Hello again! I really want to thank you all for everything. Your reviews constantly bring a goofy grin to my face, so I can't thank you all enough. Also, I just wanted to mention that anifreakazoid asked whether there would be Shadowhunter/Downworlder influences in the story. Paint & Coffee is All Human/Alternate Universe, so as awesome as it is, we really won't be entering that world at all, but I like to bring some of the references into the mundane world in a, well, mundane way ;)

So... please continue reading and reviewing, because it is appreciated so, so much. This is by far the longest chapter to date, so I hope you enjoy it, and please review!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything regarding The Mortal Instruments series.

-Clary-

"What did you just say?"

Izzy shouts as she jumps to her feet, attracting the attention of students nearby. I let out a heavy sigh as we sit at our usual table at lunch, knowing Izzy heard exactly what I had just said.

"I said, I'm not going to Pandemonium tonight." Izzy stares at me with her mouth wide open as if I told her I planned on wearing jeans to the dance tonight, well, if I were going that is.

"And why are you not going tonight?" She asks a second after she catches herself with her mouth hanging open. I have already explained this to her.

"Iz, I told you. We dissected today in Bio, and Simon passed out. He went to the nurse and was sent straight home. He texted me a few minutes ago saying he's still not feeling well and isn't up for going to the dance tonight."

Yep. Dissecting day was today and Simon kept true to his word. I didn't even get the scalpel close to our frog pinned onto the lab table when I looked over at Simon, who was white as a sheet. I had asked him if he was okay, to which he responded he was fine. Long behold, he was not fine. Two seconds later I was trying to keep him from falling to the ground while simultaneously trying not to accidently cut him with the scalpel still in my hand.

Me. Clumsy Clary Fray was trying to keep her much taller best friend up right while holding a dangerous weapon.

Ha.

He'd been texting me apologizing profusely, saying he felt awful, both from falling ill and leaving me dateless. I told him it was fine and that he should rest up and read some Manga. That always seemed to make him feel better.

"But- I mean, you can't- You have too!" Izzy is still standing, and still attracting attention. Aline had ended up skipping today, so at least I'm not dealing with her wrath too.

"Yeah Clary, you have to go," Maia says, much more calmly than Izzy does. She and Jordan have been relatively quiet since I explained what happened to Simon, but Izzy made up for their quietness.

"Yes! You have to! I already bought your dress," which I told her not to do, "and your shoes," which I also told her not to buy, "and your make up!" Yeah… Izzy has poor listening skills. I had just planned on wearing an old dress of mine until Izzy informed me that she had found the dress for me. I told her I'd pay her back, but she had just brushed it off.

I have yet to see this dress, by the way.

I let out another sigh. "Guys, I don't have a date, and it'd be awkward to go alone," even though I had been looking forward to it.

Izzy's eyes light up as she comes up with some genius idea, at least in her eyes.

"I'll be your 'date,'" she says as she puts air quotes around the word 'date.'

At that I laugh. "Iz, you have a date already, remember?" Meliorn. And I still have no clue who that is.

"Oh please," Izzy scoffs as she finally takes her seat at the table again, "I'll just tell him to meet me at the dance. He won't even notice if I don't say a word to him all night. It will be a girl's night out! Please Clary?" She asks while making the puppy dog face.

"Now you've done it Clare," Jordan jokes, "you got her to bring the puppy face out."

I roll my eyes at her, but sigh in defeat. She takes that as a victory and squeals, attracting attention to our table yet again.

"Oh, excellent! So you'll come home with me after school and then we'll start getting ready!"

Izzy's enthusiasm actually gets me excited again, even if she expects to play dress up with me for hours before the dance. It's not a 'two amigoes' night with Simon, but I could go for a girl's night out. Plus, I want to see this dress Izzy has been incessantly talking about since Tuesday. She claims that guys will drool over me in it.

Somehow, I doubt anyone will be drooling over plain old Clary Fray.

But I smile at Izzy, because I am excited, just as her smile falters a little as if she just remembered something.

"Oh."

I look at her quizzically. "Oh?"

"Jace drove me to school today, so we're going home in the same car." Oh. I see what she's saying. I have to go home with Jace, and she knows my current situation with him.

I ignore the conflicting feelings that start stirring inside me at the mention of his name and say, "It's okay Izzy, we're on… better terms, I guess." I can survive a car ride, right?

Izzy gives me a stern look. "From what you've told me, I assume these better terms progressed from a certain conversation in art class yesterday?" I roll my eyes and let out a huff.

"Izzy, I'm giving him a chance for redemption, what's wrong with that?" I had told her about Jace's continuous apologies and our conversation yesterday, to which she told me to proceed with caution, but she said it with a hint of warmth in her eyes, something I hadn't ever seen when she discussed her brother with me.

Jordan and Maia give us confused looks as we get up and head out of the cafeteria. I can tell they want to ask something, but decide not to, one of the many reasons why I like them so much. Nobody but Izzy and Jace know about what happened on Monday. Simon would have freaked out, Maia would have told Jace off, and Jordan may have put in a swing or two for me. It's better if they stay ignorant to the whole situation. For all they know, I'm just putting in more of an effort to ward off Jace's advances.

Mom and Luke could tell there was something wrong when I came home that day, but they knew if I needed to talk, I would come to them. And I definitely was not going to tell Jon. He would have come from Miami just to whoop Jace's ass.

Izzy speaks again, bringing me back to reality.

"There's nothing wrong at all with it," she says in a tone I can't quite identify, like she's aware of something I'm not. "Anyways, meet me in the parking lot after school. Or, I guess if you and Jace are on 'better' terms after he stole your most prized possession and taunted you with it," again with the air quotes, "then by all means find him in the hallway and he'll bring you to the car."

I turn to see if anyone else heard her, but Jordan and Maia are already out of earshot. Thank god.

"Izzy!" I say disapprovingly, but she's already heading in the opposite direction toward Maia and Jordan.

"See ya later Clary!" She waves before turning around, a mischievous smile on her face.

And then I'm alone.

As I head down the opposite hallway, I let those conflicting feelings creep into my mind.

I had been angry. Beyond angry, I was outright pissed that Jace had taken my sketchbook. Worse than that, he had seen one of, if not my most, personal drawings. Nobody has ever seen it. Not even Jon.

I quickly shut out the usual thoughts that come with thinking about that sketch in particular.

I had shunned Jace, refusing to even acknowledge his presence, but he was so… persistent. He kept apologizing and trying to explain to me that he didn't mean to hurt me. I couldn't understand it. No. I can't understand it. He seemed so genuine, and I can't figure out why he felt the need to keep apologizing. I'm sure he's pissed off tons of girls before.

And I was right about feeling bad after I had calmed down. I'm not one to hold grudges, but he had taken my sense of security away when it comes to my book, whether he meant to or not. I haven't brought it to school since that day. I hate it. But giving him the cold shoulder was getting tiring, and the constant 'I'm sorry's' were driving me up a wall.

Why did he want me to talk to him so badly? Why did he want my forgiveness? I was just another girl to him. Just another challenge.

At least, that's what I had thought.

I can't even allow myself the thought that maybe he cares. No. Jace Lightwood doesn't care.

I decided to let him earn my forgiveness. My trust? Probably not. But I can forgive.

I told him that, and his entire face lit up in a way I've never seen before, and for the first time since meeting him, I saw a glimpse at Jace Lightwood the person, not Jace Lightwood the player.

I could see the determination in his eyes, and when he said a typical 'Jace' comment, I actually blushed. What the hell?

And then… he asked me to dance with him tonight. I felt my heart stop for a moment. Why was I reacting like this?

I wanted to say yes. That was the first word to come to mind.

But I didn't.

The practical side of me left him hanging, but even that slight 'maybe' brought a smile to his face.

A smile.

Not a smirk. Not a smug look.

An absolutely beautiful smile that made him look beyond handsome. He was beautiful. I could see how perfect his blonde hair framed his face. How his molten eyes shined with this indescribable light I had never seen. How perfectly in shape his entire body was. How his teeth were perfect, even with a chip in one of them. How he was looking at me.

Woah.

I just stared. And stared. And stared. And didn't even realize I was staring, until he asked what was wrong and rubbed his face as if I was staring at a smudge or something.

Yeah Jace, I wasn't falling for you- I mean, your charm. I was staring at a smudge.

I still haven't forgiven him, but now these weird feelings are stirring inside me, and I haven't been able to get him out of my head all day yesterday or today. And now I have to get in a car, close quarters, with him?

Oh boy.

I shake my head, trying to straighten out my thoughts.

Izzy finds me at the end of the day and we head to Jace's car. He's already in the driver's seat with the car on, ready to go.

As we get in, he says a quick 'hey,' and starts backing out. Hey. That's all he had said this morning in art too. Nothing else but the word 'hey.'

I should be content with that. But I'm not.

So I speak.

"Got that pink shirt ready for tonight?" I ask from the back seat of the car. Izzy turns around from the passenger seat to give me a confused look.

"Pink?" She asks while turning to Jace.

He gives me a glare through the rearview mirror, one that tells me he knows I'm joking around.

"Pink," he scrunches his nose and makes a face at the word, and it's the most adorable thing.

No.

Clary, don't think like that.

Jace continues, "Kaelie very eloquently informed me that I must match her tonight." He rolls his eyes at his sister.

Izzy snorts as Jace turns onto the main road, "the day I see you in pink is the day Clary lets me get her into one of my pairs of stilettos."

I laugh at that. "So I take that as never then? Because I will never get into those death contraptions." Jace lets out a laugh at that.

"Exactly," Izzy agrees.

Izzy and Jace live farther away than I thought, and when we pull into the driveway of their house, it takes everything in me to keep my jaw from dropping to the ground.

"This is your house!?" I exclaim as I get out of the car.

This place is, to put it simply, huge.

"Yeah," Izzy states, "why?" We head towards the front door.

"This place is gorgeous!"

The styling of the house is absolute genius. Everything compliments each other, and the different aspects, from the cut of the brick to the trimming around the windows, of the house meld together as one. For living close to the city, this place somehow manages to have land surrounding it on all sides. It's like they managed to find the one place near the city that's still in the country.

How can they not see the masterpiece that is their house?

Jace and Izzy are standing at the open front door as they both turn around to look at me staring at their house like some weirdo.

Izzy gives me an amused look, muttering, "it must be an 'artist' thing," before heading inside. But Jace just stares at me, like he's seeing me for the first time.

I can't identify the look he is giving me, but it makes the blood rush to my cheeks. It's the way I imagined myself looking when he smiled at me yesterday.

Those gold eyes gaze at me, like he's entranced, and then he blinks, and he smirks. He nods his head toward the open doorway and I walk past him into the house, only to become awestruck again at how magnificent the insides of the house look.

"You must be Clary!" A tall, beautiful woman exclaims as she comes out of a doorway into the room I'm standing in. The living room maybe? I immediately know this is Izzy's mother. They look almost identical, like my mother and me.

I smile at her and shake her hand while saying, "Yep, that's me. It's very nice to meet you Mrs. Lightwood."

She gives me a warm smile while saying, "Oh please, my mother-in-law is Mrs. Lightwood. Please call me Maryse."

"Sounds good to me. Your house is absolutely gorgeous."

"Why thank you, we've put a lot of time into getting it just right," she says as she glances around the room. "Anyways, I'm sure you and Izzy have things to do before the dance, so I'll let you go. I don't know where she ran off to, but her room is through that door, down the hallway on the right side."

I turn to see it's just Maryse and I in the room. No Izzy, or Jace, to be found.

"Oh, okay. Well thank you very much Mrs. Li- I mean, Maryse."

She gives me another motherly smile, "You too, sweetheart." And then she heads out the door she had entered from.

As I'm about to open the door that Maryse had directed me toward, it swings open, and a little boy nearly pummels right into me.

"Oh! Hello," I shout in surprise. I look at the boy, who can't be more than ten. He's tall for his age, and skinny, with glasses askew on his nose. He reminds me of Simon.

"Who are you?" He asks as he takes a step back to look at me.

"I'm sorry," I laugh, "you must be Max. I'm Clary," I say as I extend my hand to him. Izzy had told me about her two other brothers. Max, the younger one, and Alec, the older one.

Recognition lights up in his eyes. "Oh! You're Clary! Wow, you are pretty. And your hair does look like fire," he says with more excitement than I expected.

I chuckle, "Izzy told you about my hair?" And that I'm pretty? That's strange.

Max's eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. "Izzy? No, Jace did."

"Jace?" I stutter out, "he told you that?" Why on Earth would Jace tell his brother about me?

"Yeah, you're special," he states matter of factly, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"Um, thank you," I say, trying to control the surprise in my voice, "you're special too." What am I supposed to say?

Max just giggles at my, um, compliment. "No, I mean, you're special to Jace." A second wave of shock rolls over me.

"And why do you say that?" I ask, because I'm so confused, and I can feel butterflies fluttering in my stomach.

Max seems to be confused now too, like he doesn't get why I don't understand. "Jace tells me everything, but he never talks about girls. I think he thinks that I still believe girls have cooties," he says while rolling his eyes, "only nine year olds believe that kind of stuff." I can't help but smile at his innocence, if only he knew about Jace and his relationships with girls.

"But he talks about you all the time."

"He- he does?" I hardly get the words out. "Wh- what does he say?" I ask as an afterthought.

Max shrugs his shoulders like it's not important. Oh, but it's so important to me, as evidence by the butterflies fluttering inside me. "Just how you're really pretty, and you're going to be an artist someday who sells paintings. Lots of stuff. He thinks your freckles are cute, but I don't get that. I thought puppies are supposed to be cute, not freckles."

If I thought I was blushing, before, that was nothing compared to the blush that spreads over my cheeks at Max's words. Jace really told him those things?

"Anyways," Max brings me out of my thoughts, "I'm happy you're here. Jace says he did something bad that hurt your feelings. He was really sad about it, but he wouldn't tell me what he did. You forgave him, right?"

Oh the simpleness of a ten year old. "No, not yet."

"Well," he says as he heads towards the door his mom had gone through, "you should." And then he walks through the door, leaving me to go through the other door toward Izzy's room.

After two hours of plucking eyebrows, and brushing, pinning, and hairspraying hair, and applying a thousand and one different products to my face. Izzy looks at me like she just completed a masterpiece.

"Oh my god, I truly am amazing," her face gleams with pride.

I let out an exasperated sigh as I turn to look in the mirror, and I gasp. It's like I'm not even staring at my reflection, but the reflection of a girl with red hair who actually is beautiful.

"Iz…" I stammer out, "you really are amazing." Her smile widens if that's even possible.

"Now the final touch," she comments as she heads toward her closet and pulls out a bag that must be my dress. She pulls it out of the bag, and my breath catches.

"Izzy…" is all I can say. She hands me the dress as I slip out of one of her extra robes and into the dress.

I stare at myself in the mirror. I actually look… pretty. My hair is in long, wavy curls down my back, not its usual frizzy mess, and my face doesn't look as pale as normal, and my freckles are hardly noticeable.

He thinks your freckles are cute.

I blush thinking about Max's words. Why had Jace said those things?

What will he think when he sees me?

And don't get me started on the dress. Its emerald green color compliments my hair perfectly. It has halter style straps that lead to a tight bodice that fits my body perfectly. It makes me look, dare I say, a little curvy, even though my curves are nonexistent. At my hips the tight bodice gradually becomes a flowy skirt that cuts a ways above my knees. On anybody else it would have looked risqué, but my height actually works to my advantage. And Izzy found heels that I can walk in, two inches high. I actually look taller.

"Izzy, I can't even begin-"

"Clary," she stops me before I can thank her, "that's what friends are for."

I turn to her, and she's already ready, dressed to perfection in a tight fitting white dress and her six inch stilettos. She looks beautiful as always. Her words touch me, because though I have had friends at my other schools, Izzy is different. Just like Simon is different. So instead, I hug her.

"Clary! You'll ruin your makeup!" She exclaims, but I don't let go, and then she's hugging me back.

"Okay, let's go. I'm sure mom wants pictures before we go…" she says in a dramatic voice.

Right before we enter the living room, we can hear Maryse, Max, and Jace talking on the other side of the doorway. The feelings that had erupted before come rushing back, and the butterflies start fluttering again at the thought of seeing Jace.

What is going on with me?

We walk in, and the talking ceases.

"Oh!" Maryse shouts while clapping her hands together and smiling. "Gorgeous! Absolutely gorgeous!"

Izzy continues with how she is a genius, but I'm too busy staring at Jace, who is giving me the same look he was giving me before, only this time, I can see that part of it is wonder. We just keep staring at each other, and the intensity in his eyes makes me forget that his family is in the room.

My breath catches at the sight of him.

He's dressed in a white button down with a black tie, black jacket, black pants, and black shoes. No pink. His clothes make his messy hair and molten eyes look like they're glowing. An angel. He doesn't look like a demon.

He looks like an angel.

Then Maryse breaks the trance. "Okay! Picture time!"

I turn my eyes to Maryse, but I can still feel Jace's instense gaze on me. I see Izzy walk over to Jace out of the corner of my eye and whisper something in his ear that in turn makes him glare at her, and not the playful one I had gotten in the car.

And so we take pictures. Tons and tons of pictures.

Izzy and me.

Izzy and Jace.

Jace, Izzy, and Max.

Izzy, Max, and me.

We are exhausted by the end. As we are getting ready to leave, and I am sending some pictures I had gotten on my phone to Jon, my mom, and Luke, Maryse gasps.

"Wait! We need the three seniors together! How could I forget that!?"

Izzy looks over at me and rolls her eyes. "Okay mom. Last one, okay?"

Izzy, Jace, and I head over in front of Maryse, with Izzy in the middle.

"No, no," Maryse shakes her head, "Jace, you go in the middle and balance it out."

Izzy whips her head toward Jace, who is looking at me apprehensively.

"Mom," Izzy starts, "I don't think-"

"Hush Izzy, would you deny a loving mother the perfect picture?"

"But-" Izzy tries.

"No buts. Come on Jace, get in the middle of Clary and Izzy and put your arms around one another like you actually like each other."

Oh Maryse, if you only knew the complications.

My eyes are locked with Jace's as he moves towards the middle. He hasn't said a word. He slips one arm around Izzy, and the other around my waist.

And it's like my skin is on fire.

Everywhere, and I mean everywhere, Jace's arm even so much as brushes against me is blazing with heat. Like a shock went through my body.

I have never felt this before. Not even when I had shoved myself into his arm to stop him from looking at my book.

I am hyper aware of every place our bodies touch.

Our eyes are still locked. Does he feel it too?

Snap!

"Jace and Clary! Look at the camera," Maryse commands.

We break the gaze and smile for the camera. As soon as I hear the snap, I step away as fast as I can from Jace's touch.

"I- I, um- forgot something in your room Izzy. I'll be right back," I mutter as I bolt out of the living room.

What is going on?

What the hell is going on?

I almost make it to Izzy's door when someone grabs my hand and twirls me around.

And now my hand feels like it is on fire.

"Clary," Jace breathes out, as if he chased me down the hallway, and hearing and seeing him like this is clouding my thoughts even more.

"What is it Jace?" I whisper out, trying to muster up a little bit of control in my voice.

"I just wanted to tell you- tell you that- you look- beautiful," his voice wavers ever so slightly, "no, more than that." He leans his face close to mine, and then moves his lips toward my ear.

"You look absolutely stunning." He whispers like there is nothing in the world he is more sure about.

He pulls away to meet my gaze, still holding onto my hand. But it's not just my hand or waist that feels like it is on fire now. My entire body is flaming with heat.

He steps away and heads back into the living room.

"Thank you," I whisper breathlessly, to the empty hallway.

As always, please review because I love hearing your thoughts, opinions, questions, critiques, and everything else you all have to say :)