A/N: sorry for the long break, I am literally writing bits of this on my phone on the train too and from work each day (which is a pretty short trip tbh) so it is taking a little while to get whole chapters out and edited.

Thank you so much to all the amazing people who left comments, I can't believe anyone is still reading after that hiatus.

I really hope you all still enjoy it :)

I had a sketch in mind for this but I didn't get around to it yet, so maybe I will do it this weekend and post later.

...

I come back from my shift at starbucks, feeling gross and sweaty and coffee splattered, and stumble into the front hall, kicking off my shoes lazily and then frowning and bending down to place them neatly inline with Holly's against the wall, when I hear voices from the kitchen.

A laugh echoes out from the other room and I ball my dirty green apron in my hands and tentatively walking around the couch to investigate.

That girl from Halloween is sitting at our kitchen counter, (did I just call it ours?) smiling broadly at Holly. She doesn't even notice me enter, focused intently on something Holly is saying as she makes a cup of tea. Holly however notices the moment i step into the room, her eyes drawing across to catch mine mid-sentence, her mouth curling in a soft smile as she finishes some amusing chemistry based story.

"Hey," she grins and tucks some loose hair back behind her ears. I hold her gaze for a moment and then she flushes lightly as my eyes flick towards her visitor and she quickly adds, "You remember Emma, right?"

"Yes, Halloween," I nod and shift my weight awkwardly, standing on the spot, as I had no real purpose for coming into the kitchen, and then stride to the fridge decidedly and yank it open. Food, I am obviously in here because I want food.

"How was work?" Holly asks me, despite the fact that her friend looks more than ready to continue their conversation, and a little miffed at my interruption. I hide my smirk behind the fridge door and groan in response.

"That good?" She asks, amused. I let the door swing shut again, still empty handed, and hold up the crumpled apron as explanation.

"I had coffee spilt on me, twice," I roll my eyes, "Anyway, don't let me interrupt. I better go get changed before the whole house smells like double shot macchiato with soy milk." I shuffle back out of the kitchen, and I'm not even two steps around the wall when I hear Emma start up about a lecturer they have. A twinge of something, mild annoyance maybe, twists in my gut as I reach the stairs and jog up onto the second floor and into my room. I push the door closed with some mild force and it bangs shut as I let the apron fall into my washing basket. I throw my keys and phone and wallet onto my duvet and run a hand through my hair, smoothing it out. Ugh, I really do smell strongly of coffee and assorted syrups. I can feel something sticky on my forehead too. I groan and begin to strip down out of my dorky uniform. I can hear the front door close and footsteps on the stairs, and I'm still pulling an old shirt over my head when my bedroom door opens and Holly strolls in. I see her blush as my head pops through the hole and I pull the material the rest of the way down over my abdomen.

"Finished so soon?" I ask somewhat briskly. Holly hovers in the threshold of my room, playing with the hem of her size too big tshirt. It folds lazily around her slight form, and highlights her small figure. Her track pants are patterned with the periodic table and it is kind of adorable. Adorable? Did I just think they are adorable?

"She was dropping off notes from the lecture I missed yesterday," as if she knows that I was wondering what her classmate was doing here. Her classmate who is super gay (I swear I saw a pride sticker on the side of her dorky backpack, as if I needed further proof) and totally crushing on Holly. Not that this means anything to me, other than the fact that Holly is kind of one of my two only friends, and I'm very protective. Obviously.

"Okay," I shrug dismissively, "cool." Holly's head is tilted slightly to one side, brown eyes observing me intently through her thick framed glasses, as though she is trying to decode a puzzle. After a moment she lets out a small, heavy breath and walks into my room, pushing the door closed behind her. She walks barefoot across my carpet and takes a seat on the edge of my bed.

"So, two coffee spills in one day huh?" She asks, "yikes, are you that bad a barista?" She teases, making herself comfortable. I shake my head, trying to fight the smile that wants to take over my face.

"Please, I'm amazing. No, I had one clutz, and one dickhead," I inform her, the corners of my mouth twitching up as I watch her lean back on her elbows casually. She lets out a small laugh, and gives me a look that says to continue.

"Don't you have, um, study to do? You know, catchup for yesterday?" I ask, still feeling somewhat guilty over her missing class. She gives me a small smile and nods slowly.

"Well, yes. But nothing that can't wait." The way she says it, something that never would have come out of her mouth when I first moved in. Maybe I have been a bad influence. I bite my lip and walk over to sit down next to her.

"Okay, well, he just looked like a wanker right from the beginning."

...

It's a Sunday and we are lying on my bed late in the afternoon. I am leaning against my headboard with my laptop in my lap, playing random youtube videos as I put together a powerpoint presentation for class, and Holly is lounging near my feet, elegantly balanced against the wall with a book in her hands, making notes on something that sounded very impressive and complicated.

I paste a photo of a cop arresting a troubled looking youth in the corner of the third page, and then flick back to youtube. I pull up a new video from a playlist I started a few weeks ago labelled H. The dulcet tones and jazzy horns start up from the speakers and out of the corner of my eye I see Holy noticeably pause, hand freezing mid sentence still poised on the page of her notebook. I glance up and watch as she places her pen down on the doona for a moment and let's her eyelids flutter closed. Her expression is hard to read. When she opens them again rich brown eyes find mine, and she gives me a small smile, readjusting her glasses.

"Come Fly With Me," she states softly, and I feel a strange warmth settling in my chest as she looks at me, like a heat pack pressed against my skin, that kind of warmth that burns but it feels good, "my dad loved Sinatra." I run my tongue over my top lip and nod.

"I know." She blinks in that same way that she always does when I admit to remembering something about her, that pleasant surprise that makes me smile in her naivety, as though anyone could possibly forget something about her, as though she could ever be so insignificant. She taps her pen against the page and wiggles her toes.

"Hmmm." It's almost a hum, a gentle and melodic pondering.

"Hmm?" I question back reflexively, needing to know what she means by this vague single syllable response. She gives me a cryptic smile and pokes my foot with her pen, leaving a small, dark blue ink mark on my skin. Then she goes back to writing out her notes, a thick section of hair falling down against the side of her face and spiralling down in a large, loose curl onto the paper of her notebook, ends splaying out over the rules lines and obscuring her sketch of some kind of chemical structure.

The warm afternoon sunlight is streaming through my window and it falls around her like a halo, highlighting the loose hairs suspended by static, falling across her cheekbones in golden tones. Her teeth drag across her bottom lip as she reads something, and she pushes her glasses back up the bridge of her nose again, and she is absolutely gorgeous.

...

Dov finds me lying on the couch with one leg up, looking at my foot. Behind my toes, even out of focus I can tell he is giving me that somewhere between amused and concerned face he does.

"Did you grow a sixth toe?" He asks grinning. I ignore him and stare at the small, blue mark on my skin.

It has been plaguing me since she left my room, took her heavy textbook in her delicate arms, hugging the item to her chest, and shuffled out with an almost shy grin as she went off to get ready for class. And I listened to her footsteps on the stairs, the soft music of her getting ready I had come to know and to listen for. And she went to class and I wandered down stairs and collapsed onto the couch in an almost defeated way. Maybe it was defeated, because I can't fight it any more or push it away, and this blue speck, this smeared ink, could be a tattoo on my skin of the moment that it suddenly clicked, like I realised I had just been staring at the picture upside down the whole time. It was just a day like any other, it wasn't like she had touched me or looked at me any differently than before. I don't know why, but my brain seemed to have suddenly caught on. Gorgeous, I thought she was gorgeous. Not, hey isn't that model in victoria's secret gorgeous, but, oh my god, this woman is extraordinary in ways I could never imagine, inside and out, kind of gorgeous. I exhale heavily.

"I have a thing for Holly," I admit, the words tumbling out of my mouth simultaneously as the realisation hits me all at once, like I am colliding with a wall. Dov raises his eyebrows, looking confused, as though he has surely misunderstood or misheard me.

"Sorry, what?" he asks, "What do you mean?" I am still a bit too wrapped up in the surprise myself too be concerned about his reaction.

"A thing. I have a thing for Holly. Like, I think she is smoking hot, in a nerdy way, and I would really like to kiss her." I babble, the thoughts rolling over my tongue before I can stop them. Dov blinks at me, surprised. I am equally as surprised. Kiss her? The thought sends goosebumps crawling across my skin, my stomach twisting nervously.

"But. She's a girl," he says, dumbfounded. I roll my eyes at him.

"More importantly, she's our housemate," I emphasise, as this is the much more pressing issue. I can't have a thing for my housemate. I'm not Dov. How did this happen? I groan and let my head fall back against the couch cushion so that I am staring up at the white, sloped ceiling. My eyes bore into the plain, white nothingness of it, but even this dull canvas can't quiet the thoughts running through my head.

"Fuck," I moan, glancing at where Dov is still awkwardly hovering at the foot of the couch, "What am I going to do?"

"Going to do? What, you think she might actually like you back?" he asks semi-sarcastically, without thinking, and his assumption that I would have as little a chance with her as he does makes me want to grit my teeth, but then he frowns and continues, "Wait, did you sleep with her on halloween?" he suddenly changes tack, and I bite back a laugh, the amusement of his expression dulled by the thought now seeping into the back of my mind.

"No, no. I mean, yes, but..." before I can finish he cuts in, eyes wide.

"What?"

"I mean sleep sleep, not sex, not that my sex life is or ever will be any of your business, but we just, slept, together, in her bed. By accident," I trail off awkwardly, and chew the inside of my cheek as the thoughts hit me, remembering that night in a whole new light, remembering the scent of her all around me, her hand holding me close, maybe more than just the warmth making me want to move in closer. I swallow thickly and shake my head. This is worse than I thought.

...

Next morning I leave for class early and I walk and take the train for the first time. I get lost and get to class 10 minutes late, sweaty and red in the face and craving caffeine. I fall into my seat and Traci leans over and places a takeaway coffee cup on my desk. She gives me a smile and then goes back to organising her notes. I have never been so grateful to have her in my class.

When college finishes for the day I hover awkwardly in the doorway while Traci packs her things into her backpack.

"What are you doing now?" I ask her. Anything, I would do anything not to go home yet. To have to look Holly in the eye after my revelation, I feel like it will be written all over my face. "I am crazy about you as much more than a friend and roommate" printed on my forehead in bold text. Tracy suppresses a smirk as she throws her backpack over her shoulder.

"I'm going to pick up Leo down the road," she tells me. I nod thoughtfully, adjusting my bag strap.

"The kid, yea? Cool. I'll walk you."

So I walk all the way down Bay street with her to the daycare, and attempt some awkward small chat on the way. Leo is actually pretty cute for a kid. We size each other up when he finishes hugging his mum, and then he gives me a toothy grin of approval, and I walk them most of the way to the nearest train station, insisting that it's on my way. After I cross the road back onto the college campus to weave my way between the buildings back home my stomach twists. Home means Holly. I think that this thought alone probably means more than I can think about right now. I shake my head and walk briskly, cold air having already tipped my nose rosy red. I push my earbuds into my ears and press shuffle on my ipod. The sound of leaves crunching beneath my feet disappears under the soft tones of music, and my stomach flips nervously as I realise that 'Come Fly With Me' is playing. I shove my hands down into the pockets of my jacket and walk a little faster around the corner of an old brownstone building to cut across a section of grass. Frank Sinatra is serenading me with his deep and soothing voice when I feel a touch on my shoulder, and I turn quickly out of the contact, hands rising in front of myself defensively. I find Holly standing behind me, giggling silently behind the sound of the music loud in my ears. I pull out my earphones swiftly, blushing, and shove them into my bag.

"Oh, hi," I squeak, "Heard a few too many stories from my brother about things happening on campuses. You can never be too careful," I confess awkwardly as she is still grinning at me in amusement.

"You'd better escort me home then," Holly tells me confidently, stepping in and linking her arm through mine, "You wouldn't want anything to happen to me." I feel my skin tingle where her hand presses into my arm through my jacket, her fingers curling possessively around my wrist, one finger pressing lightly against the skin where my sleeve ends and rubbing just slightly at the point where I remember her telling me she can find my pulse. I bite down on my lip, any witty reply dying on the tip of my tongue where it's pressed to the roof of my mouth, warmth crawling up the base of my neck. I let her lead us back down through the park, and I swallow and try to remember, how do we do this again? That talking without saying too much thing, where we converse so easily?

"Ugh, class was horrible," Holly groans, her shoulder gently bumping mine as we walk, "I don't know where my brain was today. They were talking about muscle relaxants and reversing agents and all I could hear was gibberish. How was college?" She looks across at me, glasses sitting elegantly near the end of her nose, brown eyes catching the low afternoon sun as she gazes over the frames at me.

"Average," I shrug noncommittally, "Boring. Long. I can't wait to get home and just veg out and eat two bags of cheese puffs for dinner and fall asleep on the lounge." Holly shakes her head at me, reprimanding.

"Cheese puffs for dinner? I think not. I'm making pasta," she tells me, "You will eat some, and watch Big Bang Theory with me." She says this with such certainty that I believe her. We cross the road up towards our street, and the sun is starting to set over the rooftops, rich crimson and orange light soaking the bottom of the horizon.

"I love sunsets," Holly says thoughtfully, the light just tinting the soft waves of her hair, and I can't help but smile at her, letting my hand slide up to find hers and squeeze it gently. I only untangle them when we reach the front lawn, quickly unweaving our fingers and pushing my hand deep into the pockets of my old jacket again. Holly glances down at the tatty piece of clothing as we walk up the path, and pokes at a large hole forming near my shoulder.

"This is not a sensible jumper," she informs me disapprovingly. I glance down at it, the worn grey cotton starting to wear thin in places here and there, the small coffee stain I never fully got out. Maybe a little sloppy, but not that bad.

"I have been wearing it since the last time I let my mother take me shopping. Which was two years ago. It was a disaster. This was the only non-hideous item that came out of the shopping trip." Holly smirks.

"Hmm, I don't see you as much of the shopping type," she pushes open the front door and let's me walk in first. I slip out of my shoes and step onto the soft carpet.

"True, but remember, I was not the problem!" She smirks as I say this, breezing past me towards the kitchen, her things left by the door. I dump my backpack at the foot of the couch and follow her.

"I highly doubt that," she calls over her shoulder as she stands at the sink, turning on the hot water with a horrendous squeak of rusty metal faucets. I humph loudly at her suggestion, walking up and stopping just behind her.

"She tried to make me wear mauve. Mauve, Holl. That's a grandma colour." I am aware of that fact that I am so close that the front of my jumper just brushes the back of her tshirt. I watch the hot water pouring over her hands, when she turns her head just a little, just enough to catch my eye.

"I love mauve." She says it with such seriousness that I want to laugh. I shake my head at her and lean forward, wrapping one arm around her shoulder and resting my chin on the other.

"Of course you do."

...