"I never really dipped my pen in the company ink. It doesn't make for good working conditions. After the initial shock and the awe of how pretty the girls were — Jennie, Tori, Shannen, Gabrielle, Tiffani — I would just let that resonate in me for a little bit and get over it and then get to the task at hand. And I got to kiss them on camera, so that satiated my needs." - Ian Ziering, Entertainment Weekly in April 2007.
xx
The inquisitive mind of future scientist Madeline Sanders made itself known before she even stepped onto her first international flight.
When Steve called Brenda in a panic over what he should pack for himself and his daughter, Madeline asked her aunt if she had heard from her godfather.
Quickly slipping into actress mode, she nonchalantly replied that they had briefly texted.
Including some version of the truth always helped. The little journalist-in-training didn't need to know the exact content of the text exchange, or that Dylan had already written his regret about leaving.
Brenda pointed out in their evening call that the visit with his sister would be for the duration of less than a week, at which time he could come home and resume his much-missed pleasuring of her. She reminded him that he had been excited to spend the holiday with the younger woman, as he planned long before Brenda's trip to California, and that cancelling mere weeks before would have been rude. He agreed with her reminder, but requested once more that she join them.
Erica McKay had then stolen her brother's phone, screaming into Brenda's ear that it was "more than about fucking time my moronic brother realized that you are the only one for him." She informed Brenda that whilst Dylan himself had not told her of his recent change in relationship status, he left on a loop the same song since climbing into Erica's car, which she recognized as the tune from a performance of Brenda's that she had attended during her brief residence in London. Before returning the phone to her brother, Erica, too, requested a visit from her "future sister because you finally got your fucking head out of your ass, Dylan - or should I say that wisenheimer Kelly's." Though Erica did admit, quite reluctantly, that the other woman had been of great help during the difficulties in her pregnancy, she insisted that "you and Kelly Taylor never made sense together, bro, and besides, I'm sure Bren would've done the same exact thing if you hadn't been an imbecilic simian and left her. You are aware that your ass is lucky she isn't already married to a hot English lord? Anyway, I want Cindy Walsh in the family. Maybe she'll give me her recipe for those double chocolate fudge cookies."
Having had his intelligence and past actions berated by his younger sister in three different synonyms during the same conversation, Dylan pleaded with his girlfriend to fly out as soon as she could. Erica thanked her for giving her brother another chance and swore to the both of them that she would give Dylan a swift kick into his royal jewels if his "asinine ass" screwed up one more time. She expected Brenda to officially become her sister, Erica said, and she would be immensely displeased with Dylan if their relationship halted before the ink dried on a certificate.
He assured his sister that nothing meant more to him than Brenda and the future they would unquestionably cement. His statement, however, left Erica unconvinced. She did reply that it was a good start, but noted that he still had "a shit ton of making up to do for just taking off. I mean, god, bro, I will never understand it. You two should've been married by now. Why are you always messing up a good thing?"
Brenda did try to insert that it had been she who asked Dylan to leave, but was stalled when he jumped to her own defense with a reminder of his farfetched conclusion which initially caused the entire row. Erica scolded both Brenda and Dylan for "taking nine fucking years to work this shit out. God, you two are stubborn. You know how many times I told him to call you? And you know how many times he said it was too late, that he knew he'd lost his chance? Well, who was right and who was wrong? Hint: wasn't me."
Of all the siblings who entered into the millions of families across the world, Dylan and Brenda both had to be given the smuggest of the bunch.
Brandon's gloating, she knew, would be thirty times worse.
"Anyway, Brenda, get your ass over here, okay? It's been too damn long and I'm not waiting until your wedding to see you again."
She had begun sifting through the flight results for a last-minute ticket to Copenhagen when Steve's name flashed onto her mobile.
Madeline's questions ranged from the notion of meeting the Queen - Brenda told her niece that they would certainly try, but no, she herself did not know royalty - to clarification on the concept of a period. Brenda had nearly choked on her dinner at that. On the last day before Madeline's three-week Christmas holiday, her classmate Amanda Perkins had bled excessively into her regrettably white jeans and the class could not agree on the cause. Madeline had volunteered her research services when Amanda did not return to confirm the rumors for herself. The older sister of class clown Trevor Meade had recently experienced a miscarriage and Brenda amusedly found herself limitedly explaining to Madeline the unlikelihood of eight-year-old Amanda also losing a child, despite Trevor's belief. Madeline then recalled a moment when she noticed Hannah Zuckerman-Vasquez running with a spot of blood seeping through the same place as Amanda; her consequential online search indicated the possibility of ovarian cancer.
Devastated, Madeline immediately yelled to a befuddled Steve that her close companion Hannah had cancer. When Steve ran into the room and heard the exact situation, he told Madeline that no, Hannah did not have cancer just because she had bled that one time. He then begged Brenda to please tell his daughter of the main reason that girls and women bled, for Steve Sanders had never expected to tell Madeline himself. She had plenty of estrogen around her, as he told Brenda, and she could have easily received the talk from Donna, Andrea, Kelly or even Silver.
Regardless of Steve's initial plan, Madeline Sanders learnt the precise definition of a period the year before she would study the reproductive system in her mandatory health class. Brenda could hear Steve sobbing on the other end of the phone.
When he recovered, he gave her their itinerary. It had been drawn up in full detail for him by Donna, who had created similar copies for herself and the others of their own visit.
The entrance of Madeline into London brought with it a further barrage of questions, all aimed at Brenda.
"Who's that?" she asked when Brenda met father and daughter at Victoria Station.
"This is my friend, Shane. He's offered to give us a lift to the theatre."
Steve warily eyed the man in question, expelling the slightest hint of a relieved breath when he noticed a wedding band on Shane's hand and Brenda's continued lack of one.
"He's going to lift us up? Don't you drive, Auntie Bren?"
Her father guffawed in response, resulting in one of Brenda's coldest glares.
"I think she means a ride, Mads."
"Uh, yeah. Best not to say that around here, mate," Shane warned the naïve man.
When Madeline also noticed Shane's ring, she asked if his wife experienced menstruation.
Steve's features transitioned into a hue dangling on the edge of the red spectrum. Brenda giggled. Shane outright belly laughed.
Madeline then turned to ask her aunt about her own periods, resulting in Brenda's stunned silence and murmured reply. Telling her that Janet's cousin Izumi was expecting a baby, the girl asked if Brenda had ever carried one herself.
"Mads, you can't go around asking women if they've been pregnant." Pressing a finger into his temple, Steve sighed.
"Why not, Daddy? You asked Aunt Donna if she was pregnant."
"Yeah, well, that's because she was moody and anyway, I shouldn't've asked her that, so let's just forget about it, okay?"
"Okay, but I want Auntie Bren to have a baby," she shrugged unapologetically. "You need to be in love to have a baby, right? That's what Daddy said. 'Two people in love planted a remarkable seed and that seed became you, Mads,'" she quoted. "But I guess it doesn't work with watermelon seeds."
Former ladies' man Steve Sanders was the last person Brenda imagined would brush over the subject of his child's conception through the analogy of a garden. Knowing he did brought forth Dixonian Rose vases brimming in levity.
"Godma is in love with Uncle Brandon, so they should probably get a baby soon if Daddy is right. Aunt Donna's in love with Uncle David and they have three. Daddy's in love, too."
"I don't know what you mean, Mads."
"Yes you do, Daddy. You get all gooey-eyed. You and GD, but I don't know who he's gooey-eyed over. Some picture he never lets me see. Me and Hannah tried to sneak it out of his sock drawer once, but I'm pretty sure she read the back wrong because I don't think GD knows a Bonnie or a Clyde. Right, Daddy?"
"Okay, Mads, who do you think I'm gooey-eyed over?"
"Aunt Andrea," Madeline winked.
"She's just a friend, my closest female friend in LA since your Auntie Bren decided she didn't like LA and wanted to move to a different L-city." Steve murmured. "What? You didn't and she is." He frowned at Brenda's snort of disbelief.
"Not so nice when it happens to you, is it, Steve?"
"Whatever, Bren. If you and Dylan weren't on opposite sides of the world, you'd totally be banging each other right now. Admit it."
"If you mean banging as in sha -" Shane started.
Brenda cut him off with the flicker of a glare.
"When are you gonna be in love with someone, Auntie Bren?" Sifting through her backpack, Madeline's gaze connected with hers.
Brenda again silenced, just in time, the revealing response of her easily entertained friend. She and Dylan had held off too long from telling the others for Steve and Maddie to find out without him.
The FBI's next top interrogator moved on to a series of other questions.
"Can you keep a pigeon as a pet?" Madeline inquired outside of the train station.
"Why does that bus have a picture of a soccer ball, but the words say it's a football? Can't they tell the difference, Daddy?"
"Daddy says England is on the Arctic Circle and that's why he won't let me move here. Is that true?"
"Auntie Bren, where's the sun? Can Santa find me if he doesn't have the sun to help him? Doesn't he visit London?"
"Why are the taxis black? Sobo said they're yellow in New York. Mister Wachinski -"
"Shane is fine, love."
"Shane, have you been to New York?"
Madeline barely waited for his response before hurtling on.
"Sydney Shepherd told me I couldn't visit England without knowing how to hail the Queen. Her granddad is an eque - eque - anyway, he takes care of the royal horses and she said he always tells her to make sure she knows to hail the Queen."
Brenda doubted the legitimacy of Sydney Shepherd's story.
"I've been practicing. Want to hear?"
Madeline sang rather well, certainly better than her father and the majority of her aunts. Shane humored her with a round of applause when she finished.
"See what I have to deal with?" Steve whispered, though he shone with fatherly pride.
"How was the flight?" Brenda angled to survey her friend from her position in the passenger seat.
"Awful!" She almost laughed at the look of utter petrification swarming through his countenance. "Mads was a wreck."
"Actually, Auntie Bren, I was perfectly fine. Daddy was terrified."
"Hey, Mads, you know when I told you honesty is the best policy? Yeah, I should've been more specific and pointed out that you don't have to tell your aunt the truth about everything. Some things are better left unsaid, especially when your dad is trying to make a point."
"But, Daddy, Sobo says I should always be truthful in everything and you were scared."
"Steve, I thought you've been on a transatlantic flight before. Didn't you go to Spain with your mother?"
"Yeah, when I was seven, but it was a cruise, Bren. Not a plane. In the air. Over a fu - frickin' lot of ocean."
"But you've been to Hawaii," she pointed out, knowing from her twin of Steve's short-lived reunion with ex-girlfriend Celeste Lundy in the island state during Brenda's first summer at RADA.
"Which is half the time it takes to fly over here."
"What about when you and Janet went to Saint Lucia for your third anniversary?"
"Also via cruise, Bren."
She didn't understand how anyone could feel safer on a ship over a rocky ocean which killed thousands of people with a single iceberg than on an international flight which she herself had taken numerous times to various areas around the world.
Although her tours largely concentrated in continental Europe, she did have the occasional one in New Zealand and, rarer still, Brazil.
"How have you lived, Steve?" She shook her head.
"Been just fine, thanks. The one upside to that long - über long, I mean, layover in Atlanta and everything, which made it even longer - flight is I get to see you, but I still don't know why you insist on living so far away. Why couldn't you move down to Baja or something, like McKay? Although I don't know why he had to leave, too. There's nothing wrong with staying where you grew up."
Shane and Brenda exchanged a secretive smirk which thankfully went unnoticed by Steve.
If only he knew, she thought.
"So," Brenda started, fighting to keep in her rising giggle, "Dylan moved to Baja, huh?"
"Well, I think he moved to Baja. You know he left for somewhere and you'd think he'd tell me or Brandon where he went, but no, the guy's gotta be all secretive and shi - shoot pool."
"Daddy, you do know I understand what you mean when you say shoot pool, right? I am eight years old," Madeline reminded her father. "Sydney Shepherd says shit all the time."
"I don't think I like this Sydney Shepherd person, Mads. And I don't care what she says. You can't cuss until you're at least seventeen, unless you want your Sobo to disown me as her son-in-law."
"But Sofu cusses."
"When you get to be seventy-eight years old, Madeline Sosna Sanders, you can say and do whatever you want. Right now you're eight, so can you please just do what I ask?"
Madeline spent the rest of the ride querying her father why he would not simply move them to London, a statement which Brenda heartily echoed.
"Are you kidding me? Janet's parents would slaughter me," Steve informed her once they had stepped outside and Madeline ran ahead to the outside of the theatre. "They're already annoyed we don't live closer to San Diego."
"You're not even three hours away."
"That's what I've told them! So imagine us living all the way over here. Not that it isn't tempting, believe me, just because you're here, but English weather? Nah, couldn't do it. I love my sun. I don't know how you're okay going days and days and days without it."
"It really isn't that bad."
She confirmed with Shane that he would drop the Sanders' luggage off at her home, whispered her gratitude for his silence about Dylan and agreed that she would help him run lines for his own audition following Steve's departure.
Watching him drive off, Brenda turned to a surprisingly saddened Steve. Tucking a hand into his pocket, his gaze momentarily flicked to her before resuming a close eye on his daughter.
"I was never supposed to do this alone, Bren." Shifting Madeline's backpack onto his shoulder, he spoke softly.
"Do what?"
"This. Raising Mads." He swallowed. "It should've been a two-person job."
"Steve, you aren't alone. You have me, Dylan, Brandon, the entire gang, your mother, Janet's parents -"
"Why did you say McKay before Bran?" His lips lifted into a crooked smirk.
"And you have Andrea," she hurriedly finished.
She plunged on, spotting his noticeably lightening features at the mere mention of Andrea Zuckerman.
"If you want her, you need to go for it."
"Bad idea, Bren. There's way too much at stake."
"You aren't betraying Janet, Steve. You aren't diminishing what you two had. It's okay to love again."
"No, it's just, we aren't kids anymore. I can't be with Andrea. It's not as simple as making out when studying for the SAT's or -"
"Wait just one minute. You and Andrea made out in high school?" she exclaimed, attempting to digest the information hidden for at least sixteen years.
She wondered if Brandon knew. He would have surely told her if he did, slipped it into one of their numerous conversations without realizing. He may have been better at keeping secrets than she, but he floundered at leaving her in the dark regarding any topic. Until that moment, she had believed both Steve Sanders and Andrea Zuckerman told her brother everything, even the smallest details of their respective lives.
It would seem they left out some vital history.
"There's two children involved here," he quickly added, preventing her from further inquiry about the implied, cryptic teenage makeout session between her two friends.
"So? You've known Hannah since she was born. You've been around much more frequently than Jesse. I know he's a great guy who has extremely important work and that he wishes he could be there more, but it doesn't make it any less true."
"It's not that." He cupped both hands around the back of his neck. "It's not whether Hannah loves me; I know she does. I get a card from her every Father's Day that reminds me I'm like a second dad to her. I have tons of presents she's given me each birthday. I mean, Jesse's an awesome dad. Nothing against the guy. He's doing what he thinks is best for her. I get that. It doesn't change the fact that I love Hannah like she's my own and sure, sometimes I do wonder what it'd be like to be her stepdad."
He paused mid-paragraph to gape at a passing Julie Andrews, doing a double-take to ensure he had indeed spotted the acclaimed Julie Andrews slipping into a nearby theatre.
"That - that was -" he stuttered.
"I know," she casually nodded. "Isn't the West End fantastic? If you're lucky, you might see Sean Connery."
"No fucking way. The original Bond has stopped by?"
"Oh, we have massive amounts of star power, Steve. But you're diverting. Aren't you supposed to be the risk taker of our group? Why are you playing this so safe?"
"If it was just me, maybe I would give it a go. But it's Mads, Bren. If me and Andrea broke up," he trailed off and shook his head, "well, she would be devastated. She and Hannah have already tried to Parent Trap us before. It didn't work then and it won't work out now."
"You do realize Andrea won't be single forever, right? She has plenty of qualities that the right kind of guy will love." She placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it lightly. "I don't want you to wake up one day and regret not giving this thing between you two a chance while you still could. I remember someone saying something once about listening to one's heart. How does that go? Oh yeah; if she's calling for you, listen to your heart."
She smirked. Payback was sweet.
Now she needed to play matchmaker for Valerie, who would be much more difficult to match up with anyone. Since moving eastward, Valerie Malone frequently used men as a tool to satiate her womanly desires. She confessed to Brenda that she had only been in love once and she bore no interest in going down the harrowing path again.
That had initially been perfectly acceptable and would have stayed acceptable, if Valerie hadn't joined the baseball team of people pitching the idea of Dylan.
It didn't matter that she'd been right. On principle, Brenda would simply have to annoy her self-declared twin sister to the same extent, until Valerie acquired a love life of her own and maybe gave Brenda a few more nieces or nephews.
"Tell you what, Bren. You get back together with Dylan and maybe I'll see if Andrea would have any interest in going out on a date with me. Of course, you'd either have to go for it on New Year's or fly out to Baja later -"
The frazzled director darted out of the theatre, pulling Brenda aside and saving her from the telltale crimson cheeks that would assuredly spill all to Steve in their color alone.
The child set to play her daughter had come down with pneumonia, Amerigo told her bitterly, and he had spent the entire morning searching for an available replacement, with little luck.
Steve was unimpressed when she suggested Madeline step into the role. He delved into a lengthy reminder of his own childhood with show business, as if Brenda had not already heard all about his terrible experiences on the set of the Hartley House, or the torture inflicted upon him by child star brats. She assured that Madeline would not turn to heroin merely from one stage performance for a small Christmas production - and it did benefit charity, she emphasized. He told her of the drug addiction developed in later life by his old nemesis Chuckie, that every kid he had known in the business either became a drug dealer or did time for the possession of cocaine.
Brenda pointed out that the backstage antics of Hollywood did not necessarily translate to the theatre world. She had worked with many children, all of whom grew up to be happy, stable teenagers, both in and out of the West End, and besides, it would be quite the story for Madeline to tell the fabulist Sydney Shepherd when they returned to school.
He began to waver when she told him of one of the charity's connections to research for Parkinson's, a disease for which his brother Ryan had told him just the previous week that their father Rush Sanders had received a diagnosis.
She learnt of her standing as the second person he had told about his estranged father's poor health. The first, unsurprisingly, minutes after he had spoken to his brother, was Andrea. She had then rushed to Steve's place with a delivery of matzo ball soup picked up from her favorite local deli for himself and Madeline, along with an offer to go with him to Rush's every appointment.
Frankly, Brenda thought with a large dose of gaiety, the two sounded like they were already married.
In the end, Steve reluctantly agreed to let Madeline make her own decision on the matter. She jumped at the chance and so Steve, for the first time, watched his little girl take the stage whilst tears streamed down his face.
Whether Madeline would create her own prominence on Broadway or the West End, only time could determine, but for someone who had never even performed in the school talent show due to her father's wariness, she picked up on the material and corresponding mannerisms quite easily.
Awed at Madeline's memorization skills, so similar to her own, Brenda felt the way she figured all proud mums must feel when they saw their little chickadee on their way to conquer the world.
And when she noticed the half of a heart glittering from her niece's neck, she realized that Madeline believed her mother to be standing alongside her, too.
Halfway through an intermission from the dress rehearsal, three bites into the caprese baguette brought in to the cast by a Pret employee, Brenda withdrew her ringing mobile.
"Woman, I miss you."
"I miss you, Dyl. How's everything over there?"
"Horrible. I'm freezing my balls off and don't even have you to keep me warm. How's it going with Sanders?"
"I mean, it's going pretty well, but Maddie has clearly spent way too much time around Andrea."
"You, too, huh?"
"She does this a lot?"
"You mean, sit your ass down and trap you in an interrogation that would even get the truth out of P.T. Barnum?"
"Would that be possible?" She laughed and took a swig from her water bottle.
"Hey, if anyone could do it, it would be our Madster," he replied fondly. "When she was six - my bad, six-and-a-half; she was very insistent on the half - she tried to ask me about us."
"She wanted to know about us?"
"She found our junior yearbook in Steve's room. Didn't know we were in that until she shoved it in front of my face and then she spent the next four, five months asking literally everyone what happened with Auntie Bren and GD. Got Hannah in on it, too."
"'Literally' everyone? I don't remember her asking me."
"Okay, so almost everyone. Sanders probably stopped her from asking you."
He went on to tell her that, although most of their friends had remained quiet in the Sanders-Vasquez interrogation, David replied with a response consisting of only two sentences.
"He told her - during the Easter egg hunt! - 'you wanna know what happened between Brenda and your goddad? Your aunt flew to Paris and Dylan suddenly decided he preferred blondes.' I could've killed Silver for saying that. Mads spent weeks thinking I was gonna find some blonde kid to love more than her."
"Oh really? And do you still prefer blondes?"
"Hell no. Forget what you might've heard. Truth is, I've never preferred blondes. I was just a horny dick. My girlfriend was overseas and I didn't have the strength to deal with her father anymore." He hemmed. "But I know there's no excuse for that, Bren. I'm not gonna keep trying to give one. The important thing is the here, the now, the forever. So if we're talking forever, I'm quite taken with one stunning brunette in particular. You might know her, actually. Works on West End. Kinda has an accent - Minnesotan, mixed with Californian, bit of Londoner. One-of-a-kind, just like her. She's a hell of a lot better than any blonde and it'd be a terrible shame if she ever dyed that hair."
"What if she dyed it red?"
"Red, huh? I might consider it, if it's on her head. Didn't you hear? I'm a one-woman man now."
"How ever are the single women of the world coping without Dylan McKay?" she teased, nodding to her castmate who pointed at the clock hanging on the opposite wall.
"Dunno. Probably started by asking the single men how they're coping without the possibility of dating Brenda Walsh."
"Have I told you that I love you?"
"Not today, you haven't." She could hear his smirk through the phone.
"Well, I do. My love for you outnumbers every seashell in all four oceans, but Dylan, I have to go. Break is over."
"I understand," he sighed. "Count every snowflake that falls across this planet, quadruple it and it still wouldn't touch how much you mean to me. So babe," he coughed, "come out here." He yelled out to Erica, who reiterated the consistent request.
"I'll look at flights," she promised.
"You know you don't have to pay for it, Bren. I'm more than happy to buy your ticket."
"Bye, baby. Oh, and Steve thinks I should fly out to Baja to hook up with you."
"Point for Sanders," he laughed. "We'll save Baja for later. For now, just fly to Denmark. I probably sound like a cheesy kid's movie, but I'm not joking when I say the magic awaits."
"I remember." Bunching her hair into a ballerina bun to keep it out of her face for the rest of the rehearsal, she smiled. "By the way, Maddie wants me to fall in love with someone because she's under the impression that doing so equals instant baby."
"Well, we're fervidly in love, so we should work on that."
"Okay, now I really have to go. I'll try to not have too much fun without you."
"Nah, go crazy. Just call me later so I'll know you didn't pass out in a fountain or some shit after Sophie's shindig."
"Farvel så længe," she finished in a poor attempt at an old-fashioned Danish goodbye.
Madeline Sosna Sanders was an instant hit with the London coterie, who all came to watch Brenda perform. Katie gifted Madeline with a small bouquet of bright pink roses. Shane welcomed her to the West End family with a plaque he'd had made for the occasion. Sophie ribbed that Maddie performed better than her baby brother. Vee gave her a charm in the likeness of a script. Levi and Benji asked for an encore, which Madeline happily gave in the privacy of Brenda's home.
She basked in the attention and, although Steve readily admitted to the blossoming talent of his daughter, Brenda caught him crying in the bathroom over what he claimed was losing her to show business.
Word quickly spread to the others of Madeline's twenty minute brush with fame. Cindy told her to expect a special package in the mail, containing an article that only a true thespian would own. Dylan promised to purchase whatever item she wanted. Donna called Brenda with an inquiry of the appropriate congratulatory present for a child of the theatre and to request the exact measurements of Maddie. The remaining Angelenos of the gang congregated at Andrea's home, where they viewed the Internet version of Madeline in her second encore. A tiny box of Dylan lingered in the corner of the screen, with the red ombre curls of Erica taking up the rest of the rectangle. Brandon requested a third encore when he next saw Madeline. David asked if she would like to join him in the studio. Kelly told her goddaughter that Janet would be proud.
Steve had then excused himself from the chat.
With Katie playing chauffeur, Brenda took the twosome to nearby castles and palaces, helped Steve finalize his gift for Andrea and observed Madeline's delight at the Christmas markets.
They spent the eve before Christmas at Sophie's, along with the usual crowd and an array of treats Madeline never before tasted. She informed everyone gathered that she quite enjoyed the mince pie. Steve, however, balked at the raisin-based dessert, choosing instead to partake in his fair share of Quality Street confections and a delectable Yule Log baked by Benji that Sophie declared better than her mum's.
Steve had been unusually melancholy since Kelly's comment. He leapt into considerably higher spirits on Christmas Day, waking Brenda with a childish jump onto her bed and a yelp of excitement that not even his daughter emitted.
Madeline was relieved to find that Santa evidently received notice of her accommodations and found her even with a lack of solar lighting. The gang had agreed to exchange gifts when they were all together, but Brenda's local group ensured Madeline received presents on the appropriate day.
She became especially enamored with Brenda's gift: a vintage music box bearing the image of a dark-haired girl and her blond father, who both waved from a magnificent ship to the onlookers below.
To round out the evening, Brenda pulled out a tray of madeleines for which Steve indulged in thirds and fourths. Upon introducing Madeline to the fictionalized version of her name, Maddie requested for Steve to relocate them to Paris.
Brenda laughed at how quickly she had already forgotten her dreams of English citizenship.
Embracing Brenda at the terminal for Japan Airlines, Steve whispered that if she gave in and kissed Dylan when the ball dropped, he would in turn consider a kiss with Andrea.
He had essentially sealed his fate, she told Dylan when they spoke later that night, for she planned on a thorough snogging at midnight in front of all of their friends.
He informed her of his own plans, which involved a bit more than snogging.
She did not tell him the recipient of Steve's crush, though from his unspoken understanding, she believed he may have figured it out himself.
If their peculiarly cautious friend followed through on his ultimatum, it would certainly be an interesting New Year's Eve in the Walsh-McKay residence upon the colorful row of London's western end.
-x
To fly to the McKays in Copenhagen or not to fly to the McKays in Copenhagen, that is the question. I'll let you decide.
Brendamckay61 - Dylan and Jimbo's relationship became so complex that I felt, overtime, they could come to a mutual understanding and respect of each other. I'm glad you enjoyed that bit!
Guest001 - Thank you! I'm flattered.
KMeki - Val speaking for all the anti-Kelly people, haha.
Thank you for the readership, reviews, follows, favourites, discourse, etc!