DISCLAIMER: Characters are owned and produced by The Disney Channel, That's So Productions, Brookwell-McNamara Entertainment, Warren-Rinsler Productions. I am just borrowing them for these stories.
Thunderstorms
Chapter 9
The Day After
The sun peaked through the slits of the Venetian blinds, placing uniform slivers of natural light in the room. Today was the first time in 3 days the sun shone in San Francisco County. Today was the first time all semester that Chelsea and Raven had slept in. Today was also the first time they would have to deal with the events of the last 72 hours.
On a typical Monday morning in Hayden Hall, room 5134, the alarm would be set for 7:00. Chelsea would wake up, shower, dress and head over to the dining hall for some fruit, a bagel and a San Francisco Chronicle before the eight minute walk to her History class. Raven's ritual was pretty much the same; save for the extra hour she had before her 10 am Psych class.
This morning, however, no such alarm was set. This was not a typical Monday morning. According the alarm clock on Raven's nightstand, it was 8:42. The two residents of this room entangled in each others arms are still sound asleep. Raven is in the middle of a dream about strawberries.
(Raven's Dream)
Ripe juicy strawberries in the field. The smell is intoxicating. Her subconscious is at work. Her head is turned toward Chelsea. Her nose pointed directly in the direction of Chelsea's strawberry scented hair. The dream switches to her house. She is sitting at the table. There is a plate of fluffy pancakes with strawberries and syrup. She is naked in her dream. Chelsea is there, naked, feeding her, slowly, seductively. "Mmmm… strawberries." She purrs in her dream. Chelsea leans in to kiss her. Closer. Closer. Their lips are about to touch… when the microwave timer goes off. "More pancakes?" She asked Chelsea in her dream. Chelsea simply smiled. It goes off again, louder this time… then again still LOUDER…
She is snapped out of the dream by the sound of her telephone ringing. She snatched the cordless out of the cradle and hit the talk button in one motion. She glanced down at Chelsea who hadn't so much as stirred. "You've got to hit her with a brick to wake her up." Raven thought as she put the phone up to her ear.
"Hello." Raven in a voice barely above a whisper still raspy from sleep.
"Did you just wake up? I thought you'd be getting' ready for class!" Said the familiar voice at the other end of the line.
"Hey, Eddie. Waz up wit chu?" Raven replied before the English part of her brain fully awoke.
"Waz up wit me? Waz up wit chu? And why are you whispering? Are you hung over?" Eddie's reply was a mixture of worry and annoyance.
"No. Chels is still 'sleep. I don't want to wake her up." Said Raven, still whispering.
"Still 'sleep. It's a quarter to twelve here, so it's a quarter to nine there. She's still asleep, you just waking up? Y'all must've had a… rough…" Eddie stops his train of thought. Raven can hear the wheels turning in his head. His thought process has come to a juicy conclusion based on the limited evidence presented. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Fire away." Raven said as she glanced down at Chelsea, still asleep.
"If I asked you to wake Chelsea up for me so I could talk to her, what would you do?"
"I don't follow." Raven replied doing her best at playing dumb.
"I mean, if I asked you to go to Chelsea, wake her up and tell her that Eddie is on the phone, he wants to talk to you, where would you go?"
"What do you mean, where would I go? What kind of stupid-ass question is that?" Raven loved jerking Eddie's chain. She could string him along with the best of them.
"Did I stutter? I said where- would- you- go. I want you to describe for me the exact steps that you would take to wake Chelsea up."
"Well, I am lying on my bed, on my back. I suppose that I would lift my head, since Chelsea's bed is in my line of sight from here..."
"Yeah?" Eddie says, anticipating deception on Raven's part.
"…then I would look to see if Chelsea was still asleep."
"Keep going." He senses the payoff coming soon.
"Then I would call her name."
"Don't keep stopping, just go ahead." Eddie's impatience with her hesitation is evident in his voice.
"Then if she didn't answer, I guess I would reach down and brush the hair out of her face and say, 'Sweetie, Eddie is on the phone for you.' After all, she is lying down next to me with her arm draped across my stomach."
This piece of information was not enough as far as Eddie was concerned. Raven and Chelsea had fallen asleep in bed talking before. He needed more.
"Ok, fine." "Can I ask you one more question?" Eddie wants the final piece to the puzzle to confirm his suspicion.
"If you must." Raven says in a playfully dismissive, but still quiet tone. She knows the hammer is going to drop with this one.
"If you had describe your current state of dress at this very moment, what word would you use and what word would you use to describe Chelsea's?"
"That's a two-part question." Raven said with a devil-may-care grin, sensing that Eddie is about to burst into flames.
"Just answer the damn question! Geez!"
"Ok. Ok. The words that I would use would be 'indisposed' and 'indisposed'."
"I knew… Eddie dropped the phone and started jumping around his room, pumping his fists in the air in excitement for his friends. "…Yeah, baby! I knew y'all would do it! That's what I'm talkin' about!" Raven could hear Eddie screaming in the background.
"Eddie!" Raven tries to whisper-yell into the phone. She looks down to see Chelsea starting to stir.
"Is that Eddie?" Chelsea whispers groggily, not yet conscious.
"Yeah, it is." Raven answers her, as Eddie is still celebrating in the background.
"Tell him I'll call him when… I… wake…" With that, Chelsea drifted back to sleep.
Eddie scrambles back to the phone. "Rae, I am so happy for y'all! So I take it the talk went well?"
"Well, not exactly." She winced.
"What do you mean, 'not exactly', if the talk didn't go will, then how did you end up…"
"We didn't exactly talk." Raven cut him off.
"What happened then if you didn't talk?"
"We had a stupid argument and… well… she apologized, I hugged her and the rest, as they say is history."
"So y'all never talked about your feeling or anything like that?"
"Well, for a few seconds in the shower." Raven smiled, allowing herself to reminisce.
Eddie gulped as his imagination started running. "The shower?" "What about… the shower?"
Raven snapped back to reality. "Huh, what? Boy, they'll be burying me before you find anything like that out. That's personal. Ya nasty…! " "Anyway, when she wakes up, we'll talk."
"And say what?"
"Everything that we should have said weeks ago, how we feel, what triggered our feelings, how we're gonna go forward."
"How are you gonna go forward?"
Raven thought about this last question. She still didn't know. "I really don't know. But I'm not doing it without her. That much I do know. I love her and I want us to give this a try."
"Just be careful. Y'all might be in San Francisco, but there are still some ignorant people out there, you know? I don't want to see anything happen to you."
"We'll be careful. I'll stab 'em with my stilettos if I have to."
"Well you know I'm there for you… for the both of you. I love y'all."
"We love you too."
"Now you sure you can't tell me anything about the shower?" Eddie had to try just one more time.
"The water was warm and wet! Now get off my phone!"
"Damn the water, were y'all warm and…"
"Get off my phone you nasty son-of-a…" Raven fired in mock anger.
"Raven and Chelsea sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G… "
"Goodbye… idiot!" Raven said chuckling.
"Bye." Eddie starts singing. "Secret lovers…" He laughed as he hung up the phone.
It was now a quarter after nine. Raven decided that it was time to get up but didn't have the heart to wake Chelsea. She knew Chelsea needed the rest. Raven just lay there wondering what the day was going to bring. After a few minutes, she closed her eyes. They didn't stay closed long. She was being watched.
"You know, closing your eyes around me these days could be dangerous."
To Raven, that might have been the sexiest sentence she ever heard Chelsea utter. It was a combination voice, raspy, warm and sleepy, slowly drawn out and suggestive.
Raven opened her eyes and replied with her now frequent Cheshire cat grin. "Seems like having my eyes open have their consequences too." "I thought you were going to sleep all day."
"I would, but I'm sure you have things to do today." Chelsea's sexy voice remained unaltered. "You have got to stop with the voice, girl! I can't take that much longer!" Raven's mind pleaded.
"Nope. Cleared my whole day for you." Raven said with a smile.
"You know we still need to talk." Chelsea replied.
Raven nodded in agreement, "I know. We will. Do you mind if we eat first? I'm kinda starving."
"You read my mind." Chelsea slowly slid away from Raven, stood facing Raven and overhead stretched some of her sleepiness away. Raven was mesmerized by the stretch. Chelsea took notice.
"What, you've never seen anyone stretch before?" Said Chelsea with a smirk and a raised eyebrow reminiscent of The Rock.
"I am not going there with you right now, girl. Just go get cleaned up so we can go eat."
"Where is my morning kiss?" Chelsea asked playfully. "She's in a good mood. That's a good start." Raven thought.
"On the other side of our toothbrushes. Morning breath? Hello?"
"Good point." Chelsea acknowledged. "Wanna share?" She motioned to the bathroom.
"The last time we shared the bathroom, not a lot of cleaning got accomplished." Raven said sarcastically.
"I… meant… One of us showers, and the other brush or whatever." Chelsea replied as she gathered her bath accessories.
"Oh. I knew that." Raven said blushing.
"And you said black girls don't blush." Chelsea said smiling and biting her bottom lip as she started toward the bathroom door.
"You gon' be blushing AGAIN if you don't get in there. I'll be in there in a minute."
As Chelsea closed the bathroom door, Raven thought to herself, so far so good. She's in a good mood. They still wanted each other. They still wanted to talk. Raven continued her morning rituals, albeit almost three hours late.
It was the day after the storm. The sun was shining bright; the day was full of promise. The talk was looming but it was something they were both looking forward to. Raven was firmly affixed on Cloud Nine. She was in love. It felt good. She felt free.
Chelsea turned on the shower and looked around the bathroom. Debris from last evening's storm remained, a bra here, a pair of panties over there, a sweater over there. The word, Wow, was all that came to her mind. She was in love. It felt good. She felt free.
The calm after the storm was under way.
Chapter 9. What do you think? I am having so much fun with this. Should I keep going? I think I will. Chapter 10 is coming soon. BTW, I think I want to do a reader's choice chapter. What do y'all want to see? There is one more thing I want to see. Let me know. Your wish will be my command. Maybe not for the next chapter, but soon after. The most asked for idea wins. Thanks for reading.
Triple L
