I do not own PJO or HoO.

II

And the end is unknown but I think I'm ready, as long as you're with me. - The XX

November

November came and I was angry. I found myself checking Thalia out at every opportunity. I was awestruck at how easily she moved around school. She took whatever she wanted without calculation and planning ahead. She made crude jokes and poked fun at you, noting your flaws and challenging your views. She laughed obnoxiously, at the most awful things like Holocaust and Jesus jokes. But she was also brilliant. Ask her about mythology and politics and her eyes would light up like fireworks on the fourth of July. She also liked literature, mainly poetry. We bonded over Sylvia Plath one night and I remember her smile when I told her how I felt about the poet. She went on and on about how Plath helped her and how her Plath's journals made her feel. I was on top of the world feeling her gaze on me like that. I could feel myself gaining Thalia's trust. One day while she was driving me home from school to her house, she turned to me at a red light and smiled awkwardly. "I've never really had girl friends before. One actually...Annabeth but she's back in New York. Having girl friends is way too much work."

I laughed. "It's fine."

"I guess we're supposed to braid each other's hair now and tell each other our deep dark secrets now," she joked, eyes firm on the red light.

"Not really," I replied, and earned a smile from Thalia.

Jason was still at work when we got to their home and we sat in the kitchen snacking on Oreo cookies. I rubbed the cookie part together and scraped the excess creme filling off, tossing it onto a piece of paper while Thalia poured us milk. When she saw what I was doing she rolled her eyes and popped the creme filling into her mouth. "You're such a fucking savage, Reyna. The filling is the best part."

"It tastes like diabetes in my mouth!"

She rolled her eyes and picked at my remains. We were quiet for a bit, Thalia checking her Tumblr while I studied her. She had short black hair with one side longer than the other, slight freckles over her nose, dark eyes that gave you the chills when they set on you, a small mouth with a tiny brown mole on her left upper lip. She was 5'09, half a foot taller than me with fairer skin than mine. Me, I was had long curly brown hair, basic brown eyes, full lips, tiny cold hands. tiny feet, tiny everything basically.

I was suddenly aware of Thalia studying me. "What's the most embarrassing thing you've done?"

I cleared my throat, embarrassed and dipped my cookie into the milk while I thought. "I was 13 and dated this guy I met online for like a month. I told him I love you like the first day."

Thalia burst out laughing, her teeth and lips had black specks on them. "Sounds like something you would do."

I blushed and hit her with a piece of creme filling. "What about you then? Hmmm?"

"EASY. One summer my friends and I broke into someones back yard to swim in their pool and we had no bath suits so I'm standing there with like, my four closest friends-Luke, Grover and Annabeth- and I start pulling my pants down only to realize I wore the biggest granny panties on earth. Big enough to hang on a flag pole but I thought, 'Fuck it, I've come so far and it's too hot to do anything else'. So take off my pants and my friends see and there's a huge silence but no one says anything. Anyway, we swim and hours later we're walking back home all wet and Grover says, 'So we're just gonna ignore Thalia's big ass underwear?' And they never let me live it down." I watched as a faint smile tugged at her lips and then she burst out laughing. "God, it was so reckless."

"Sounds like a blast."

"It really was...You've ever been with a guy?"

I shifted in my seat. "What do you-?"

"Are you a virgin?"

Sadness tugged at me inside. "Yes, but it was a mistake. I should have waited."

Thalia opened her mouth to speak but refrained. She picked at her black polished nails. "I was about to. We dated for like two years and when the moment came and I was taking off my clothes, I realized he wasn't the one and I walked out."

I commented on how I thought that was a wise decision and that she should value her virginity. Thalia just shrugged her shoulders and scrolled through her phone once more. Jason came home shortly after that and we ended up playing video games. Twenty minutes into the game and the controller kept slipping out of my clammy hands and I was sweating all over the place. I hurled my remote to Jason and quit.

"REYNA ITS JUST A GAMEEE!" he yelled, trying to kill his sister's character.

"There's no logic to it!"

Thalia clacked her tongue. "Biiiitch, you just use your weapon to kill the play-haaah!" Her character, Princess Peach kicked my Zelda off a platform. I tackled her into an attack of tickles. Thalia screamed for mercy and I let go. Later when I was turned away from her, she wrestled me down and pinned me to the floor.

"Thaliaaaa," Jason sighed, "hands off the baby!"

We ended up watching a movie, Hercules, and ordering Pizza. Within minutes Thalia was knocked out but would wake up to add commentary to the film. "That's the garden of rape!" and then she'd be snoring. Jason fell asleep too. I was confined between the two Graces, picking at the inaccuracies of the film. Jason lay near my stomach, his legs bent and hanging off the bed. I became extremely aware of Thalia beside me, snoring and blowing her warm breath in my ear. I knew that her proximity was closer than I wanted and I dared not to turn. But temptation got the best of me and I did. I stared at her peaceful face for the remainder of the film.

I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to know what her lips felt like, what they tasted like. I wanted to impress her. I wanted her to like me just as I liked her. I began to inch closer to her. If I kissed her right now. she wouldn't know. She was sound asleep. I think I spent three hours, long after the movie finished, in the dark trying to make up my mind. I wanted to kiss her. I had to kiss her. I had to know.

Days passed and Thalia and I texted each other more than ever. I read her and sent her poetry in French which I had to translate so she could understand. Each poem was specifically picked. It always meant something more to me although she thought I was sending it because I simply liked it.

One of my favorite poems by Anne Herbert has a stanza:

Toi, ta parole et ton silence, ta vie et ta beauté, ton amour me ramènent inlassablement, tel un rosier sauvage qu'on allume dans la nuit, sous la pluie.

Even though she and I weren't dating my growing love for her left me crazy, restless. I couldn't sleep because I realized that everything I knew was deteriorating. This savage rosebush that would wrestle with me for fun didn't know what was stirring inside of me. She drove me cray and it was wrong. A) She was a girl. B) She was my best friends sister and C) She was girl! I never liked girls that way but there was something about Thalia. What was so special about her that I saw myself wanting to kiss her, hold her hand in the halls and make her happy with unconditional love?

My realization of this made me take out my anger on Thalia. Why did she have to be so cute? Why couldn't I hang out with Jason without her having to be there? I told myself that it was better to push her away and make up a lame excuse to her and Jason about why I couldn't be her friend anymore. And that's exactly what I did. Thalia noticed because my phone began to blow up with invites to the movies or lunch or with poems.

November 30

I came home from my work out to a huge text message where Thalia called me out for being a coward. She explained that if I didn't want to be her friend that I should just tell her upfront instead of making her invest time in a friendship that was one sided.

Don't bother explaining yourself. I'm over it.

Reading that, I felt like crap. Panic seized me and I fumbled with the keys on my phone.

"What?" came the voice over the line.

"Thalia, I'm sorry."

She sighed. "Reyna, whatever. If you don't want to be my friend, it's okay. I'm a hard person to like...I just wish you had been honest in the first place, instead of being a two faced bitch."

I began to cry because that wasn't the case. I wanted to explain myself. I wasn't two faced, I was simply in awe by her and it hurt that we could never be a possibility. Thalia heard my sobbing for a good five minutes until I quieted down. At home, I was curled up into a ball beside my bed with snot glistening on my knees.

"What did I do wrong?"

"Nothing, believe me, Thal."

"Then what the fuck?"

I should have left it at that but my mouth said otherwise. "I just can't be your friend, Thalia?"

"Why not?"

"I just can't! Please don't ask me to explain."

"How are you going to call me, waste my time and not tell me why?"

"I CAN'T."

"You know what, I'm done. Girls are so dramatic anyway. You don't want to be my friend? Fine. I don't nee-"

"I can't be your friend because I like you! God, Thalia. Is that what you wanted to hear? Now you know. And we can never be together because it's so wrong. I can't be your friend because it's painful to look at you knowing you'd never like me the way I like you and Jason better not find out about this becau-"

"You like me?"

"Have you not been listening to me?"

The line was silent save for my occasional sniffles. Thalia then spoke. "Why? How? When? Tell me."

And so I did. We were on the phone for two hours while I confessed everything to her. I asked her if she was grossed out by me and Thalia's reply was that no, she was just surprised. She didn't know how to interact with the opposite sex let alone the same sex. Then she grew cold and distant. I felt her shut me out when she told her she had to go.

"This is why we can't be friends," I whispered.

"Reyna...I just need time to think.I'll see you at school, okay?" Thalia hung up.

DECEMBER 1ST

I didn't sleep that night. I cried out about 20 gallons of tears. I considered skipping school but I went. Tuition was too damn expensive to miss. When I saw Thalia in the hall that morning, she didn't even bother looking at me. I ducked into a classroom and sobbed because I knew things would never be the same. It'd only be a matter of time before she told her brother and they'd both be disgusted. I was disgusted.

Surprisingly I made it through the rest of my classes when I found myself face to face with Thalia. She scrutinized me before speaking. "Can I come over? We need to talk?"

I couldn't look at her in the eyes. I didn't want to talk. I wanted this humiliation to be over. I wanted to die, but I agreed. Thalia and I sat in her car later that evening talking and to my surprise, she was very calm as I recounted everything from the beginning.

Thalia was silent. She pushed her short hair back like she did when she was exasperated. "I had see you face to face to know," she told me.

"Know what?"

"To know if we could make things work. I figured, why not? If I'm ever to be with a girl, I'd rather it be you, Reyna, than anyone else..."

We sat in the car for about two hours getting to know each other a bit more and figuring out what it'd mean to date. It'd have to be in secret: from our parents, friends, Jason, school and public. It also couldn't be too serious because it was something new for the both of us. We shook hands, awkwardly, and then parted ways. I lay in bed that night, excited but also nervous because I had gotten what I wanted but I knew there had to a cost.