At last: the party. Y'all, I really enjoyed writing this chapter. Idk how you guys are gonna feel, but for me it was just such a chef's kiss moment. (Also, I loved reading everyone's thoughts on Felix last chapter; literally nothing brings me more joy than your theories!) I hope you're all staying safe in this time of corona-craziness. Remember: wash your hands and stay 6 ft apart! Enjoy the chapter. :)

WARNING: There are descriptions of a panic attack near the end of this chapter; please read with caution if you are sensitive to such.

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"Rayla, you look awesome!" Felix exclaimed as he stepped aside to allow the group of four to enter his house, pop music filtering in from the background. "Ooh, let me guess - an elf? Or… maybe a dryad?"

"An elf, obviously," Rayla said, gesturing to her horns and giving Felix an amused smirk. "I thought these made that clear."

Honestly, the horns had just made Callum confused about her costume, but he didn't plan on mentioning that. Either way they still looked great.

Felix laughed. "You're right. Do forgive me." He turned to give everyone else a once-over. "Okay. Claudia, you've got some major dark wizard vibes going on."

"Dark mage," Claudia corrected, but she was grinning.

"Mage! Got it, got it." He then studied Callum, pursing his lips. "If she's a dark mage, I'd say you're a sort of… light mage, then? But you've also got a crown on, so there's clearly some elements of royalty, too…"

Callum forced himself to smile at Felix, unsure of why the football player's presence had put such a damper on his previously cheerful mood. "I was aiming for a prince who's a sky mage, but 'light mage' works, too."

Felix laughed, pumping his fist. "Alright! I count that as a victory for myself." He then turned to Soren. "Hm. Some sort of warrior guard? You've got a ton of armor on."

"I'm Callum's crowd guard!" Soren said with a grin, shouldering his sword and looking terribly pleased with himself. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"Um, obviously," Felix said, grinning as wide as Soren. "I'm so glad you guys were all able to make it! Food and drinks are in the kitchen. Jason and Lucas are making sure alcoholic and non-alcoholic stuff is staying separate, so don't accept drinks from anyone other than them. Cool?" Upon them nodding in response, he flashed them a thumbs up before taking Rayla's hand in his, and Callum felt a weird, nauseating sensation start to roll in his stomach when Rayla made no move to pull away. "Okay," he said, beginning to lead her through the main room, "I need to properly introduce you to more of my wrestling friends!"

Rayla rolled her eyes but was smiling, and after giving the remaining trio a quick wave she allowed herself to be dragged off before anyone could get a word out in protest.

Callum was tempted to follow them. In fact, he really wanted to follow them. Just to make sure Rayla wasn't alone, of course. He had no ulterior motives - he was only looking out for his friend. His friend who'd seemed annoyingly happy to go hang out with Felix and his wrestling buddies. That wasn't weird of him, was it? Maybe he needed to -

"Ooh, could I be detecting a hint of jealousy from Callum?" Claudia snickered, not-so-casually elbowing Soren away. Her brother rolled his eyes in response but obliged, disappearing into the crowd of the party.

"No, I -"

"Who am I kidding," Claudia continued, not letting him finish. "There is way more than a 'hint' of jealousy here. It's practically a truckload at this point."

Callum's face reddened up to the tips of her ears at her comment. "I am not jealous," he protested, glaring at her. "I just... don't like Felix. For a reason that is totally, completely, entirely unrelated to Rayla."

"Mhm. Sure." Claudia smirked at him. "If that reason is unrelated to Rayla, then what is it related to? Care to share?"

Callum opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish as he struggled to find a response. "I, uh..." He huffed, stomping his foot in what was undoubtedly a childlike manner. "I don't know, Claudia! Do we really need to talk about this right now?"

Claudia rolled her eyes. "Uh, yeah, because if we don't, you're just going to be irritated the whole evening, and I don't want my best friend to be a Debby Downer and ruin the party for everyone. Everyone meaning me, because you already know I'm gonna be glued to your hip tonight. So." She tucked her white streak behind her ear before giving him a knowing look. "Let's try this again. Why don't you like Felix?"

"I -"

"And be honest with me, okay? I'm not going to judge you. You know that."

Callum hesitated, then groaned, dragging his hand down the right side of his face. "He just... He spends so much time with Rayla without any of us around, and she seems to really like spending time with him even outside of football practice, and obviously there's nothing wrong with that, but he's just always so close to her and holding her hand and…" He trailed off, his eyes widening as his brain caught up with the words that had left his mouth. "Oh. Well."

"Did you finally piece it together?" Claudia asked excitedly, beaming as she grabbed Callum's hand and dragged him into the crowd before sitting down on a couch near the back of the room and pulling him next to her. "If you didn't, I don't care. You like Rayla!"

"Wh-What?!" Callum sputtered weakly, shaking his head. The music was way louder now that they were in the thick of it. "No. No! No, I do not like Rayla."

Claudia rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Oh my gosh, Callum. You can't deny it any longer. I'm literally going to have an aneurysm if you keep it up."

"I'm serious!" He couldn't have a crush on Rayla. He couldn't! Not that she wasn't brilliant and amazing and funny and strong and beautiful and talented and he trusted her with his life, but - "I like you!"

Claudia appeared taken aback by his words. "You - me? What?" She blinked, and for a moment she seemed to be at a total loss for words, but then she squared her shoulders to reassert herself. She sighed, tucking her hair behind her ears. "Callum, I know you did have a crush on me for a really long time, which was admittedly super adorable - you were like a little puppy - but you cannot use that as an excuse to ignore your painfully obvious feelings for Rayla. I won't let you."

"But I'm - I'm not ignoring anything!"

She groaned, burying her head in her hands. "Why are boys so difficult?"

"I do not have feelings for Rayla!" he snapped. He then became infinitely more grateful for the loud music blasting through the house that made it so only Claudia could hear him.

Claudia sighed. "Okay. Let's walk through this together. Baby steps." She began ticking things off on her fingers. "One, you're jealous of Felix and how much time he spends with Rayla. No shame in admitting it, jealousy is a natural human emotion, even if you are being kind of ridiculous about it."

"I'm not jealous." That excuse, or rather the lack thereof, was pretty pathetic. He'd admit it.

"Point proven," Claudia said with her signature 'I know you better than you know yourself' look. "Two, you and Rayla have been practically attached at the hip since she arrived here, which makes your jealousy both funnier and even more unnecessary. I mean, you would think that I'd be the one to spend the most time with Rayla, since she's literally living with me and we have like three classes together, but no. Somehow you've got me beat, which clearly shows that Rayla wants to hang around you just as much as you want to be around her."

Callum couldn't think of a solid comeback. Yeah, it was true that he and Rayla were... well, always together, but that didn't mean -

"Three, basically all of your sketches from this past month are of Rayla. You only sketch a person if they've really grabbed your attention. I would know, because as soon as you hit puberty Soren was always teasing you about how much you were sketching me."

"I - no, Rayla's just an interesting muse," he insisted, but his protest sounded weak even to him.

Claudia sighed, though this sigh sounded less frustrated and more sympathetic than before. "Callum, do me a favor and open your sketchbook."

He hesitated, but she continued to stare at him insistently, so finally he shook his head before doing as instructed.

"Great. Now find a picture of Rayla. Any picture. I won't even look, if that makes you feel more comfortable."

That did make him feel more comfortable, so he nodded and she turned away. He then began flipping through his sketchbook, finally stopping on a picture from only a few days ago. It was of Rayla putting her hair up while sitting cross-legged on his bed. Her hair tie was held between her lips with her computer balanced precariously on her knees as she tried to create some sort of bun on her head. Pens and crumpled-up papers were scattered around her.

"I want you to look at how you drew her." Claudia's voice filtered its way into his mind as he stared at the picture. "You don't need to say anything to me. Just look. What did you focus on? What has the most detail? What parts have the most smudges because you kept accidentally smearing the lines when you got distracted looking at her?"

Callum's brain tuned out the rest of his friend's questions as he continued to examine the drawing. He lightly ran his finger over the outline of the sketch, brushing gently over the charcoal smudges, then he smoothed out stray wrinkles at the corners of the page.

Rayla was beautiful.

And she was beautiful like no one else he'd ever known. She was... electric, maybe that was the word he was looking for, and incredibly passionate, and she always made him laugh and she made him feel so good about the world and his place in it and -

And she was beautiful. God, she was so beautiful.

Huh. It was funny, almost, how much he sounded like Harrow talking about… about Sarai. Amaya had told him many years ago that before Harrow had proposed to her sister, she'd never seen anyone look at or talk about Sarai with as much admiration as Harrow did. People always said his mom and Harrow were more in love with each other than any other couple they'd ever known.

In love...

Oh.

Oh no.

"Oh my God," he mumbled, his gaze slowly lifting up from his sketchbook to meet Claudia's eyes. "I… I think I'm in love with Rayla."

Claudia blinked, then burst out laughing, her tone a mixture of amusement and endearment. "Wow. Okay. Only you would skip over the crush phase, huh?"

"What - What do I do?" Callum sputtered, slamming his sketchbook shut and shoving it back into his satchel. "There's no way she lov - likes me back." Rayla was - she was everything, and he was just… "Claudia, this is a disaster! Why would you make me confront my feelings like this?!" And at a party, of all places. His anxiety was starting to skyrocket.

"I'll tell you what you need to do," Claudia said, ignoring his second question as she smirked at him and crossed her arms over her chest. "You need to ask her out. And don't feed me any of the 'oh what if she says no' BS. She's head over heels for you - probably more than you are for her! And no, I don't care if that's hard for you to believe, because it's true."

Callum loosened his scarf around his neck, finding that he was struggling to breathe. It was definitely warmer in the room than it had been a few minutes ago - it wasn't just him, right? "I - I can't. No. No way." His mouth felt dry.

"Yes, you can!" Claudia insisted, poking him in the chest. "Come on, tough guy. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Oh, I don't know," Callum snapped, glaring at her. Christ, it was really hot in there. He was sweating and his hands were starting to shake, and the crowd kept moving closer and closer and closer, stealing his air, smothering and suffocating and strangling him - "She laughs and, and she says that she'd rather die than go out with me?"

"Callum, you are catastrophizing! Even if, for some blue-moon reason" - there was no way she was using that expression correctly - "she does say no, you know she would never be that harsh about it."

"But -"

"No 'buts'! You're her best friend, and she wouldn't -"

"Shut up!" Callum shouted, jumping to his feet and slamming his eyes shut, clamping his hands over his ears to close himself off from the glaring world around him. It didn't help. The music - the music was so loud, seeping into his mind and choking him, drowning him from the inside out. "Just shut up!" He couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe, everyone was too close - "I can't, I can't" - he was like a broken record and his lungs were filled with cement, no, someone was filling his lungs with cement, and he couldn't see them, couldn't stop them -

He was vaguely aware of someone calling his name - Claudia, maybe? - and of someone else dragging him out of the house and to the front yard. Fresh air washed over him with the force of a tidal wave as he dropped to his knees, and some of the cement broke inside, but not -

Not all of it.

"God, how could I have been so stupid? We never should have made him come to this party -"

"Claudia, this is not your fault. Callum knows his own limits."

"But it is my fault! I pushed him! I kept pushing and pushing and I didn't think about how close he was standing to the edge. Oh God, he's never going to forgive me." A pause. "Were you able to find Rayla?"

"Yeah. Emilé went to get her."

Callum felt someone kneel down next to him, gently taking his hands in one of theirs and placing their other hand on his back.

"I am so sorry, Callum. I didn't mean to - I only wanted to - ugh! Just - Just take deep breaths. In five, out five. Like Sarai taught you. Inhale 1... 2... 3... 4... 5. Hold. Exhale 5… 4… 3… 2… 1. And again."

Callum did his best to follow the instructions, inhaling and exhaling slowly for five counts each. After several breaths, he found himself able to open his eyes, doing so just in time to see a certain white-haired girl dropping to her knees next to him and crushing him in a hug.

Despite the sudden and almost overwhelming presence of Rayla, Callum found himself relaxing into her hug. He slid his arms around her back, burying his face into her shoulder and ignoring how her hair ever-so-slightly tickled his nose.

It still smelled like lavender.

"You dummy," she chided him, though the relief in her voice was impossible to disguise. "You shouldn't have come to this party if you didn't want to."

"Mm. Didn't want to be alone," he mumbled.

"You wouldn't have been alone, silly prince," she whispered in response, hugging him tighter. "I would have stayed home with you. Claudia, too. Probably Soren if we promised to have food there."

Callum managed a laugh at her comment, though he made no move to lift his head and look at her. He had a lot to think about. And he knew that in a matter of minutes, probably seconds, he was going to pull away from Rayla's hug a red-faced stammering mess, and he'd have to explain to her that sometimes his social anxiety got the best of him but it really wasn't a big deal, which she and Claudia would proceed to adamantly protest and before he knew what was happening all four of them would be back in Soren's car, headed home or to get ice cream or something.

But for now, she was here. With him.

And that was enough.

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Now, I'm not saying 10 is a magic number, but it is one of my top five favorite numbers, so... Next chapter is gonna be good, y'all. To quote Helen Parr from The Incredibles: "Brace yourselves!" Don't forget that I'm taking a break from posting to get into crunch time for my AP exam prep, so you might have to wait three weeks (versus the usual-ish two) for the next chapter, which I apologize for, but hopefully it'll be worth it. :) I really hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Thank you so much for reading!