The Day After

You're woken up by the ringing of your phone. Who the hell is calling you this early, you think.

You carefully reach over Julia and grab your phone. "Hello" you say, sleepily. "Yay, you're awake" comes the reply.

"Marie? What are you doing, calling this early for?" you get out, a little rougher than you intended. "Early? Anni, it's almost 11" Marie answers back. You hear a little bit of her excitement leave her voice, being replaced with the faintest hint of hurt.

"Is it? Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night" you whisper, as you try to untangle yourself from Julia, who was still sound asleep. "Oh really? Guess that means it went well" she says and you can hear the smile on her face.

"Yes, it went very well" you tell her and you can't help but laugh a little bit at the squeal she lets out. "I'm actually surprised that it's taken this long to hear from you, and only you. I can't believe you aren't with Duckie to hear the details" you laugh out, as you walk into the kitchen.

"Oh, I am. I woke her up at like 8, which is apparently really early. Even if she had adjusted to the time difference already" she laughs. "She went back to sleep." "Oh, I bet she loved that" you laugh back. You know Raye was one never much for mornings if she had no sleep and that it usually takes a day for her to get on your time frame. "She probably only just got to sleep like an hour before. How are you still alive?"

Right about that time, you hear Marie yell "hey" and you hear Raye growl out something like "3 hours M, 3 hours" and you can't help but laugh. "What happened?" you ask. "She threw a pillow at me, and let me just say that for someone who is still half asleep, she has good aim" she says.

You then hear her say "I'm talking to Anni, don't you want to know how it went?" This is followed by Raye in the background saying "First, hey A and second, don't need to. Junni is ENDGAME, period and A had this in the bag. Jules said yes, there was no way that she wouldn't. Therefore, they were probably up all night doing all kinds of wanky things that I DO NOT need to hear about and like me, need more sleep. Now please little one, shh. I love ya but I need a few more hours sleep" she finishes, kindly. "Ok, ok" she tells her.

"Well, as you can see, I should go before sleeping beauty here kills me" she says. "I heard that" you hear in the background. "Tell her I said hi, and to chill but that's fine. We can meet her later and we'll tell you all about it" you tell her. "Okay, bye" she says and you hear the playful arguing going on and you can't help the smile on your face as you hang up. Those two were crazy sometimes but you were glad that you had them in your life.

"Who was that?" you hear Julia ask sleepily, as she comes out of the bedroom. "It was Marie. She wants to come over with Duckie later" you tell her. "Really? That's cool. Wait, I didn't know that Duckie was in town. Did you?" she asks and then you see it hit her. "You did, didn't you? Cause they knew what you were planning, didn't they?" "Well, yeah. I needed a little help to pull it off" you say shyly.

As she starts to give you a look, you pull her in for a passionate kiss. "If you start that again, we will never be ready when they get here" she laughs. "But, but..." you start to protest. "No buts" she tells you. "You know as well as I do that they'll be here in like an hour or two at the most, if we're lucky. And we need to take showers and get ready. Plus, we should clean up a bit." "Fine" you pout, but as you go to leave the kitchen, she grabs you to give you one last passionate kiss before you have to get ready.

"You know, it would save time and water if we just showered together" you smirk. "GO" she laughs, and playfully shoves you out. "I'll get the coffee started" you hear her say, as you head to take your shower.

An hour and a half later!

You finally hear the doorbell ring and when you answer it, it's exactly who you thought it would be, Raye and Marie. "Hey guys. Marie, I see you got her out of bed" you smile. You're greeted by a grunt from Raye and a huge hug from Marie. As you and Marie break from your embrace, you turn around adn see Raye and Julia breaking out of their own hug with a mumbled "hi and thank you" from Raye, and a small laugh from Julia. You can't help but mess with Raye so you say, "Oh okay. I see how it is Duckie. You just grunt at me and walk right on past but J gets a hug and a hi" you fake hurt. "She likes me better, I mean can you blame her?" Julia jokes, whilst throwing her arm around Raye. "Say it isn't so Duckie" you cry. "Sorry A, it's true. Jules had hot cocoa made just right" Raye laughs out, and wraps her arm around Julia.

You gasp and bring your hand to your chest and reply "How do you know she made it? She could have just been holding it after I made it." "One, because you always forget the extra sugar and two, I know you were too busy trying to get into J's pants" she laughs out, sitting down her hot chocolate and starting to walk over to you.

"OMG DUCKIE" you feign shock, as she walks over and pulls you into a huge hug. "Oh come on, what have the two of us always said. I know you and you know me, right... plus we're all family here. We know it's true" she laughs."Yeah okay okay, fine you're right" you admit, as you return the embrace.

"Okay, now that that's all out of the way, can we go sit down?" Marie says, practically dragging the two of you over to the living room. "Okay, okay, we're coming. Ya'll please tell us how it went before this child dies" Raye says. You all laugh as you settle down in the living room. You're content to sit back and let Julia take the lead and recount the evening. It's nice to hear it from her point of view.

After Julia finishes telling them every detail of the best night of your life, everyone is hungry. So, after some debate, you decide to just order pizza as it's getting late and no one wants to cook. After everyone eats their fill of food, you all settle back in the living room to watch a movie. You and Julia on one end of the couch and Marie on the other, while Raye takes the recliner.

About a quarter of the way through the movie, Julia gets up and moves towards the hallway. "Where are you going?" you ask her, sitting up straighter. "Look at Duckie" she says, motioning her head in the direction of the girl. When you look over to the recliner, you can't help but smile as you see Raye snuggled up with a pillow in her arms and curled into a ball and sleeping.

You watch as Julia comes back with three throws. She hands one to Marie and one to you before covering Raye up with the third. When she comes back over and sits down, she sees you smiling and asks "what?". "Just thinking" you reply. "About what?" she smiles. As you lay your head in her lap, you simply say "Oh, just about how great you are and how much I love you. Also, just how lucky I am. Oh, and that Duckie has got the right idea" you laugh.

"You're such the sweet talker" Julia smiles down at you, as she starts to play with your hair. As you slowly start to drift off to sleep, the last thing you remember is looking around you and thinking how happy you are and how it couldn't really get much better than this, being curled up in your loves arms with two of the most important people to the both of you sitting around you.

'You truly are one of the luckiest people in the world Anni' you think, as you fall asleep.