A/N: A couple people asked if I was going to do "What I Don't Like About You" from Lilly and Oliver's perspective, and I had planned on it, but couldn't really decide what part of the episode I wanted to focus on, so you're getting pretty much all of it from the time they start fighting... except not really because the story's really made of missing moments. Yep. I have trouble making decisions. Also, when I have no internet, I tend to write... like, more than usual, because I have no online distractions.
Three Days
Day One
Lilly angrily stomped her way through the sand, kicking up the grains around her. She couldn't believe him! He didn't even remember their first dance! Or their first date! What kind of a boyfriend was he? The jerky kind, that's what. She thought he was better than that. Well, obviously it didn't matter anymore. She was done with him.
Done. Finished. Through. Kaput. Were there more synonyms she could use? Probably.
She didn't even want to be friends with a guy who couldn't remember important things about his girlfriend. No girl would want to be friends with a guy like that. So what if he could make her laugh? So what if he had eyes she wanted to stare into all the time? So what if she had known him longer than anyone else outside of her family? None of those things actually mattered. She had obviously wasted the last 12 years of her life on him!
When she reached the sidewalk, she chanced a quick glance over her shoulder and spotted Oliver getting into his mom's car. She couldn't believe things were so different only a few hours after him pulling the car into the lot. They had parked at the beach and walked to Miley's earlier so she would be surprised to see them when she got home from filming her movie.
Well, surprise.
Lilly set her jaw, faced forward, and kept walking. She had to walk all the way home now. By herself. In the middle of the day under the hot sun. And it was all his fault. Her anger was causing her to walk even faster than she would have any other time, and her legs were starting to burn a little bit from the force behind her gait.
But she kept walking, blond hair streaming behind her.
Almost a block back, Oliver flung himself into the driver's seat of the car, keeping his gaze firmly attached to the steering wheel in front of him. He knew she was at the other end of the lot, but he wasn't going to look.
No. Not a chance. Nope. Nuh-uh. He wasn't going to do it.
He slammed the door beside him and started the car, but he didn't go anywhere. Instead he gripped the wheel and stared at it harder than when he first sat down. She never believed him! She never thought he was right about anything! He could usually just roll his eyes and brush it off, but this was different. She didn't even remember the song they danced to or their first date! It was like none of it had even mattered to her. It was like he didn't matter to her. Maybe he never really had.
He started the car, put it in reverse, and then realized he wasn't wearing a seat belt. His mom would freak. Whatever. He was living on the edge now. Speeding out of the lot, he didn't even turn his head in her direction, but he couldn't stop his eyes from latching on to her in the mirror, and that's when he felt the anger settle somewhere in the middle of his chest.
Three blocks later he made a U-turn and pulled the car up next to the figure in the purple shirt who looked like she was going to break the record for speedwalking in Malibu.
"Not that I care or anything, but since I drove, do you need a ride home?" Oliver called out the window.
"No."
The word was snapped out of her like a pebble from a slingshot, and Oliver was glad she wasn't carrying any projectiles with her. He was pretty sure that the car would have been pelted with crayons if they were seven, or food if they were twelve, but he wasn't sure what she would throw at him now. Probably something sharp and painful. Kind of like her words.
"Fine," Oliver muttered, and he sped off in the direction of his house, which happened to be right next door to hers.
Lilly pretended the sudden breath of air she took was simply because she was walking so quickly. It had nothing to do with the car leaving. The sight of the tires pealing down the road, that had absolutely nothing to do with the sharp pain in her stomach. Nothing at all.
They both had plenty of time for their anger to build the rest of that night, not explaining the slamming of doors or the dark clouds hanging over their heads to their parents. Oliver only felt a little bit guilty that his now ex-girlfriend had to walk all the way home when he realized he wasn't entirely positive that their first dance had really been to Coldplay. (He was sure that it hadn't been to Radiohead though.) And Lilly felt the slightest twinge of shame when she thought that Miley was probably still waiting for her two best friends to come back and make up at a table on the beach at midnight. The shame was more than a twinge though when she had a vague recollection of Oliver buying her sour gummy worms and holding her close in the dark while they made fun of a horror movie... but that couldn't have really been their first date.
Neither of them slept much that night. Lilly's eyes kept going straight to her cell phone, wanting to send off an angry text message or two, giving him a piece of her mind, but she didn't. She just tossed and turned, her sheets twisting around her legs and her hair knotting against her pillow. In another bedroom next door, Oliver's eyes kept going to his window. He usually left his blinds open at night, but had shut them as soon as he got home, and he couldn't help but wonder what the person just across the lawn was up to. But he squeezed his eyes shut tight and pretended to sleep through the night, all the while feeling a sharp ache somewhere near the middle of his rib cage.
***
Day Two
Bright and early the day after their big fight, Lilly sat in the kitchen eating a bowl of sugar crunchies, which was supposed to be her brother's cereal, but she didn't care. She sprinkled a handful of extra sugar over the top of the bowl when her mom's back was turned. Heather didn't like the kids to have too much sugar. She was currently on another health kick. Probably had something to do with the high school basketball coach she had gone on a date with a couple of days ago. Lilly was hoping the sugar rush would make the ache at the back of her head and in the pit of her stomach go away. She knew it wasn't the most logical choice, but she wasn't working on very much sleep.
"Miley called a little while ago, said she said she'd be over soon." Lilly's mother said the words quickly, a little apprehensively, as though she thought Miley might have been the reason for Lilly's bad mood.
"Really?" Lilly asked, giving a quick look at the clock on the microwave, "But, it's not even nine." Miley didn't get up early unless she absolutely had to, like in the event of a Hannah appointment, or the need to get to school on time.
"I know, I was surprised too." Heather shrugged her shoulders and took another sip of her coffee, just as the doorbell rang.
"I'll get it," Lilly mumbled around a mouthful of cereal. She walked quickly to the door so her mother wouldn't be suspicious, but she hesitated with her hand over the door knob. Miley was going to want to talk about yesterday, and Lilly wasn't sure her anger had gone away enough yet to be able to talk about it. Miley wanted them all to be friends again. Lilly wanted to throw something heavy at Oliver's head. A knuckle started to hit the door to knock instead of ring the bell, so she pulled it open before her mother could ask why she wasn't answering it.
"Hey," Miley said, with an obviously forced smile on her face, showing Lilly a plastic bag from a drug store, "I thought we could do our nails."
"Okay..."
Lilly opened the door with a confused expression on her face, letting Miley inside the front of the house. When she shut the door with a click, she turned to find her best friend watching her expectantly.
"Mom, Miley and I are going upstairs!" she called toward the kitchen.
"Alright, honey!"
No request that she finish her cereal. No instructions to put her bowl in the dishwasher. Her mom was either really distracted, or she really thought something was wrong. Well, nothing was really wrong. Nothing except that Lilly never wanted to see her oldest friend ever again. But, other than that, nothing.
"So," Lilly said when they reached her room, but she didn't really have anything else to say, so she settled at the head of her bed and assumed the lotus position, her hands braced on her knees.
Miley kicked off her flip-flops and sat at the foot of the bed, facing Lilly, and dumped the contents of the bag on the bed. "I brought everything we need to do manis and pedis... even though you left me sitting on the beach all night, completely alone, in the cold night air..."
Lilly rolled her eyes and her gaze settled on the phone on her night stand. She knew last night was what this was really about. "I didn't want to see him," Lilly snapped. "He's a jerk."
"Ookaay," Miley whispered, then more loudly added, "he can't be completely bad, right? I mean, you never would have gone out with him if he was all bad."
"Right, because my track record shows I have such great taste in guys. Matt stands me up, Lucas cheats on me, Gabe doesn't even pay attention to me until I make a fool out of myself, Jake chooses you... Yeah, I always manage to pick a good one." There was no holding the sarcasm in. She reached forward, picking up a bottle of bright red nail polish, turning it over and watching the light dance on the glass.
"Come on, Jake isn't all bad," Miley responded, feeling the need to defend him, "he's just a little selfish."
"Yeah, like a hurricane is a little bit of bad weather," Lilly muttered under her breath, dropping the nail polish bottle back down on her bedspread. The bright red against the pink and green looked a tad strange to her.
"Okay, fine, so Oliver forgot a couple of little things... I'm sure he feels really bad about it. You should talk to him." Miley didn't look at Lilly, instead picking up a nail file and running it across her fingers.
"A couple of little things? Miley he doesn't know our song! He doesn't remember our first date! How can someone forget something like that? It's just – Ugh!" Lilly crossed her arms over her chest, all of her anger returning in a sharp wave. Every muscle in her body tensed, like she was ready to spring. She was too angry to even want to cry about the end of a relationship, even a relationship that meant as much as this one.
Miley decided she was going to try another tactic. "Well, why did you decide you wanted him to be your boyfriend then?"
"What?" Lilly asked blankly, as though she didn't understand the question.
"You always say what an idiot he is, especially with girls, why'd you pick him?" She shrugged, still running the file across her nails, hoping that this would change Lilly's train of thought.
"I didn't pick him!"
"But you said yesterday-"
"I know!" Both girls were silent except for Lilly's deep breathing. "But I didn't pick him," she said softly, "I just, he was, I don't know, okay? It's not like I looked at him one day and thought, huh, I think I want to try dating Oliver cause he would be the perfect boyfriend, why didn't I ever think of that before?"
"Then what was it? Why Oliver?"
"Because... because he's Oliver," Lilly mumbled. She sighed, then tried to explain herself. "He's funny, most of the time. He's," she rolled her eyes, "not as dumb as he acts. He's cute, when he's not being an idiot. He knows me better than anybody, or at least I thought he did."
She propped her head up on one hand, leaning forward and flicking through the nail polish bottles on her bed again. She lifted a bottle of a dark green. It looked like it would be really shiny, so she set it back down. She wasn't really in the mood to do her nails, but she kept going through the bottles anyway. If Miley brought them over as a pretense to talk, she was going to hold up the charade.
"Have you always thought he was cute?" Miley asked, forgetting her plan to get her friend to remember all the positive things, her lip curling back in disgust. It wasn't that she thought Oliver was ugly, it was just that, well, he was Oliver.
"I don't know, I guess I never really thought about it before," Lilly evaded, picking up another bottle of nail polish and examining it.
"Huh." Miley raised her eyebrows, picking out a color for herself and deciding to paint her toenails. "I just thought, you know, since you guys have known each other for so long, maybe, you know, you liked him before you guys actually started-"
"Miley, just spit it out."
"How long were you crushin' on him?" She shook the bottle of blood red nail polish and brought one of her knees up to her chest. She propped her chin on it, opened the bottle, and waited for Lilly to respond.
"I don't know," Lilly repeated. She felt like that was the only answer she could give, but the expression on Miley's face told her that wasn't good enough. "Maybe on and off since..."
"Since you held his hand to use his crayons?"
"I was four!" Lilly protested.
"What's your point?" Miley deadpanned, swiping the brush along one of her nails.
"I don't think I had a crush on anyone when I was four." Lilly rolled her eyes again, her mood not improving. She picked up the nail file Miley had abandoned and absentmindedly began working on her fingernails. She didn't want to talk about this. But Miley, apparently, didn't want to talk about anything else, because she didn't say another word until Lilly finally said, "six."
Miley had already finished the first coat of polish on both feet by the time Lilly said it, so she wasn't sure what she was talking about. "Six what?"
"Maybe I had a crush on him on and off since I was six... There were a few times I thought I liked him, but then I decided I didn't, and then you moved here, and then he had a huge crush on Hannah Montana and I had one on Orlando Bloom, and then he liked Becca and I liked Jake, and then we started high school... I just-" Lilly stopped, her throat tightening. Her anger was starting to turn into something else, and she didn't want it to. "Definitely since he started dating Joanie," she finally said in a small voice.
"Why didn't you ever tell me?" Miley capped the nail polish, focusing on Lilly completely now.
"Uh, because he's Oliver?" Lilly said sarcastically. "You know, the same person who announced to the whole school when I got my first real bra? The same person who handcuffed us together when we had that big fight? He's the one who ruined your grade in drama in eighth grade. He killed my gerbils. He wanted to stop being friends with you just because you were famous. He gave his phone number out to cute girls over the PA system. Do I need to keep going?"
"You know, he said he was sorry for all of those things," Miley pointed out after shaking her head.
"Yeah, well, he hasn't said he's sorry this time. And I don't think I would forgive him, even if he did."
"Lilly," Miley started, but her friend had already jumped off the bed and stomped over to the window.
Glaring out the glass, she said, "you know, he's going to have a hard time finding another girl who likes his obsession with Batman, or the way he talks through every movie he watches, or his stupid jokes, or him constantly flipping his hair around, or him tripping over his own two feet all the time. No one else is going to think it's cute when he gets jealous or compares himself to a Greek god or comes up with cheesy nicknames."
"Yeah... he is quite the dork," Miley agreed with a sigh, letting her feet dangle off the bed. She could see that it wasn't going to be as easy as she thought to get Lilly to change her mind.
"You know what's going to happen? He's going to die sad and alone when he's old, and bitter, because nobody else would have him, and he's going to be even sadder when he realizes that he lost the only girl who really-" She stopped and said, "well, you get my point."
"Yeah, I got it." Miley sighed again, and decided to move on to plan B. She spent a couple more hours with Lilly, making sure to keep the conversation away from Oliver, other boys, and anything that could possibly be related to Oliver in any way, shape or form, like hair products or super heroes. That didn't stop her time at Lilly's from ending with Lilly's assurance that Miley was her favorite, and her very best friend for being there for her, and not him. Miley could only nod her head and play along.
That afternoon, Oliver had just slammed the door to the dryer shut and was carting a basket of towels in from the garage when the doorbell rang. Being the only one home, he was sorely tempted to ignore it so he could be alone in his misery and anger, but it rang again. And again. And again. He dropped the basket on to one end of the couch and trudged on over to the door.
He opened it to find Miley standing there with a tight smile on her face and a pie in her hand. Apple, of course. He should have known.
"You're not still at the beach," he told her flatly, walking away and leaving the door open for her to come in.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious. And your hair isn't combed," Miley shot back, closing the door behind her. "I brought you some pie."
"What's the catch?" Oliver asked, back in the living room, and picking up a dark grey bath towel from the top of the laundry basket. He folded it in half, then in half again, not really expecting Miley to tell him the truth.
"No catch." Miley set the pie down on the coffee table. "I just feel kind of bad that I caused that fight, you know, so I thought I'd bring you some pie to say sorry." She shrugged, watching as he folded another towel, also dark grey.
"Oh, so this is a guilt pastry." He gave her a look and picked up another towel from the basket, this one a lighter shade of grey.
"Yeah, okay, it's kind of a guilt pastry." Miley looked at the ground, a frown on her face. She had thought this would be the best approach to take with Oliver, but now, she wasn't so sure.
Oliver shrugged, picked up the pie, and took it into the kitchen. "You gonna want some of this?"
"Yeah, sure." Maybe it would work after all.
Miley followed him into the kitchen, only to see Oliver open the container and pull two forks out of a kitchen drawer.
"You planning on eating the whole pie?" she asked.
"No, you said you wanted some." He rolled his eyes at her look and added, "Miley, we never have pie in our house, do you really think I'm going to let this stay here where my little brother can devour it? No." He handed her a fork, and they dug in.
Miley let him get a few bites of the pie before she started talking again. Leaning against the counter, she told him, "I really am sorry, you know, about getting you and Lilly into this big fight."
"Whatever," he said though his mouthful of pie. "She never listens to me." He swallowed and stabbed at the pie with his fork. "Always thinks she's right." He stuffed the forkful of apple filling and pastry crust into his mouth. "We're better off."
"Really?" Miley asked, her fork halfway to her mouth with only her second bite of pie.
"Yeah." Oliver tossed the fork down with a clatter and moved to the fridge. "You want some milk?"
"Uh, yeah, sure." She licked the edge of the fork, getting the apple filling off the metal and watched Oliver pull out a gallon of milk, then turn to get two glasses. "So, you think dating Lilly was a mistake?"
"Obviously." Oliver poured the milk and replaced the jug in the refrigerator. "I never should have told her how I felt."
"You told her first?" Miley's face brightened and she looked at him with wide eyes, accepting her glass of milk with a small smile, but Oliver's expression stayed dark.
"Yep, and look how dumb that was." He shook his head and attacked the pie again.
"Well, what'd you say?"
"I don't remember all of it, I said a lot of things that night. It was like I couldn't stop talking or something." He swallowed another mouthful of apple, then poked at the crust. Sighing, Oliver added, "it basically all meant that I couldn't take being friends anymore, she was driving me crazy." He pushed the fork down almost hard enough to go through the pie plate. "So stupid. I should have just kept suffering. I didn't know she was going to go all weird."
"Yeah, the whole thing was kind of harsh." Miley took a sip from her glass of milk, let Oliver eat a few more bites of pie, and then she asked, "so, what made you tell her?"
"What do you mean?"
Miley tapped her newly polished nails on the counter top and specified, "How did you know you wanted to be more than friends, what made you decide to tell her that's what you wanted?" She found it amusing that both of them tried to avoid her question by acting like they didn't know what she was talking about.
"I told you, she was driving me crazy."
"Yeah, but how?" Miley chuckled and got herself another bite of pie. They were like two peas in a pod.
"I don't know... she was just... being Lilly." Oliver rolled his eyes when Miley groaned. "Okay, fine, let me think." He chewed on a bit of apple while doing his thinking, not really wanting to go down this road with Miley right now. "It's just, she's one of those people who has an opinion on everything and she tells you whether you want to hear it or not. And, you know, she's always got a comeback ready, never taking any of my crap." He shrugged.
"Really? That's what did it for you?" Miley paused when Oliver shrugged. "If that's all it took, you should have been crushin' on me a long time ago."
Oliver knitted his eyebrows together and grimaced. "No offense, Miles, but you're not really my type."
"So, see, there is more to it." She gestured with her utensil while she spoke, "what was it?"
Oliver took another bite of pie before placing his fork down and standing up straight. "I don't know... I guess it's everything. She's not afraid to get messy, but she still looks great in a skirt. She'll play basketball with you, then want to go shopping." He downed half his glass of milk, feeling that ache in the middle of his rib cage again, like his food was sticking right there, but he knew it wasn't the food.
"And she smells like apples," Miley said softly.
"Yeah," he agreed. "But none of that even matters because she didn't remember anything right, and she acted like I was an idiot." He pushed away from the counter and moved to look out the window. "I know I'm not exactly a genius, but I know ice skating wasn't our first date. We did go ice skating, but it wasn't a date. The movies were. We saw one of those crappy horror movies and got kicked out for making fun of the actors half way through it."
Miley gave a half smile, thinking that Oliver was softening, but when he turned back around, he looked anything but happy.
"How could she not even remember? She remembers everything. You know, she remembers the day you guys met. You exchange gifts for your 'friendaversay' every year. We never do." Crossing his arms, he leaned back against the sink. "This whole thing was just a dumb idea. We don't even do the friends thing right, why would we be able to date?"
"Maybe," Miley said quickly, dropping her fork now as well, "maybe, you guys just need to talk everything out, you know, get it all said, so you can work through it."
"There's nothing to work through. We're done."
She helped Oliver fold his towels, and she even sat through a movie about an alien race trying to take over the planet, and when she moved to leave, much like Lilly, he thanked her for hanging out with him, and let her know he was glad she was his best friend.
Miley felt more in the middle than ever. Her plan hadn't worked, and they both just wanted her on their own side. She didn't know what to do.
Lilly and Oliver might have both spoken about the dissolution of their relationship with an air of finality that day, but that night, they were both fighting the urge to walk next door and apologize. Too nervous to face him though, Lilly pulled out her cell phone, scrolling through her messaging program's contact list, and she settled on his name. But, she couldn't bring herself to punch in the letters of a message. She didn't know what to say. "I hate you because you hurt me" and "I miss you, come over" were both at the front of her mind, so she shut the phone, and laid awake most of the night. Oliver got as far as opening his bedroom window, sitting on the edge of the sill, thinking he would make a quick climb down his house, and then a quick climb up hers, but he didn't know what would happen when he got there. Too worried that he would just yell at her again, or that she would hit him when she thought he was a burglar, he closed the window and stared at his bedroom ceiling until the sun came up.
***
Day Three
When Lilly saw Oliver at Rico's the next day, her eyes narrowed and she sat down heavily at one of the tables outside the little beachside bistro. It was weird to not be at the same table as him, and it was weirder to have Miley invite her to something that Oliver wouldn't be attending. She felt a little badly that, because of her, Oliver wasn't going to get to see the rough cut of a new action movie. He loved action movies.
But then she remembered that none of this was her fault. It was Oliver who was an idiot and had insulted her.
Of course, then she found out she got voted the worst ears in Seaview High history, and she ran home to look in a mirror. Standing there with tears in her eyes, she was tempted to call Oliver and ask him if he thought her ears looked as bad as he thought her taste in music was. But she didn't. What she really wanted was for her boyfriend to console her and tell her she was pretty, that it didn't matter what anyone else thought, but he wasn't her boyfriend anymore. He wasn't even her friend.
So she just moped around her room, trying on different earrings and attempting different hairstyles to make her ears look more attractive, until she had to leave for Miley's house.
Oliver, on the other hand, worked incredibly hard to pretend he didn't see Lilly at all. Not until Miley got there anyway. He couldn't help but be a little disappointed when Miley chose to sit down with Lilly first. But, he got it. They were girls. They shared everything. They talked about boys. He was never going to be that kind of a friend for Miley. He had tried that once, back when Miley and Lilly weren't speaking for days, and it hadn't worked for him.
Imagine his surprise when Miley switched to his table and didn't even blink when he called her a traitor. She even chose him to come over and see a rough cut of her new movie. He was kind of touched. Miley never picked him first for anything.
There was a brief moment where he felt sorry that he may have been stealing Lilly's best friend from her. But then, he decided he didn't need to be sorry. Miley could make her own decisions. And Lilly probably wouldn't even like the movie anyway. What did it matter?
He wound up hanging out with a few guys on the beach that afternoon, and trying not to look back in the direction of Lilly's house, wondering if she was okay. It wasn't any of his business. Not anymore.
Except that it was Oliver's business because it always had been, and Lilly felt more than a little guilty because she knew he would like this whole rough cut thing more than her. When they both came through the doors to the living room that night, there was a moment of shock, then a feeling of betrayal for both of them.
Oliver was the first one to move for the front door. He had to get out of there. He hadn't been that close to Lilly in days, and when he walked by her on his way out, the scent of apples slammed into him. His hand went out automatically to touch the small of her back as he moved behind her, and he had to pull it back at the last second. His own body was betraying him, so he held his anger at her around him like a suit of armor.
Lilly felt it though. The second where his hand hovered just behind her when Miley came in wearing her stupid costume felt like a lifetime. And she swallowed hard, feeling the anger dull into something far worse. She had focused so hard on the anger to avoid missing him, but having him this close to her now, it was torture. It was like her stomach had dropped out from her body and she was empty because he wasn't there for her.
Neither of them could stop the sorrowful expressions on their faces when they watched their friend's movie, not exactly what they were expecting either. (Lilly wanted to cringe at Miley's horrible acting, but the cringing was more for her own behavior. Oliver wanted to be disturbed by the thought of Miley imitating him, but he was too focused on how much he had hurt Lilly.) But Miley always had been someone who meddled. They really shouldn't have expected any less. They had to admit that Miley was right, that the fight was stupid. And they had to thank her. Because they really couldn't imagine not being a part of one another's lives.
Though Miley had kind of missed the point. They weren't fighting about which band was better. That was never the issue.
Standing outside the door after watching something that was not a rough cut of Indiana Joanie, there wouldn't be one for at least another month, Lilly felt that Oliver's arm around her shoulders was exactly where his arm was supposed to be, and Oliver knew that Lilly pressed up against his side was right where she fit.
"Lilly," Oliver said softly as they walked through the neighborhood, "I'm sorry about everything. I shouldn't have gotten so mad."
"I know. Me too. It was so dumb to argue about anyway. I can't believe I took it so far." She leaned in closer to him, wrapping both of her arms around him, trying to get as close as she could while walking down the sidewalk.
"I thought about it... and I don't think we danced to Coldplay."
"I know, but we didn't dance to Radiohead either," Lilly agreed. "If it had been Radiohead, I think I'd remember some words to the song, but I've got nothing." She slowed her steps, wanting to take as long as possible to get back to the beach where Oliver had parked his mom's car again. "And," she added, "I know the movies were our first official date. Ice skating just popped out."
Oliver chuckled and stopped walking, pulling her around in front of him. "It's okay."
"Are you sure? Cause I'm prepared to do some more apologizing." Smiling, Lilly looked him in the eye and tilted her head closer to his.
"I'm sure," he affirmed, pressing his forehead against hers. "Did I tell you that I missed you?"
"You might have... a couple times."
"Oh, good. I didn't want to forget to do that."
Lilly giggled just before he kissed her. And she wondered how she had possibly gone the last couple of days without doing this. She must have been crazy. Oliver was more curious about how he had been able to live the first 12 years of their friendship without doing this. It shocked him every time.
When they pulled apart, after catching his breath, he said, "I gotta say though, I'm less excited about seeing Miley's movie after watching the video she made."
"Oh, I know," Lilly agreed as they started walking again, "and her impression of you was kind of disturbing... I really didn't like it."
"I know, right? It was weird." He laced his fingers through hers, bumping his shoulder against her every so often.
"So, what did you do yesterday?"
"Ate some pie, watched a movie, you?"
"Painted my nails." They were quiet as they got closer and closer to the parking lot. Lilly could hear the waves crashing not too far away. "What kind of pie?"
Oliver smiled. "Apple."
"Of course." She was quiet again when she spotted his mom's car. She dragged her feet over to it, then let go of his hand to hop up on the back bumper, sitting herself down on the trunk. "Promise me something?"
Oliver took in a deep breath, acting like he had to think her question over. "Anything."
She reached forward, grabbing his shirt, and pulled him toward her. "Promise that no matter how much we fight, we'll always be friends." She plucked at the fabric in front of her nervously.
"I don't know," Oliver sighed, but then he grinned and said, "I haven't been to second base with any of my other friends... well, not on purpose anyway." Lilly moved to smack him, but he caught her hand in his own and kissed her before she could snap at him for teasing her. "I promise," he whispered against her mouth.
"Good." She kissed him again.
"Seriously," Oliver said in a low voice, his feet shuffling until his knees were resting against the bumper, "you know, even if I'm acting like I hate you, if you need me for anything, all you gotta do is ask."
"That goes for you too." She smiled at him, looked away quickly before she was tempted to kiss him again, then asked him, "what do you think of my ears?"
"Your ears?" He tried not to laugh and ran the tip of one of his fingers over the cartilage at the top of one of her ears in surprise.
A shiver went down Lilly's spine at the contact. "Yeah." She chewed on the inside of her cheek before telling him, "Max said I got voted the worst ears."
"By who?"
"I don't know."
Oliver rolled his eyes, placed his hand under her chin, and turned her head, first to one side, then the other. He leaned his head in close to the ear not covered by her hair and pretended to examine it in the dim light from the streetlight at the corner of the lot. Lilly shifted on the trunk of the car, her breathing speeding up. She closed her eyes when she felt Oliver's breath on the side of her face.
"I can't find anything wrong with your ears," he whispered right into it before kissing her on the cheek. "When do you have to be home?" he added.
"Not right now," she answered, pulling him close again.
Lilly may have missed her curfew that night, but she was smiling and not slamming any doors, so her mom let it go. And Oliver's mother may have heard him talking on the phone long passed the time that he was supposed to be in bed, but he was laughing again, so she thought it best to ignore it just this once.
***