AN: Welp. No time no see. I honestly probably won't ever stop saying the words sorry. I've had the worst writers block. At one point, I was really just considering never writing again. It was unbearable. But recently, someone reviewed on my story telling me about a story Average Canadian wrote that was partially inspired by me, and after I read it, I regained motivation to keep writing. So here I am. I'm really sucky, and this chapter is probably really sucky, but what can you do honestly. Im sorry you guys :/
Percy
The days after the playoff game turned into weeks and then months and then time went by so fast that before I knew it, we hit the second semester of the school year, Thalia's baby was reportedly now ten inches long, and football season was mostly over. More importantly, my girlfriend's birthday was coming up, and I'd be damned if I didn't say I had something in the works for her.
Ever since the playoff game, Annabeth had consumed herself in her studies. Our tutoring sessions dwindled down from every week, to every other week, to once a month. Anytime I'd talk to her, her voice would hold a degree of stress you couldn't ignore. These days, she was always so tense, and it was becoming increasingly hard to catch her at a good time.
I was admittedly scared for her. I was worried something was going on at home. Maybe things with Helen had become worse, or maybe she was on bad terms with Malcom again. I didn't know exactly what it was. All I knew was that something was off, and I just wanted Annabeth to be okay. When I teased her, she wouldn't even react anymore, or argue with me, she'd just let it pass and consume herself in something like a book, or her homework, or whatever she could find that was readily available. But I wanted to change that. That's why I currently found myself in one of the empty classrooms of Goode, standing in the front of the classroom with a whiteboard marker in hand, and staring back at the group of people I'd called for a meeting hastily.
"Alright! Welcome everyone! I'm glad everyone could make it on such short notice-"
"Yeah, really short notice." Thalia commented, as she narrowed her eyes at me while she rubbed her baby bump.
"Yeah," Malcolm piped up, sitting up in the chair next to her, "We have a checkup appointment to get to in an hour and the center is forty minutes away."
"And I have GSA after school today." Reyna added quickly. Piper nodded quietly in agreement, while some others voiced their different afterschool plans. I felt my hope fading quickly and completely lost it when one of Annabeth's cheerleading buddies got up and marched out of the classroom.
"Guys come on! I haven't even said anything yet!"
"Percy why are we here?" Malcolm asked tiredly, swinging an arm around Thalia's shoulder. Jason nodded from the back and opened his mouth to speak for the first time.
"I-
"Look, I get it! We all have places to be today. But maybe if you guys stopped complaining so much and just let me speak, you'd all get out of here faster." And that seemed to shut everyone up. I let out a smug smile at my small success and got right to business.
"Alright. So, as you all know, Annabeth's birthday is this weekend. She's been super on edge for a while now, and I had this idea that we could maybe pull together a surprise party for her. I mean she's just so overworked right now, and I honestly think it would be a nice break for her from everything going on right now with school and her studies and stuff." I stopped quickly to gauge the reaction of my small crowd, and when no one said a word, I started rambling.
"Guys, I think she deserves it. I mean she works so hard all the time and I know she would do it for you guys and she-"
"I'm on board. We can even do it at my place." Thalia said suddenly, cutting off the beginning of my rambling.
"Yeah, me too. I think it's a great idea." Piper chimed, bobbing her head.
"Yeah, Annie deserves a break." Jason agreed, leaning back in his chair and then staring at me intently. "Who knew Jackson had a heart." He commented, and I bit back my smile while chuckles erupted from the crowd. Annabeth and I had done a spectacular job at keeping our relationship in the shadows if even Jason couldn't see it.
"Okay, great, so if we're all on board, I'll pass this piece of paper around and you guys can all put your numbers down so we can start a group chat about it, yeah?"
And with that, my small plan started forming.
The weekend of Annabeth's birthday came in a flash, and on that Saturday, I was almost as stressed as Annabeth had been for the past couple months. The party was set to be that afternoon, and as soon as I'd woken up, I'd sent Annabeth a happy birthday message, and rushed my way over to Thalia's. So here I was, currently stressing over the color of some streamers, and gripping a clipboard so hard my knuckles were turning white.
"Jason, Piper, did you pick up the cake from the bakery?" I shouted over the booming music that Thalia was currently attempting to set up correctly.
"I'm not getting in a car with him, Percy I can't." Piper told me, not caring that Jason was standing right in front of her. I rolled my eyes and let out an exasperated breath as I fixed the baseball cap on my head.
"Okay fine, go with Reyna then to pick up the helium balloons." I watched as Piper's jaw clamped shut and her face promptly flushed. As I looked up from her, I saw Reyna shaking her head at me and mouthing 'NO' at me from behind her. My hands curled into fists and I counted to ten in my head like Annabeth had taught me one day.
"Percy, Kay is completely messing up the set up at the table, I can't work with her!" Someone shouted.
"And I don't like this music!" Someone else shouted. Soon enough everyone was bickering with each other and I felt my calm slipping away through my fingers.
"I can't do this okay this is too much." Someone said, and that's when I completely lost it.
"GUYS. SUCK IT UP. YOU ARE ALL ACTING LIKE BABIES." I shouted, and everyone's voices and complains stopped instantly. I let out a breath and crossed my arms over my chest, continuing.
"This isn't your birthday. It's her birthday. It's the one day a year that is specifically for her. Annabeth deserves this. She deserves to listen to the music she likes, with decorations that appeal to her, and food that she likes. Because this is for her. And I get it. Some of you don't like each other. But honestly, you all are being so immature about this, and that's coming from me. For one day, just suck it up, and get over your differences. For Annabeth's sake."
And then everyone stared at each other for a good minute, and then without speaking, everyone went off to do their own separate jobs. And I let out a breath.
"Okay," I started, turning back to Jason, "Jason, you can go pick up the cake. Piper, go help set up the table and the presents. Reyna, you can go get the balloons and the snacks. Is this fine?" And when they all nodded, I let myself relax. All I wanted was for this day to go smoothly so I could see a smile on her face.
I supervised the people setting up the table, over watched as Thalia set up the music, and when Jason came back with cake, let out a sigh of relief when I saw that it was the right one and at least that had gone without fault.
And then I went to go pick Annabeth up. The ride there filled me with excitement I hadn't felt in forever, and when I got to her house, I jumped out of the car so fast I almost tripped over my own two feet.
I knocked on her front door loudly, and when Annabeth's dad opened the door, I had to hide my relief in knowing that Helen wasn't there.
"Hey, Mr. Chase. Is Annabeth almost ready to go?"
"Should be. She's upstairs, you can go up there and get her if you want." And with that, I ran up the stairs with an eagerness I couldn't contain. I barged into her room and stopped in my tracks at the scene before me.
Annabeth's bed covers were thrown messily over her bed, the first sign that something was out of place. There were dirty dishes piled high on her computer desk, and books scattered all over the floor. But that wasn't what bothered me the most about the current state of Annabeth's room. What bothered me the most was the empty liquor bottles ever so subtly poking out from under the bed. As my eyes raked the rest of the room, I caught a second thing that made the earth fall down from underneath my feet. It was a small, almost inconspicuous pocket knife, opened, and laying on her bedside table.
"Perce?" A voice said from behind me, and I swiveled around to meet Annabeth's eyes. I forced a smile and tried to hide the fact that my face had gone white.
"Hey! Your dad sent me up here to get you for lunch. You ready?" She nodded quietly and I gave her a half-hearted smile. I don't know what I just saw in that room or what it meant, but if I was concerned before, now I was paranoid to the extreme.
"Alright, let's head out then." And so we went, her not really talking, and I, for the first time in a while, doing the same. I couldn't really talk. Currently I was too busy trying to figure out what was going on with her.
As soon as she stepped foot in the house I knew my surprise for her had gone wrong. I was trying to regain my excitement during the car ride to Thalia's, shoving the images of Annabeth's room in the back of my head and instead thinking about the awaiting party. When I missed the turn to our lunch destination, she turned and looked at me with eyes full of confusion, but I just keep driving, my anticipation coming back in full swing.
And then she opened the door and everyone had yelled surprise and she had stood there for minutes, with the most shocked expression on her face. And that's where we were now. No talking. No thank you's or happy birthday's, or anything. Just staring. And then,
"I'll be right back." She said quietly, and then walked away swiftly to the backyard. Everyone around shot me concerned looks, even Malcolm looking back at his retreating sister. And so I repeated Annabeth's words to them, and followed her out to the back. I found her pacing the grass, and as soon as she spotted me, her eyebrows drew together.
"Percy, how could you do this?!" Her eyes were storm clouds, glinting dangerously, and warning of the incoming storm. I was completely thrown off.
"What?"
"I hate surprises. How could you do this, you know how stressed I am and this is just making everything worse!" Her pacing started up again and I watched as she ran both of her hands through her knotted hair.
"Annabeth I'm sorry, I didn't know. I thought this could help, maybe give you a break from everything you've been dealing with."
"Well you thought wrong." She stated, and I watched perplexed as her eyes clouded with thick heavy tears. "You should've asked me. You should've asked me instead of just assuming that I'd be okay with something like this. You should've at least tried to give me some sort of option before you just decided for me." Her voice was strained, and I could tell she was holding back sobs. And as I watched her tears streamed down her cheeks, I knew that this break down had nothing to do with the party, and everything to do with the reason she'd been so off lately.
"Okay." Her eyebrows drew together again and she let out some noise that sounded like a mixture of a scoff and a held back sob.
"Okay? That's all you have to say?"
"Yes. I know this isn't about the party. I know there's something else going on that you're not telling me, and I know that it's probably why you've been so off for a while now." Instead of replying, Annabeth stayed silent, and I watched worriedly as her crying intensified.
"Alright, come on. Let's go for a walk." And I put an arm around her shoulders, and together we walked out of the backyard, and onto the streets, not knowing where we were going.
For a while, we had walked in silence, Annabeth's crying and sniffling being the only noise filling the air. And then, after some time, Annabeth had stopped at a curb and sat and covered her face with her hands and cried some more. Every time she hiccupped, my heart broke a little more, and once I couldn't bear it anymore, I broke the silence.
"What's going on, Blondie?" She raised her head from her knees and met my eyes with her now red rimmed ones. And then her eyes filled with tears again and she shook her head.
"You know you can talk to me. That I'm here for you. You know that right?" She nodded and I rubbed her arm.
"Okay. Let's start small then. Why are you upset right now?"
"I'm overwhelmed." She stated quietly.
"And the party set you off?" She nodded.
"Okay. Is there something specific making you overwhelmed?"
"Just life." She stated, and I heard her voice getting thick again.
"Okay. Anything particular in life?" Her tears started up again and before I knew it she was rambling.
"I'm sorry, Percy. I'm really sorry," She said through her sobs. "It's not you. You're fine. It's just me. I'm just going through some stuff right now and it's a lot and it's been hard to deal with it and I haven't been able to talk about it to anyone."
"Hey, it's okay. I understand. But you know you can always talk to me, you know I'm always here, you can trust me." She nodded and she wiped away the tears that kept falling.
"I know. I know. But I just can't right now. Not now. I'm not ready. And I'm scared." I hesitated, giving her a good look for the first time in a while. Her hair was strewn messily all over her face, and the sweater she wore hung off her body loosely. She looked thin, and hollow, and not okay. And at that point I knew I couldn't stop myself from asking what I was suspecting was already true.
"Is this in anyway related to the bottles and the knife in your room?" Her breath faltered and she looked up at me, shock registering in her face.
"You saw that?" Her whisper was almost inaudible, and I shut my eyes, the ball of worry in my stomach growing by the second.
"Please tell me you're not being reckless. Tell me you're not hurting yourself." And her silence was enough of an answer for me. I felt my eyes filling up with tears, and I looked up to the sky, hoping for an answer from anywhere. Something that would distract me from the current situation. Just something.
And we stayed silent, and I held her as she buried her face back into her knees and cried some more.
"It's okay, Blondie." I said after a while. "You don't have to tell me right now. You don't have to tell me what's going on. I'm going to be here when you are ready. I'm going to be here regardless. So take your time, and when you're ready, and you're comfortable, I'll be here." I paused and shut my eyes again, trying to keep myself under control, but when I spoke again, my voice cracked.
"But please. Please. Don't hurt yourself. Don't do this. I can't watch that happen, I can't just sit here knowing that you're doing this. It's going to break me. I would rather you punch me and kick me and completely pummel me to the ground to get your frustration and feelings out than you hurt yourself. I can't, Annabeth, I just can't. Please."
The only thing that was left was muffled apologies and tears. And then, when all was said and done, she met my eyes, and with a determined look on her face, set a hand on my cheek, and pressed her lips to mine in desperation. And I'd kissed her. I'd kissed her like my life depended on it. I kissed her like it was the last time I'd ever be able to kiss her again. I kissed her with every intention of translating every last ounce of emotion that I felt for her. I kissed her so hard I almost lost feeling. And unlike recent times, she wasn't tense or stiff. Instead, she returned the same urgency I felt and that made me break even more inside. It was everything I had felt between us in the past couple months. The uncertainty, the worry, the pent up concern and emotion. It was all the times I feared she was spacing herself away from me, that I was no longer important to her. It was everything. For those moments where our lips met, nothing else mattered. It was just us, together, and we could look away from the hardships of life for a sliver of time.
And when she rested her forehead on mine and started mumbling her countless sorry's once again, I'd let out a small, sad laugh and stopped her.
"No no no. You're fine. You don't have anything to apologize for. You have feelings. And that's okay. " I mumbled against her hair before I pressed a kiss to her temple. And she met my eyes with this amazingly dazed look on her face and as I wiped the tears from her face, she'd said "I love you a lot, Perce", and I'd said "I love you too, Blondie". And that was that.
I found that there were two things in this world that really and truly mesmerized me. The first was the adoring smile my mom gave me when I acted like a dumbass. She would always be number one. But coming in second was Annabeth's laugh. It wasn't just the way she laughed, not at all. It was every component involved with the laugh. It was the way she wholeheartedly threw her head back when something was particularly funny, or the way her eyes would glint, and if whatever she was laughing at was truly exceptional, how tears of joy would suddenly stream down her cheeks. When Annabeth laughed, everything just seemed to glow. That's the image I saw before me at the second.
"Oh, you should've seen your face." She gasped, as she held her sides and tried to calm down her laughter.
Sometime after the party, after everyone had left and Malcolm and Thalia went off to sleep, Annabeth and I found ourselves back in the Starbucks where it all began. We were currently discussing the look on my face when Annabeth had proceeded to dump a frappucino on my head. Even though the joke was at my expense, I couldn't help but just sit there and stare at her. This was the happiest I'd seen her in months. It didn't happen in the way I wanted it to, but regardless, it happened.
"I'm sure it was hilarious." I replied with a self-satisfied smile, and snatched the drink she was currently sipping away from her. She rolled her eyes at me, and after a while of just sitting there in comfortable silence, her eyes softened and she spoke again.
"Perce, I just wanted to tell you that I actually really did like the party. I'm sorry that I blew up in the beginning and blew everything out of proportion. It really was a lot of fun." I knew she still felt bad about her entire outburst and shook my head at her.
"Hey, you're fine. I just wanted to make your birthday special. I didn't mean to ruin it." She shrugged as I sipped the drink gingerly and then stood up promptly, gesturing to the employees cleaning up tables and putting things up in the back. So together we walked back out to my car, passing the drink between us.
"Actually," She spoke as we neared the car, "Even with everything that happened, it's probably one of the best birthdays I've had in years."
"Seriously?" I unlocked the car and climbed in, turning the engine on and then waiting until she was safely in to lock the doors again. "When was the last time you really celebrated you birthday?"
"Probably back when I was really young and mom was still alive. I remember how every year for my birthday, we'd go up to Montauk and hang out at the beach for some time. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. My mom loved it there. After she died, Malcolm and I would ask to go for my birthday, but Helen would forbid us from going so I haven't been there in years. It was kind of my way of being able to stay close to her." She explained as she leaned over and rested her chin on my shoulder. I set a kiss down on her forehead and thought for a while.
"I'm sorry, Blondie." She shrugged and looked down even though there was nothing to look at.
"It's fine. I kind of just wanna go back some time." I could feel the idea brewing in my mind before I ever fully realized it, and suddenly I sat up and stared at her.
"What about next weekend?" I asked quickly.
"Wait what?"
"We could go to Montauk next weekend. I could take you." Her eyebrows pulled together and she lifted her head from my chin.
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah," I confirmed, starting to get excited, "I have a friend who owns a shack down there, I can probably ask him to borrow it, and we have that extra day next weekend. It'd be like a late birthday present."
I watched as her expression changed from one of complete confusion to one of anticipation and excitement, and I instantly knew I had said the right thing.
"Oh my god yes! That'd be amazing oh my god! Percy are you really being serious? We're really gonna go?" She resembled a little kid being given a lengthy curfew.
"Of course we are, Blondie. It'll be fun. And I can watch you get sun burned." I added in, and even when she swatted my arm, I could tell she was excited. That night, as I drove her home, I felt a sense of peace inside me. It finally felt like things were, for once, going to be okay. Of course, I had no idea that I was completely and utterly wrong.
AN: Drop me a review please! I'll try to get the next chapter our soon :)