A/N :
Oh here here here it comes! Chapter 46!
I just passed 300 pages on Words... geeze I'll have to start a new file just to avoid the long loading time lol!
To tell you I never thought my story would be that long. And to think I still have lots to tell in it! We're getting there though!
Anyway we will see more of the normal life of Max in the next chapters. See the progression of her relationship with Chloe and the building relationships around. The drama part that has been very present until now will still have some presence for the few next chapters but they shall come to an end as well to give a more happy end for everyone (yeah don't worry I'm a sappy person!)
I'd like to thank Husky1980 for beta reading this chapter. I wasn't sure about some parts and he managed to alleviate my fears so thanks mate! Oh and the title is his too! Thanks for the nice idea!
For the reviews :
Jossi55: I can't wait to write that part too! I got several ideas on how to make it I'll try to make the best of it:) And I do like the texts and diary thing too. I dunno if I'll have as many as our friend Heart in Ouroboros but I like the idea and I'll try to have some fun ones too (although I have to create my own!)
Enjoy Chapter 46 and please don't hesitate to review! Those review, in addition to giving me heart into this work, can give me ideas and maybe see things differently for a better story!
XLVI – Just a Typical Monday
The weekend had not been a good one in the end. Between her fight with her mom, running off in the middle of the Thanksgiving meal and the awkwardness with Victoria, Kate's Thursday and Friday had been strange. The rest of their long weekend had not been great either.
She had returned from Chloe's on Saturday, accepting the invitation to sleep over with Max and Chloe. Chloe's mom was a very nice woman, and Kate had started to wish she could have been her mother instead of the harpy that she had home. And what a cook too, the food had tasted just like at the diner. She might have to find a way to spend more time at Chloe's.
Back in the dormitories she had quickly moved toward Victoria's room, hoping to talk with the girl. She hadn't been sure what she was going to say but she knew she had to see the girl and find out if the feeling were there or not. To her disappointment, no one answered when she knocked on the door. She had returned every now and then hoping to see the blonde, knocking on the door without getting any response. She left messages on the white board but nothing came out of it. She had started to worry too and sent text messages hoping the girl was doing good, without success.
All in all, the only sight she had of the taller blonde had been sometime on Sunday when she unexpectedly saw the girl walk in the dorm building with some take-out food. She had called and rushed to join her, but Victoria had just glanced at her and quickly hurried to her bedroom, locking the door and refusing to respond when Kate knocked.
It had hurt. Kate had felt a sharp pain her soul as the taller blonde had ran away from her.
Is she… Is she avoiding me? Does it mean she realized I … was about to kiss her? Is she … Is she avoiding me because she thinks I'm having feelings for her?
Kate's mind kept running in circle all night and she barely got any sleep. She had quickly showered and changed in the morning before going to class. She had hoped to see the taller blonde and talk to her. But when she went to say hi, Victoria had just nodded and resumed her talk with Taylor and Courtney, literally ignoring Kate. It had gone all day long. Every time, Victoria would ignore her in class, walk away from her, taking other paths when possible. At the end of the day, Kate was lost and confused as she sat beside Max in the photography lab.
They had decided they should sit with friends and try to change how things were so as to give a different feeling from the last time they all had been in this room. Kate had felt Max tensing up as they entered the room, the girl's hand squeezing her crutches to the point her fingers turned white. Kate understood why as photography had been the last class Max had before she got shot. And today was the first time she got back in this specific room.
They sat quietly, Max fiddling nervously with the rings in her ear. Kate looking at the nearby table, watching as Victoria kept her back to her as she spoke to Taylor. Kate had hoped they could all see together, but Victoria had purposefully moved her bag to the chair beside her as soon as she saw Kate approaching.
The message is clear. No seat for you here Kate…
Kate had moved reluctantly to the table at the back of the room sitting alone until Max had come and joined her with a smile. "You okay?" She had asked the blonde girl softly.
Kate had nodded with a wince. "Maybe a bit tensed, but I'm okay, Max…"
The bell rang and they all shuffled, head craning and eyes looking toward the door to look for the new teacher. Silence started to buzz in the room, everyone feeling some butterflies in their belly as they felt the tension of meeting an unknown teacher rise. But even after the corridors had turned quiet, the last stragglers having finally disappeared into their classroom, no one entered.
Max was partly glad to be back in class. It was a strange feeling actually, because she wasn't one of those hardworking students who enjoyed a classroom over chilling in her bedroom or walking around with her camera. But being at school had the benefit of filling her mind with something else than the endless family drama that kept bothering her during the weekend.
On the other hand, she wasn't so sure about she felt as enthralled by the idea of going to her last class. No, let's be honest, she was terrified! As soon as she had approached the photography laboratory's door, she had felt her heart pounding and her stomach churning as memories from that dreadful week had come back. She had been the last to reach it, following Kate so no one really saw her pause, panting with her eyes closed as she fought her demons and tried to ignore the creepy voice that had called in her head.
"Max Caulfield! As I kept saying, you cannot avoid coming back to me!"
Opening her eyes after a second she had taken a deep breath and stepped into the room. The buzz of students' discussions hit her like a wall, drawing her fully back to reality and her eyes had started to wander around the room. The first thing she noticed was how bare the walls were. Gone where all the magazine's covers, the pictures, the posters of Mark Jefferson's work. The man had fallen in disgrace and the academy had reacted by removing every hint of his passage. I hope they used his work for a bonfire!
Max felt the eyes of her classmates following her as she walked toward her table, smiling as she noticed Kate had taken place there as well. She knew why they all looked at her, knew what they all remembered, the last class she had before she got shot, her last photography class.
She took her sit beside Kate, looking at her friend's face she felt a bit of sadness at the longing showing as the blonde girl looked at Victoria. Yeah Kate, I'm afraid you are smitten…
The bell rang and like everyone she expected to see their new teacher pass through the door. But no one came. Minutes passed, students started to look at each other questioningly as they tried to find out what they should be doing and if the teacher was coming or not. Nearly fifteen minutes had gone by when a woman wearing a leather jacket, torn jeans and more surprisingly a motorcycle helmet, and carrying a box on which she had placed a stack of binders, came accompanied by the clapping of armored boots.
"Gomen Gomen! I had to stop at the administration office for the rosters and I got lost searching for the room." Her voice was muffled by the helmet although the silver visor was opened. Max found the voice and the helmet oddly familiar and she squinted trying to catch a better sight as the woman set the box on the desk and reached to pull the helmet off.
As she removed her helmet, she shook her head setting loose her long white colored hair and looked up revealing a relatively young Asian face with several piercings in her nose, lips, eyebrow and ear. Max' eyes grew wide as she recognized the woman and she felt her cheeks burn as a soft groan escaped her throat as she remembered her first encounter with who she realized must be her new teacher.
The woman sat her helmet on the desk and unzipped her leather jacket taking it off to place it on the back of the chair, revealing the heavily tattooed arms and a simple white tank top with a bandage covering her left shoulder. The woman moved to the blackboard as she resumed her talking.
"Anyway, sorry for being late on my first class. Like what, it can always happen to anyone, right?" Her tone was light and cheerful as she started to trace symbols on the board, which Max recognized as Japanese characters, then wrote letters beside them. "My name is Kurosawa Azumi and as you can suspect from the fact I am standing here, I'll be your photography teacher at least till the end of the semester and let's hope being late on my first day won't prevent me from being that till the end of the year!" She chuckled, joined by most of the class, although Max was still too stunned and busy hiding her face and trying not to imitate a lobster.
"Now, before we get to know each other, which is the main topic of the day, I'll try to answer the generic questions I usually get." She smiled raising a finger. "So, you can call me Kurosawa-san or Azumi, I don't really care provided you remain polite and respectful."
She raised a second finger. "As some may have guessed, I'm Japanese, although I do have a dual US citizenship as my mother was American. And no, my father or grandfather is not Akira Kurosawa. Actually I'm not even sure I'm even related to him, although seeing that we both live behind a camera, we never know." She winked playfully before raising a third finger. "I got a degree from Musashino Bijutsu Daigaku, another way to say I went to a fancy school to get a paper that says I know how to take good pictures… Yeah I guess the pictures themselves aren't enough, amirite?"
Most students chuckled and giggled at her words, the woman obviously not taking herself seriously. She let them laugh a bit before she took a binder. "Okay first on today's schedule, roll call…" She opened the binder and looked at the list. "Alicia Anderson?" she called eyes scanning the room, nodding as Alicia rose her hand with a simple "Here!"
The teacher looked down at her list. "Maxine Caulfield?" She rose her eyes, beaming as she noticed the pink-haired girl with a raised hand, and Max grunted as for the first time the woman realized she was in the room. "Oh, Max! Nice to see you again! You say hi to Steph for me if you see her today, ne?" She smiled warmly before returning to her list letting Max trying to find a hole where to dive and hide. "Victoria Chase?"
She proceeded with the call, taking each name in order and taking a minute each time to watch at the student's face, as if mentally taking pictures.
"Okay I see everyone is here! Great! Now, I have looked at the syllabus left by my predecessor for the school year." She raised a small folder from the box she had carried; oblivious of the tension she created by mentioning Jefferson. "And well, as I'm not a narcissist prick with delusion of grandeur…" She tossed the stack of paper in the trash bin. "There it goes… And I'm sure most of you will be glad." She wiped her hands together in an obvious 'I wash my hands of this crap' motion. "Seriously it was more a book on 'how to tell a group of people how much of a narcissist jerk I am' than a real way to teach you the technics you may need for your passion."
She moved around her desk and sat on it nonchalantly. "Because well, that's all there is really, passion. Like any artistic work, if you don't have passion for your craft, then it's just a job, not art. Whether you take landscapes, portraits, or whatever, if you just do it mechanically … Then your picture won't have no life, no soul and it won't move people's hearts. So it's not art." She looked at the students with a smile.
"Now, we'll go around the room and you will each tell me why you are interested, maybe passionate, in photography. Is it because every time you see something you can't help but taking pictures? You know, like those people you see walking around with a camera always on their face! Is it because you only want to submit it to galleries and magazines and get a big fat check, like a paparazzo? Is it just a hobby, a way for you to spend time now and then, and you want to take great pictures of your holidays? Or, god forbid, is it just a class you took because you had to fill your schedule and you thought it would be easier than… hmmm let see, sports?" She shrugged raising both hands in a 'yeah whatever' manner as she looked around and pointed at Stella. "So here we go. Tell me which photographer you are, remembering I am in the first category." She winked jokingly as she launched the discussion.
"Come on Steph! Seriously?" Chloe had lost the number of time she had complained as another melancholic song came out from the loudspeaker. Sure the singer's voice was nice and fitting the melody slowly given by some acoustic guitar, but the tone set by the song was very depressing and didn't help Chloe to concentrate on her work.
"Shut up Chloe! I'm still the boss and I feel like listening to this!" The store owner responded from the register.
Chloe rolled her eyes as she kept working the tattoo gun on a woman's lower back. "Dude, I don't say the song isn't nice, although I don't understand a single word of it. But it's not by playing sad songs non-stop that you'll cheer up and feel better!" As the first verse of Akatsuki no Kuruma ended, the guitar took a more sustained presence the song turning more folkish. "And where the hell did you find this song? Another sad, mushy, forbidden love-story anime?"
Chloe knew most of the music of Japanese origins her friends knew were coming from Japanese animations, and even if she would never admit she was just as into mushy love drama anime as her friends, if not more; she had been away from those for so long that she had no clue which drama that song might be coming from.
"Yeah sure… I mean Gundam series aren't exactly love-stories!" Steph retorted.
Chloe chuckled. "Well don't beat it! I mean I'm sure I could bag myself all the gals if I were piloting one of those big ass robots!" She looked at her customer and winked playfully as she slowly moved the needle along the stenciled line.
"Yeah sure… not like you need it…" Steph mumbled in her corner, envy pouring in her voice.
Chloe felt bad at the words. She had been trying to cheer her friend all day long but the brunette's mood had not improved. Chloe knew that Steph had a tendency to overthink her feelings into madness and depression sometimes, even before she made her moves too - after all that breakdown over a tattoo design for that Japanese chick sure made the point – but she still didn't expect her friend to toss her relationship with Max in the discussion like that.
"Yeah yeah… I know, I got Max and you got nobody… Boo hoo…" Chloe sighed and looked up from her work for a minute. "You really got to get a grip on yourself Steph. First, you don't know yet if your crush isn't crushing back on you, so no need to get so depressed just yet. Second, you know that things are far from perfect for me and Max."
"Sorry… I … it's just eating at me…" The response was shy and Chloe nodded before she resumed her work.
She knew her friend's worries were eating at her. Just seeing how hunched and apathetic she had become in just a couple of days would give it away. Hell the music she had been playing since morning would give it away. Just as it was giving away who had rendered her like this. After all, no real coincidence that every single song played since the opening of the store had been some Japanese music.
God please someone put me something I can understand! Hell I'd even take some of Max' pussy banjo strumming! Sponge Bob! Anything fucking English would be good!
"I know Steph, why I say you should change the music tone a bit. Put some rock or something funny! Will cheer you up a bit!"
Chloe focused back on the contouring of the tattoo in front of her, some tramp stamp for a college girl she had been working on for the past two hours. It was not a bad design in itself as far as Chloe was concerned, probably because it was an original Chloe Price.
At least she wanted something more customized than the usual butterfly or tribal shit!
A dear skull was centered on the girl's tail bone, antlers rising to cup her spine, while thorny vines moved out from its eyes and came to crawl over the curves of her buttock to reach her hips. A simple design but with enough punk in it that Chloe hadn't been as bummed as she usually was when working on tramp stamps.
The song moved on to an instrumental phase, the singer's voice replaced by a violin solo, and Chloe heard her customer chuckled softly. She frowned a moment and realized she had been humming along the music. Shit! Fucking tune is catchy! She scowled trying to hide her downfall as she finished the last thorn.
"Okay missy… we're done for now. Don't forget to keep it clean and protected and follow the instruction in the care package for the balm and moisture. We'll let it heal for a week and see if we can go with the shading or if we have to wait again."
She quickly took the needle off the gun and put it in the used needle container before removing her gloves, letting the girl rise to her feet. "See with my cheerful boss for your next appointment and, unfortunately, today's bill!"
"Sure! Thanks for the work and cya next time!" The girl responded as she carefully buttoned her low cut jeans and tugged her shirt back down.
"You got it!" Chloe responded automatically as she pulled her phone from her pocket, checking to see if she had received any messages.
She placed her phone on the station with a sigh as she started to clean up and refurbish the station for the next customer, cleaning the palettes, replacing the paper dressing on the table, tossing all the used tissues in the trash. As she worked, her shoulder started to droop and her mood got a bit darker.
One reason Chloe had been so pushy trying to cheer Steph up and get her to change the music, was that she needed to change her own mind from her own worries. She had managed to forget about them mostly as she worked on the design and contouring for her latest tattoo, but now that she had nothing to busy herself, her thought started to return to her little Maxine and the fact today was the first school day since the epic failure of their Seattle trip, and that her pink-haired angel would soon be attending her first photography class since that messed up week of October.
Lots of stressful firsts today….I hope she's okay… I wish I was with her…
She moved and checked her phone again.
She should have started the photog class 10 minutes ago. I guess all is going well since she didn't call, right? No news, good news?
"Worried about Max?"
The voice startled her and she almost dropped her phone as she jumped off her stool. "Fuck Steph! Don't do that! No need to give me a heart attack!"
The brunette's lips curled slightly, not a full smile but Chloe would take it as progress.
"You worried about her?"
Chloe nodded. "Yeah, first time apart since … well you know, and she told me they were having a new photography teacher today… first time she gets to that cursed class since … well that psycho and his shit got stopped."
Steph nodded understandingly. "Yeah guess it's a pretty rough situation too…"
Chloe reached and patted Steph's shoulder. "Yeah, guess we are two worrywarts today!" She looked around the store and seeing it empty grabbed Steph's wrist and dragged her to the door. "Come on, smoke break at last for me and you can fill me in on your new, probably silly, concerns about Miss Dragon tattoo."
"There's nothing new there, Chloe… I'm just bummed that she probably sees me as just a piece of tail she nabbed easily and quickly for a one night stand."
Chloe rolled her eyes, lighting up her cigarette as soon as they passed the door and taking a deep drag before sighing loudly. "Yeah that hit the spot!" She shook her head and looked at Steph. "Dude, you don't know she only saw you as a one night stand, okay? I mean she did tell you she wanted to do it again right?"
Steph nodded. "Yeah, but … Well she didn't sound like she wanted it that soon, and she probably won't be in town long."
"How would you know? She's got a job around no?"
"What she said yeah… Just she lives in a trailer and from what I saw, the thing looks like it's on the road pretty often. What if her job's only for a few weeks?"
Chloe pondered a moment. "Well even then, she won't leave town without you finishing her tattoo so you get more chances to woo her."
"Which will do nothing, as she would still be leaving town." Steph sighed.
"So what? Go with her! Leave this shithole behind and enjoy the roads!" Chloe waved her hands exuberantly at the idea.
"Chloe, I invested and borrowed a lot for the store, I can't just pack and leave! I got debts to pay back!"
"Fuck those Steph! If you lov-" She got interrupted by the loud chime from her phone. She winced as she realized the volume had been set to the max, and reached to look at the messages.
Max: Dude! You will never guess who my new photography teacher is!
Chloe: Chloe Kardashian?
Max: Nope… although I'd like that… would be quite a nice sight… I'd totally be a teacher's pet for her :p
Chloe: MAXINE!
Chloe: and no emoji
Max: Anyway, it's AZUMI!
Chloe: who?
Max: My teacher! It's Azumi!
Max: The biker girl with the tattoos!
Chloe: Steph's crush?
Max: Steph's goddess :D
"Fuck!" Chloe chuckled as she read the confirmation. "Oh god that's gonna be so weird!" Chloe finally said as shock finally left place to amusement.
"What?"
Chloe presented her phone to Steph as she said. "Let's say that I'm quasi certain your gal will be in town until June or July!" She quirked an eyebrow. "And that if you mess it up, it will be pretty awkward for Max!"
