Hey everyone! Thank you for all the reviews :) I'm sorry I haven't had the opportunity to get back to a lot of you on them yet, but a great big thank you for taking a few minutes to leave me a message after each chapter! This story is just about wrapped up - about time to move on to the next!
Whistling some tune that had been stuck in her head for the past couple of days, she headed back into the living room with the wet towel slung over one shoulder. When Ruby had announced that she'd be going out with Weiss for dinner tonight, Yang had gotten so nervous about asking Blake out that she'd decided to take a shower first in order to calm herself down. Plus, smelling good might go a long way in getting Blake to say yes, right? Who didn't like someone who smelled like citrus?
If only it were that easy…Yang would willingly shower twice a day for the rest of her life if it meant Blake would positively say yes to a date. Their water bill would be massive, but it would totally be worth it.
On the plus side, she'd finished the book last night! While she'd been reading she'd even written down some notes to make sure she remembered some of the smaller details to discuss with Blake later. She'd never taken notes in school, yet here she was writing down thoughts and musings on various plot points in order to make the girl next door like her. Her teachers would probably be disappointed in her priorities...
Her whistling abruptly stopped when, instead of the empty living room she'd been expecting, she found none other than Nora Valkyrie sitting on her sofa chowing down on chips and salsa with Zwei sitting patiently at her feet waiting for the inevitable scraps to be tossed his way.
"Hey Nora," she greeted while taking the towel from her shoulder, spinning it several times and whipping it towards the girl. Nora snatched it easily out of the air without even dropping a chip.
"What's up Blondie? Let's watch that movie like you've been promising me!"
Rolling her eyes, she headed into the kitchen to get a glass of water. She'd stopped thinking anything of Nora showing up out of the blue a long time ago. Whenever Ren was busy Nora liked to come over and eat all their food then leave. Ruby must have let the girl in before leaving for dinner tonight. It was either that or Nora had figured out how to get into their apartment without a key...which meant they would quickly be eaten out of house and home.
"What happened to the plant?" she asked, pointing to the broken pieces of vase in the garbage can and taking a quick sip of water.
"It wasn't me!" Nora immediately whined. "Ruby tripped and knocked it off the table!"
"Uh huh…"
Nora sucked at lying. Or more like, Nora was good at lying, but only for about five seconds before she would inevitably spill the truth.
"She almost fell through the wall too. I might have given her a little shove, but she should have stayed on her feet!"
Yang rolled her eyes and shook her head. For whatever reason, Ruby and Nora loved to roughhouse with each other. It was about as evenly matched as David wrestling a hundred Goliaths. The look on Weiss' face whenever they went at it though...it was this fascinating mixture of horror, amusement, and fear for Ruby's safety. Not that Nora would ever intentionally harm Ruby - especially when Yang had it on good authority that Weiss had threatened everything in Nora's life if Ruby was ever seriously hurt.
"What movie did I promise to watch with you?" Yang asked while returning to the living room. When Nora held up a movie case, she leaned forward to read the title squished in between what looked like a horde of bloodied zombies.
"Body Snatchers 6?" she asked incredulously and firmly shook her head. "I think you've got the wrong person - you're looking for someone slightly shorter than me with brown hair and a rich heiress glued to her hip."
"Nope - you promised!" Nora replied resolutely. "Three months and five days ago - I said 'hey let's hang sometime!' and you laughed and said 'sure, whatever you want.'"
Staring in shock at the girl's surprisingly impeccable memory, Yang finally shook her head and decided that there was no point in arguing. Nora was going to stay and watch the movie anyway, so Yang might as well hang out too.
And from now on she was going to be more careful about using the phrase 'whatever you want'...
"Alright, let's get this over with," she teased as she crashed on the sofa beside the girl. The movie would be a couple hours max, which would give her plenty of time to work up the courage to go next door and talk to Blake. So...maybe this actually worked out perfectly for her. There was nothing like a good ol' D grade horror flick to boost her confidence.
Satisfied that her evening plans hadn't been completely destroyed, she reached forward, grabbed a chip, and stuck it into the jar of salsa before popping it in her mouth. The chips were a little stale, but other than that this would be a great movie snack. And the chips wouldn't have been so stale if she and Ruby hadn't run out of…
Salsa...
"Wait, Nora, where did the salsa come from?" she asked, picking up the jar and looking at the girl intently. It would run counter to everything Nora was if the girl had actually brought over her own salsa, but maybe, just this one time -
"Girl next door," Nora answered distractedly while struggling to set up the movie. "She's real nice."
For a second, Yang's heart literally stopped beating. And then it warped into overdrive.
"You went next door? What did you say? What did she say?"
If her questions came out sounding panicked, that's because she was. Enough to drag Nora's attention away from the television set in shock - one chip hallway to her mouth. But this could be bad. Really really bad.
"I dunno - I told her we had mandatory movie time and needed salsa and she handed me that," Nora answered, pointing at the salsa.
"Mandatory movie time?" Yang pressed. "Or a movie date - did you call it a date, Nora?"
There was no reason to wait for Nora to answer the question because Nora called everything a date. Movie date, dinner date, bathroom freaking date.
Still holding the jar of salsa, Yang jumped up and rushed next door.
This was a disaster - her absolute worst nightmare had just become reality. Actually, she hadn't even thought that this would be a possibility! The worst she'd come up with was that Blake would refuse a date request and then seeing each other would become uncomfortable. Never had Yang imagined that one of her friends would walk next door and basically masquerade as her girlfriend directly to the girl she actually wanted to be her girlfriend.
All the time she'd spent laying the groundwork with Blake...all the time she'd spent being patient...and Nora had just waltzed in and nuked the whole thing in under five minutes for a jar of smashed tomatoes.
"Please, please answer," she muttered while knocking rapidly on Blake's door. In her nervousness she may have knocked more than two times, but she couldn't even remember now. She just needed Blake to answer so that she could try to fix this.
Thankfully, the door cracked open a little while later and Blake peered out - clearly surprised to see Yang standing there.
"Oh, hi Yang."
"Hi," she answered succinctly, feeling there was no time for formalities. "Listen, my friend Nora just came over to borrow this from you," she explained hastily while pressing the jar of salsa into Blake's hands. "I'm really sorry she bothered you - she's just an old friend from school. We're good friends, you know? She actually has a boyfriend, but whenever he's busy she likes to come over and bother Ruby and me. Which is what she's doing tonight. Bothering me - and, you know, you."
Out of breath, she paused in order to draw in some more oxygen and wait for Blake's response.
"Oh. Oh I see…"
Thinking that Blake would say more than that, Yang waited - she waited until the silence grew awkward and a little bit uncomfortable. But Blake wasn't making great eye contact and...now Yang didn't know what to say next. Should she apologize again? How could she make it abundantly clear that Nora never was and never would be any type of romantic interest? Was that even what Blake had thought? Did Blake even care?
"Her taste in movies is just as bad as Ruby's. Already have one rotten tomato in the family - sure don't need two!" Yang chuckled at the attempted joke, but it fell flat when Blake only cracked a small smile in response.
"What are you watching?"
"Something called Body Snatchers 6," Yang answered even though it didn't really seem like Blake cared much to know. Was this what it was like to make polite conversation? To ask questions just for the semblance of carrying on?
"Sounds interesting." Finally Blake looked back to Yang and smiled - it wasn't the biggest, but at least it was something. Again though, they lapsed into silence that was nowhere near comfortable.
These were uncharted waters for the both of them and Yang had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do next.
"Um...did you want to -?" she began to ask, gesturing with one arm towards her apartment as if Blake would actually choose now to come over and watch a movie with her.
"No, no. You two have fun. I have some...reading to do…" Blake's eyes turning downward and back towards the window after the response - clearly wanting to look anywhere but at Yang.
Glancing over Blake's shoulder, Yang found the book of the day lying on top of the little table, but there was also a book lying out on the coffee table. The sight was attention grabbing because...well, there was hardly ever a stray book in Blake's apartment.
"New one?" she ventured a guess, nodding towards the coffee table. Blake followed Yang's gaze before opening her mouth to say something, only for nothing to come out. The next second, Blake closed her mouth and nodded with another smile that failed to reach her eyes.
"Yes, a new one."
On a normal day Blake would tell Yang something about the book - its title, its genre, what made her want to buy it...but today there was nothing but endless silence shouting that Blake didn't want to speak on the subject anymore. Or any subject, it seemed.
But Yang really didn't want to leave without knowing that Blake was alright with what had happened. And Blake's lack of enthusiasm in going back to reading wasn't exactly the most reassuring in that regard...
"Are you sure you don't want to watch?" Yang asked again. "Because you're totally welcome to join us if you want to."
Hopefully it was just her imagination that Blake had flinched at the word 'us'...
"Yes, I'm sure. And you can keep this," Blake answered, handing back the jar of salsa and giving Yang a miniscule smile. "Wouldn't want your chips to be unaccompanied, after all."
"Ah, yeah, Nora would be real unhappy," she replied with a grin that instantly fell when she caught the look of ache that crossed Blake's face.
"Right. Wouldn't want that, would we?" Blake attempted another strained smile, but it didn't linger for very long.
With one hand Blake was holding onto the edge of the front door - looking like she would love nothing more than to close it between them. This certainly felt like when Yang was supposed to take her leave, more so than on any previous visit, but…
Even if she didn't want to go, she wasn't willing to overstay her welcome.
"Ok...then I'll...talk to you later?"
"Right, we'll talk later."
Turning away with a great deal of reluctance, Yang walked the few steps back to her own apartment with her brow scrunched together in confusion. Before she'd even reached her own door, she heard the door behind her snap quietly shut. Still, she looked back over her shoulder like she always did...finding nothing but the empty hallway behind her.
It felt like the door had slammed closed on her own heart.
Numbly walking back into her apartment, she sank into the seat next to Nora in stunned disbelief. With an 'oohhh' of excitement her friend grabbed the salsa out of her hands and began eating again, oblivious to her current state of complete dismay. When Nora started the movie, Yang leaned against the back of the sofa and allowed her mind to wander next door.
Something about that exchange had been really off...especially when compared to the last couple of times she'd gone over there. It was almost like they had been body snatched and replaced by complete strangers - ones who didn't even know how to communicate with each other.
Just when she'd thought that maybe Blake would consider going out on a date with her, something like this happened. Not that it had been Nora's fault - she had only been joking about it being a movie date, but there was no way Blake could have known that.
Why was the thought of Yang being on a date with Nora that upsetting to Blake? Upsetting enough to shut Yang out?
The only reason she could think of for being upset would be if…
But Blake couldn't be jealous...could she?
Maybe Yang should put herself in Blake's shoes. What if a random girl knocked on the door and announced that she was going out on a date with Blake?
It wasn't even true and yet Yang could feel the heat of jealousy pouring into her veins. The thought of someone else getting to spend time with Blake...time that Yang herself wanted, but couldn't seem to have…
Yeah, that sucked.
But did Blake really think that their time together meant nothing? Sure, they weren't exactly sitting down and having deep conversations, but it wasn't like Yang was just going over there for the fun of it. It wasn't like she thought of Blake as just a neighbor to bum fruit off of. She'd been trying not to be too overbearing, but did that mean she'd come off as uninterested instead?
Because she was interested. A whole lot of interested.
Sighing, she snatched a chip from Nora's hand and ate it plain.
Ok, maybe she needed a new plan. Forget asking Blake out - Yang needed to do some damage control. Maybe...give Blake some time to calm down and then go over there to apologize profusely. Or, Yang needed to do something that showed Blake how important their seemingly trivial interactions actually were.
And maybe, just maybe, tell Blake how she truly felt.