Thanks to everyone for reading! This chapter is definitely very much a filler chapter, but there's definitely lots of plot development next chapter, I assure you. Haha. Hope you enjoy!


VII

As Christmas and New Year's came and went, I was becoming happier and happier every day. At the beginning of the year, I would never have guessed that I would have what I believed to be the most amazing boyfriend ever. I'm sure every other teenager in a similar position as me would have felt the same way, but that never crossed my mind, and it wouldn't have put a damper on my spirits, either. Besides me being happy, Ethan was happy, too, as were all of our friends. Everyone said they "saw it coming" and "it was only a matter of time" which made my heart dance more than I would like to admit; other people thinking highly of my relationship choice shouldn't have affected me so much, but it did. Deep down, I was still so concerned with what people were thinking of me at every moment of the day. I was certainly more distracted than I was at the beginning of the year, but I still had a fearful feeling eating away at me.

I neglected to tell anyone outside of school of my relationship status, and this was on purpose. If my mother found out that I had a boyfriend, let alone a boyfriend who had recently turned seventeen in the days following the New Year, she would have had a heart attack. After her recovery from said heart attack, she would've probably just teased me about it, or worse, asked me prying questions about the various activities we got up to (which was nothing all that terrible, I swear). If I told my still almost-step-dad, he would have just subtly tattled to my mother, risking his chance of me revoking his status as favourite parental figure. And then there was my father, of course. Confiding in him about absolutely anything would never, ever happen. My mother still made me call him every once in a while, and she tried to guilt me into it by saying he had been asking when I was going to be able to talk to him, but I could not have cared any less.

I had a horrible feeling my mother was going to find out about me and Ethan eventually. I was leaving the house way more than I ever had, and I spent a lot of time either outside or in my room on the phone. If I wasn't talking on the phone, I was texting, or I was on the computer on Facebook or some social media of the like. This made me privy to a few interrogations, but she still really wasn't attentive enough to notice something was all that different. Sure, our relationship had drastically improved since my sullen first month or so of school, but it's not like we were all that close. Still, it's not like she was blind; she could see when cars came to pick me up. It was almost always Jeanette, who understood my need to keep my social life to myself, therefore she acted as my taxi to Ethan's house or wherever we had decided on going for that specific day. It was pretty exciting, being involved in this secret relationship. Ethan and I always laughed to ourselves while we were studying Romeo and Juliet in English; pretending it was like us…without the death.

After Winter Break, the fact that the semester was ending soon was particularly prominent in my mind, which was definitely a major downer. Since Ethan was somewhat secretly a junior in disguise, so to speak, we wouldn't have any more opportunities to sit together in class, secretly holding hands under the desks where Ms. Delancey either couldn't see us or pretended she couldn't. Thankfully, she hadn't done a rearrangement of our seating plan; maybe she secretly thought Ethan and I were cute together and didn't want to separate us in our last few months of having a class with one another. We would still see each other every day, obviously, but being able to spend an extra hour and twenty minutes next to each other each day was one of my favourite things.

I brought up how sad I was about the approaching change with everyone at lunch, which of course sparked many sarcastic comments, mostly everyone acting in a fake sympathetic manner, asking how I would ever survive. Ethan stretched upwards to kiss my forehead, as I was sitting on his lap at the time, which is probably part of why I was receiving such sarcastic feedback, and he agreed that it was really just going to suck.

"You guys see each other basically every other waking moment of the day, Morgan, I'm sure you're going to manage somehow," Jeanette said saucily as she pulled her messy brown hair into a bun on top of her head.

"Well, sure, but being in class together is probably the only time she doesn't have her tongue down Ethan's throat," Ethan's close friend, Josh, remarked. I scoffed and glared at him, appalled.

"That's not true! Right?" I exclaimed, looking at Ethan to back me up. He gave me a devilish smile that gave me the sneaking suspicion I wasn't going to like his answer.

"Oh, of course, Morg, it's only some of the time," he said with a giant grin on his face. Josh, and all of the other guys, and a couple of the girls, laughed hysterically. I felt my cheeks heat up, and I looked down at him, my expression asking why he had to say that. Of course, his statement had the slightest of truths behind it, so I kind of had to own up to that.

"You're mean," I said with a fake pout. He continued to smile at me.

"And you're cute." I grinned at that, wrapping my arms around his neck. At that moment, the bell rang, and I sighed heavily, not wanting the break to ever end.

"Don't miss me too much," I giggled. He kissed me, and it was definitely for a few moments longer than what should have been happening at school in a classroom, but I wasn't going to protest. My stomach leapt with butterflies, and they continued after he pulled away. I looked up into his deep, brown eyes and smiled. I had been smiling an awful lot lately, and it was really quite lovely.

"I love you." I gasped just the tiniest of gasps, and searched through his eyes for sincerity, truly hoping it was there.

"I love you, too," I said back with little hesitation. We both realized that despite the major step in our relationship, we really did have to go to class, so I grasped Ethan's hand, intertwining our fingers, and rested my head on his arm (I was too short for my head to reach his shoulder, which was a quality that I thought made us very cute together) as we walked to our respective lockers. Suddenly remembering my first few weeks at school, I was more than pleased to realize how lucky I had somewhat quickly become. If it wasn't for Ethan asking me to eat lunch with him and his friends, I still would have been the lonely, sad, unwanted version of myself that still barely lingered in me.

Upon returning home that afternoon, I still felt as if I was on top of the world after the exchange of seven words between my boyfriend and I that occurred at the end of lunch. I was desperate to tell someone new, but I had already exhausted all my potential sources, and it's not like there were very many to begin with. I briefly pondered telling my mother, but that would just end awkwardly or angrily, probably both, and I just wasn't in the mood for that. There was the brief thought of calling or texting one of my old friends, but I had barely spoken with them since the very beginnings of the school year. They would probably just write me off as that girl who ditched them and then called up months later to boast about her thriving relationship. As I meandered up the carpeted staircase to my room, I noticed a note on the doorway telling me to call my dad. Yeah, like that was going to happen. He was not going to ruin my mood right now. Deciding to leave the note on the door as a reply to my mother that I was not planning on acting on her order, I slipped into my room, leapt onto my bed, and logged onto my computer.

I scrolled through my emails, trying to find someone that I could gush to about my day. The options consisted of nobody, and just as I was about to give up and resort to calling Ethan to talk about essentially nothing of substance for the next hour, I saw a slightly intriguing email at the top of my inbox. It was from Catherine, who had basically been my hero during the summer. She had written to me to ask how I was doing, how school was going so far, and if I was going to be coming back to Vegas to visit anytime soon. The note made my heart rather happy; at least someone in Vegas truly cared about my feelings, and she wasn't even related to me. I immediately responded, telling her probably more than what she wanted to know about my life, including my awesome day. I threw in a couple questions about how things at the crime lab were to not seem narcissistic or rude. Honestly, her job really intrigued me, even though she worked in the same building as my father. When I looked past that, it was quite a fascinating profession, and I was genuinely a bit curious about it.

I quickly pressed send before overthinking prevented me from replying, and smiled. Maybe I would continue to have struggles making connections with my actual parents, but someone as cool as Catherine was an individual I could certainly get used to talking to on a regular basis about my life.


Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed a bit of fluffy filler with a dash of teenage angst before the next chapter gets a bit intense. Leave a review if you wish, I love reading them! :) Thanks again!