" She tried to be cautious, but Lilly exploded anyway.
"What? How could you say that? Why would I be jealous?" Lilly's eyes were wide when she turned back to Joanie, and her hands were now balled in to fists at her sides. "Oliver is my best friend," Lilly hissed. She tried to get the volume of her voice under control again, not wanting to wake Miley. "We're friends. That's all."
"Woah." Joanie held up a hand to stop Lilly before she said anything else, even taking a step back at the wild look in Lilly's eyes. "I just meant that maybe you're not used to him spending time with other girls. You and Miley are, like, the only girls he talks to on a regular basis who don't ignore him. I never said he was more than your best friend." She eyed her closely. There was a thought pricking at the corners of Joanie's mind now, but she was not going to be the one to voice it.
Lilly bit her lip, again not knowing what to say. She and Joanie stood there in silence for a few minutes.
"It's just… you're not a nice person," Lilly finally managed to get out. Her thoughts were jumping around in her head like she had too much sugar and she was struggling to pull them together in a way that made sense. So much for her brain and her mouth being on the same page.
"Excuse me?" Joanie crossed her arms and glared at the petite blond across from her.
"Oh, please, like you don't know that. You've tried your best to make my life miserable since you moved to Malibu. My kite, my balloon, my sixth grade science project, my collarbone… all crushed because of you." Lilly shook her head.
"Well, the collarbone was an accident," Joanie made a half hearted attempt to explain.
"Just let me finish."
"Fine."
Lilly took another deep breath. She was starting to worry that she might hyperventilate if she kept this up.
"Oliver goes after nice girls. He dated Becca and Sarah. Well, he kind of dated Sarah. I'm actually not entirely sure about that." Lilly thought for a second, then continued, "Becca would never hurt a fly and Sarah wants to save the planet by the time she graduates. Neither of them play hockey or would shove a guy twice their size out of the way during a basketball game. Neither of them would yell at him to tell him how stupid he's acting like you would. Well, Sarah would, but only under extreme circumstances. He doesn't go after the girls who yell or fight or might physically injure him. He doesn't like girls who act like you."
Lilly was rambling now, and she was slightly out of breath.
"Or like you," Joanie put in, suddenly catching Lilly off guard. "Look, I get that I might not be what you think is his type, but he's been hanging out with you for the last however many years, and you're not exactly a nice girl either. You spit, you chew with your mouth open, you're willing to trip someone in a soccer game to get to the goal post…"
She gave Lilly a pointed look at that one.
"You treat him like your own personal punching bag."
Lilly opened her mouth to protest, but Joanie cut her off. She decided it was her turn to bring a list to Lilly's attention.
"You guys yell at one another all the time, even in the middle of a crowded hallway without even noticing that everyone is watching. And you wouldn't think twice before accepting a challenge to play in a pick-up hockey game with the boys. Obviously, he can handle a not-so-nice girl."
"I'm not trying to date him," Lilly reminded her crossly when Joanie finally paused. The words escaped before the filter in her mind kicked in, and she immediately knew it was the wrong thing to say.
"You sure about that?" Joanie questioned, her voice sharp, bringing the thought she had wanted to avoid to the tip of her tongue.
"Of course I'm sure!" Lilly stomped one of her feet to emphasize her point.
Neither of them really believed Lilly's words though. Lilly believed them even less than Joanie. Joanie may have had her suspicions, but Lilly had first hand knowledge. She had never been very good at lying to other people, but apparently she was great at lying to herself. She did not understand how knowing that Oliver was interested in Joanie could open her eyes more effectively than anything else had. She did not like this. Not at all.
She was not jealous was what she tried to tell herself the last couple of days. The words had been repeated over and over in her mind like a broken record. She just hated Joanie. Because Joanie was evil. It had nothing to do with Oliver. After all, Miley hated Joanie too, and she was definitely not jealous. Repeating these things in her mind did not make them true though.
"Lilly, I really like him," Joanie said softly, scuffing one of her shoes along the wooden deck.
"I know!" Lilly burst out, causing Joanie to flinch. "But you're...you! Gah! This is so weird!"
They stood there just facing each other, not sure where to go from there.
Lilly was the first to make a decision.
"Promise me something, Joanie?" Her voice sounded as though all of the energy had finally left her.
"What?"
"Don't hurt him." Lilly's voice was barely more than a whisper now.
Joanie barked out a short laugh. "What is this? One of those, you break his heart, I'll break your face kind of talks?"
"I won't break your face. That would be rude. Maybe an arm or a leg." Her voice was deadly serious, and Joanie had no doubt that Lilly would follow through on her threat.
"I won't hurt him." Joanie stared her right in the eyes when she said it, and Lilly almost believed her. There was still that nagging doubt at the back of her mind though, much like the one in Joanie's. Lilly firmly believed that guys like Oliver did not belong with girls like Joanie. He deserved better.
They spent the rest of the night talking about sports and school in between their bouts of spitting. They paid no attention to which of them was actually winning the contest. Neither of them brought up Oliver Oken again, and by the time the sun was rising, Lilly found herself agreeing to a pick-up hockey game with the boys, just like Joanie said she would. They even found themselves enjoying one another's company, right up until Oliver walked in to the living room to see how their night went.
Lilly forced herself to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat when Oliver walked in the door, putting on a friendly face, especially since not only did she have to deal with her own confusion, but she also had to deal with Miley not understanding how she could possibly be getting along with Joanie after just one night. Wasn't Miley the one who told her they had to do this for Oliver? After all, it was more important that Oliver be happy right now than Lilly worry about someone hurting him in the future. She decided to put a little faith in her former enemy.
Lilly Truscott and Joanie Palumbo would never be the best of friends, but that night, they had reached an understanding.