It takes less than nine minutes for me to hear a knock at my bedroom door. I rise from my bed with a nervous jolt and walk towards it. I want to look in the peephole, but that would be needless. I know who I'll see.

I spent that small fragment of time between the text being sent and the sound of the knock slowly being nibbled into madness by fear. The arrogant Noah is not so great at dealing with people on a purely personal level, stripped of his cloak of sarcasm. The arrogant Noah cannot deal with people stripped of his actual clothing, either.

I bite a loose edge off my fingernail and swallow hard – the saliva in my mouth is foamy and solid like a pepto-bismol milkshake. The spices from my oriental supper still hide somewhere in my mouth, under the blanket of minty toothpaste from my freshly-brushed teeth. Somewhere in my gut, a miniscule chunk of galangal is doing the tango with a green onion, trying to force a burp from their nervous footwork.

Swallow. Taste the minty toothpaste and forget the tom yum. Slide the lock and turn the doorknob.

He stands before me, smiling slightly, as if I wasn't a total turd to him today. Not that he deserves better – or maybe he does. Who am I to say? I spend so much time judging people and so little time truly listening before responding.

I look intently into his open, greenish eyes.

My voice is pinched, shaky.

"Do you like me?" I say.

He looks surprised by the question, but I uttered it with enough intensity that he should be capable of recognizing my intent. Every part of me knows there are much better ways to handle this. In a modern world of bureaucracy and diplomacy I could use every communication method, every subtle nuance, and build my case. But I've tried that before and it got me nowhere.

So I toss every detail-oriented interpersonal study I've ever done in my life out the window and select a far more junior-high approach. I repeat myself sternly.

"Trent, do you like me?"

His pupils dilate and his shoulders rise – his ribcage swells slightly, taking in a deep breath. Trent doesn't speak, doesn't move, but his body language still tells me something. I stand with my hand on the door, standing on the threshold, and we stare each other down for another two seconds, which feel more like sixty.

My hand releases the door, which I catch with a toe to prevent it from shutting. After a final, slow breath, I raise my hands to meet the shoulders of the taller boy and bring my face to his in an embrace.

My hands grip the fabric of his shirt to pull him into the room, away from the doorway, to afford some privacy. At least Chris has the sense to keep our bedrooms bug-free.

It's agonizing to pull away from Trent – more nerve-wracking than it was to pull him close in the first place.

"If this is too weird," I whisper to him, face still centimetres from his, "Leave my room right now. We will never talk about this again."

He glances away from me for a moment, pensive. With one last twitch, he puts his hands on my cheeks and pulls me in to kiss again.

Kissing Trent feels odd and foreign and almost exactly as it was in my dreams. His mouth is narrow and tight, his saliva watery. His kisses are sloppy and unorthodox and I begin to understand why he and Gwen made out so much less than Bridgette and Geoff do. Yet despite the marginally passable skill level of his kissing, I feel very much electrified by the touch of someone who I'd never thought I'd have.

I always saw Trent the airhead, Trent the cool guy, Trent the green-eyed musician. And now, met with, Trent the basket case, I all at once feel repulsed and drawn to him, if only because he's attainable now.

At a good three inches shorter, I need to crane my neck to reach his mouth, and his kissing is so forceful` it threatens to bend my neck backwards. But I like the forcefulness. It arouses me more and more, until I tear into his back with my stubby fingernails.

I blindly amble towards my bed; eyes still sealed shut in a kiss. I open them only when I pause the kiss, and only then do I take a deep breath. Our faces stay close. I push his torso into the bed and climb onto him. Our kisses lose all sense of propriety and direction and soon I'm dragging them against his stubbled chin and neck. I kill two birds with one stone when during an ear-kiss, I slip in a whispered 'Get on top of me.'

I roll onto my back on the bed – the comforter is already half torn off, exposing the steadily wrinkling sheets. He hovers over me before descending into another feverish kiss. The pressure of his body mass weighs heavily on me, yet somehow the smothering compression serves only to make me harder. Cody was a dream of recapturing the purity of young love in front of a musty piano. Trent is a dream-turned-reality, a mildly frayed bundle of nerves in the body of a rockstar. Trent is the silken, chocolate voice that spoke to me in Italian in my mind.

Trent is the body who presses me into the mattress and nibbles at my Adam's apple, and I can somehow begin to understand why Gwen made such choices. I feel the blood rush through my extremities, pooling in crawling tickles in my nose, and in my dick. Every part of me that flushes feels at once warm and shivery, the sensation only relieved when a kiss is planted in the correct locale.

Our shirts are gone and I feel underwhelming while so overwhelmed. My body is soft and shapeless and dark, small and unimpressive beneath the slim, sculpted ivory of his skin. His back is without blemish, unlike Cody's. I promise myself to not think of Cody again tonight.

He pins me against the bed and I writhe beneath him, feeling so feminine. As he places a kiss on my rather hairy stomach, I wonder how he can possibly be so fearless about this. And even more importantly, why I feel so fearless.

I am without an ounce of fear as I wrap my arms around his torso, holding him tight and nearly motionless, as our muscles twitch and rumble in unison. We inhale the same air – sharply, suddenly, breath steaming into our faces. Our voices and gasps are hushed and hasty. Owing to all of my nocturnal practice, my confident hands caress his body as his dextrous ones comb through my hair.

I touch his cock as if it were my own. My heart thumps, but with a purpose. Boldly. I'm not scared. I can't be scared, because fear is what happens before the undertaking begins. Once you set in motion, fear becomes excitement. It's too late for fear.

He breathes heavily into my ear and my skin burns. I am not going to wake up this time.

He's still on top of me when I begin to laugh. It's a slow, whining laugh, unsupported by my lungs which are too depleted of oxygen to be useful.

I quiet and scratch my greasy scalp with my fingernails.

"Did you know your name is French for 'thirty?'" I ask him

"Nah." He says quietly, rolling off on me and burying his face in my pillow.

"Your name should have been Neuf instead. That's 'nine'."

"Too hard to pronounce."

"True."

I slide under my sheets. I shouldn't go to sleep. It's not even nine o'clock. But the only alternative to falling asleep is to kick Trent out of my bedroom, and I'm not ready to do that yet.

I turn onto my side and my eyes shut. My back is to Trent. I never place another hand on him. I simply sleep.

Dreamlessly.

At quarter to five the next morning, I roll around and my eyes open on him. He's standing up, buckling his pants. He pulls his undershirt on and begins to walk away with his t-shirt in his hands.

"Trent?" I say, groggy and weak.

He turns around.

"I think maybe that shouldn't happen again." I finish

He shrugs. "Maybe you're right." He walks towards the door. The time between the sound of the door swinging open and it slamming shut is a little longer than it should be.

I close my eyes tightly, maybe to try to sleep again, maybe to force my thoughts in a different direction. A deep sigh shudders from my chest as I wiggle closer to the centre of the bed, but I know that comfort won't encourage sleep, not when I've been in bed since 8:50 and it's nearing five. I can't for the life of me decide whether to label last night a success or a failure. Maybe it's closer to a surrender. I got a taste of second prize – which was honestly quite tasty – because first prize pissed me off. Now I've magically managed to make things awkward with both of them – a bit of a victory, but a failure too.

I turn on the television, but at this hour there's nothing on but infomercials for cleaning products and exercise programs. A few Magic Bullets here and there. I prop myself up against the pillow.

Judging by Trent's nonchalant attitude, if I'm lucky enough, yesterday was simply a random outburst and life can continue according to status quo. Either way, it's mid-October and the end of the season is tantalizingly close.

To my knowledge, there is no season three planned. I can return to my hometown, finish high school, and watch reruns of the show to remember my 'awkward time at summer camp'. Maybe Chris will be kind enough to give us all a DVD box set of the whole series.

It was a Friday when she dropped from an unknown location in the ceiling as I passed through the second floor hallway. My first instinct was to yelp helplessly.

"Shh." She says, covering my mouth with her rough, dirty hand. She stares at me intently through her apple-green eyes, pupils as tiny as a pencil lead. With a squatting, savage kind of walk, she drags me into the little room with the ice dispensary. Once inside, she uncovers my mouth, but gives me no space to speak.

"I know what you did." Says Izzy, in her 'dark Izzy' voice. I get a tiny lump in my throat, but such is a natural reaction to the phrase 'I know what you did.'

"Izzy, I've been on this earth for seventeen years, of course I've done things."

"Oh but special things." Her face is too close to mine, I can smell her breath – not too gross, highly fruity, but a bit unsettling.

I scoot away from her. "Keep talking."

A request I never thought I'd make of her.

"With Trent. I could tell, it was written all over your sheets."

"You went through my laundry?" I'm far more outraged about her methods of data collection than I am about her conclusions.

"Yes, I found a few black-coloured hairs on your bedsheets when the housekeeper's cart came along to collect them. At first I thought it was a pubic hair but it wasn't kinky like pubes should be, it was very straight. So I picked it up with tweezers and put it in an envelope, and then I brought it to the CSIs for DNA testing, and you know what I found out? The DNA was a perfect match to one TRENT BRENNAN DASCENZO, of Brandon, Manitoba!" She chuckles, a throaty, maniacal laugh. My eyes bulge as I crush further against the wall.

She stares at me, unblinking, with a tight-lipped smile for an instant. Her laughter resumes, this time more open guffawing. "Of course not, doii! I saw Trent leave your room at 5 AM with his shirt in his hands. You guys had sex!" She laughs even harder.

"What were you doing outside my door at five AM!?"

"Well, sometimes when I can't sleep I go for my hallway jogs. Having a skinny, athletically nimble figure doesn't come for free!"

I release a huge breath. "You make no sense. Why are you telling me any of this?"

"Because I want to help you!"

"With what?" I shriek.

"Noah, are we friends?"

I rub my temples with my index fingers. "Honestly Izzy? We are not friends. Frankly, I'm afraid of you. You offered me a threesome once, and complimented me on my nose. Which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that you're a known criminal and you attacked your team mates in a bear costume. Which of course made Cody pee himself. Some of us actually care about our sanity."

"Aw, Noah, I'm glad you liked my nose comment. I like your nose. It's very nosey. Like me! I'm being nosey right now!"

"You got that right. Can I go?" I put my hands on the floor and attempt to slide up against the wall but Izzy places a hand on my shoulder.

"Please can we talk, please please please? Please with…mustard and hotsauce on top! You seem like a hotsauce guy. No, no, a tabasco guy."

I stick my head around the corner of the little ice room, peering into the hallway. No one there. I look at her again and sigh: "Can we go someplace else? It's like negative ten in here."

"Actually it's negative 3.8, see?" She points at a wall thermometer. She rises to her feet and grabs me by the wrist.

"Okay, grabbing me: not necessary."

"Noah I know you think I'm totally loopy and crazy and I would agree with you because I met my grandma and I am my grandma so I know from an outside perspective how kay-arr-ay-zed-why I can be! But I'm also very intelligent even though I'm naughty. Like in grade 8 my science project came first for my school and like third for the province! They said it really made up for the year before where I was eliminated because apparently you can't use live animals for test subjects, who knew!" She continues to talk to me as we approach a door. She knocks once and it opens.

Inside, Owen appears and scoops me up in a squeeze, as usual. For the hundredth time, I question how a nice guy like him wound up with the most insane person I ever met. It must be the whole obesity thing making him desperate, what a shame.

"Owen!"- Izzy snarls in her 'loud Izzy' voice – "Noah wants to make happy times with Trent, we should help!"

"Oh, I'm not sure about that, Izzy." Owen says, voice wobbly. "I'm not even that good at making my own relationships work let alone set up buddies!"

"Guys, seriously."

"Shut up and listen, pumpkin pie!" Izzy yells. "I know so much about the art of manipulation and conversation and circumcision and cremation! I see you being your quiet, snarky, self all day while the rest of us make out with people and I think you need a man!"

"How did you even know I like men?"

"Um, doii!" Izzy says. "That's the second 'doii' I've need to make today. There better not be a third!"

"Owen? Buddy, dude, help me out here."

"Eh, it is kind of obvious." Owen says, with a meek shrug.

I rub my face until I see blotches in my vision and hop up on the bed beside Owen. "Okay. Okay, Izzy. I'll give you free berth to talk for the next two minutes. I won't stop you. I will humour you. So what do you think I should be doing that I am not doing?"

"Here." Izzy says, tossing a full honeydew melon into my lap. "Snack on this while you listen."

"What the fuck." I mumble.

"Well one time, when I was in seventh grade, I really liked this guy named Armand. That's such an unusual name, right, and he had long hair and he was super cool but he was in ninth and he never noticed me! I spoke to him this one time on a field trip but he hardly remembered, then every time I saw him in the halls I was like 'ooh that's Armand' and then he never even said hi! Can you believe it!? Then one day I saw that I had the exact same pencil case as him so I decided to take his pencil case and dump all the stuff out of it and put all my stuff in his case and then give him back my case instead! Subtle eh! Well I thought so, except I forgot that it said 'Isadora Quigg, 555-6896' on it, and also I had a condom in the front pouch but that was kind of on purpose. So he was really not happy and really kind of creeped out by that and he also didn't like it when I tried to offer him rice crispy squares a month later, he just gave me back my bag and said to leave him alone."

I want to ask her why she told me this story but her chance for a point of interest has not yet ended.

"Anyway." She continues. "He didn't date me and never talked to me again but at least he noticed me! So what I'm saying is, you gotta grab the bull by the horns!"

"Yeah, okay." I say, still holding the honeydew melon. "But in your case, grabbing the bull by the horns generally involves getting arrested or creeping people out. That wasn't even good advice."

"Also I really wish I'd had the chance to give you the advice before you hooked up with Trent but I actually didn't even know you wanted to 'til then. Gay people are so crazy, they're like your own sock 'em bop 'em robots!" She makes gestures with her fists.

"Okay…" I slowly utter. "How about I ask Owen for his view now?" I say in my most saccharine, primary-teacher voice. "Owen. On a more direct note, how did you rekindle your relationship with Izzy after things went not so well? How did you, um, reconcile things that only sort-of happened?"

"Uh…" He stalls, attempting to formulate an answer. "Well if you love someone…" he glances nervously at Izzy, who is indeed smiling. This encourages him. "When you love someone you need to be direct! Yeah! And not worry about when you offended them before or when they offended you, you just got to be buddies! Like you and me. Except with kissing and stuff which I don't want to do with you! The only dude I could see myself doing that with would be maybe Justin!"

Izzy's smile morphs into a look of disapproval and Owen frantically backpedals. "Not that I would, though! Not when I have Izzy, she's way better than Justin, even though she isn't tanned! Hehe."

"Noah you bad boy." Izzy teases. "Did you offend Trent?"

"Okay, listen, if it weren't for you, Trent might have been the most mentally unstable guy I've met here – discounting the hosts. Trent goes nuts over the number nine and I kind of made out with him because I was mad at Cody and because I was sick of Trent's creepiness and I just wanted things to be clear for a change. I'm sick of this teen drama bullshit where nothing is out in the open, why can't people just say what they mean? Reality TV would hardly even exist if people were honest all the time."

"I love doing things in the open! Me and Owen made out in the swimming pool two days ago!"

"Um…as long as your suits stayed on, who am I to judge right? Still, kinda ew. But thanks for that."

"Wait, so you don't even like Trent?" Owen says, wringing his hands.

"You guys, I like you. Even you, Izzy. Sort of. But sometimes I think you have rocks in your brains. I like Cody." At that moment, I realize I'd never told anybody up until this point. "Don't tell him." I quickly tack on.

"Oh!" Izzy practically yells. "I was right! I was so right! The kiss was on purpose! Hahahaha!" She guffaws obnoxiously.

"Izzy!" I snap "First of all, what part of 'don't tell anyone' gets interpreted as 'let's start screaming!?'" My voice quiets. "And actually that was an accident, though in retrospect I remember it a bit fondly."

Izzy continues to snicker. "You should do it again."

"I did, once."

"Oooh!"

"The less said of that, the better."

"Cody is my buddy!" Owen chimes in. "He was so great to work with during the Total Drama Drama Drama challenge! He offered me some of his kit-kat once too, even though I know he loves candy. I'd like if you guys were together because then two of my special buddies would be buddies with each other, even more special!"

"Yeah, I don't think so."

"Have you tried?" Izzy says, with the flattest, more normal voice I've ever heard from her. "Seriously."

"No…"

"Then get out there, panther!"- and of course she's back to screaming – "Get out there and win for mother Russia!"

I open my mouth. I want to protest. Every bit of me wants to yell 'don't take advice from Izzy'. But what this psycho just said was the simplest, most straightforward advice that I've never gotten. I made a bold move with Trent because I wasn't so worried about what he'd think of me – I knew he'd leave me alone either way. Yet somehow it evaded my expansive mind to simply discuss things with Cody, to make even the smallest move, instead of being the most pathetic, submissive, unsuccessful little nerd in all of Muskoka.

I can only imagine how dark and blank my eyes look at the moment, because Owen nudges me. "Are you okay, dude?"

"I'm a bit surprised."

"Why?"

"Because by the end of this week, I might truly see Isadora 'Kaleidescope' Quigg as a friend."

Now I'm in front of Cody Anderson's door. It's not like we haven't talked all week – we have, but our interactions were cooler and less friendly than they'd been before. And not that they weren't friendly, either, just…different.

But tonight, I'm here with purpose. The feeling floating through my mind is not unlike what I experienced in August, after our first and only kiss. Except this time I will knock, and I don't know if he'll talk or we'll kiss, or what, but yesterday I was confronted by a psycho hose beast and told to embrace my inner psycho.

My mouth had been foaming from nerves when I waited for Trent to arrive on Tuesday, but once he came in, I stopped feeling fear. And likewise, all day today, I ate nothing and wandered aimlessly, sorting out my plan of attack. Here in front of his bedroom door my nerves fade away into a gentle thumping somewhere in my gut.

I tap.

I wait.

I tap again.

"Go away." I hear his voice.

I stare at the number on the door, hand floating millimetres from the panelling. My breath is shallow and my nerves begin to froth again. Should I tap again? Should I run off and cry to Owen and Izzy? No sound escapes the room. I swallow in order to hold myself together, and tap once again.

"Cody. Dude. It's Noah."

After a long pause, I hear the mechanism click, and the door cracks open, a golden chain bridging the gap. Cody stares out with one turquoise eye. "Hey." He says, tenderly and quietly.

I blink a couple times, deciphering his mood. "I'm coming in?" I phrase it as neither a question nor a statement.

He shuts the door, unhooks the latch, and opens it again. I dawdle behind him as he returns to his seat on his bed. He's wearing a plain shirt and Spongebob pyjama bottoms.

"Are you sick or something?"

"Maybe." He says, with a deep breath. He reclines onto his bed. I feel uneasy as I approach his bed, but ultimately decide to kick off my shoes and take my place beside him.

"Listen," my voice is as milky and gentle as it's ever been. "I'm sorry that I gave you the cold shoulder for a lot of this week." I turn to look at him but he faces forward. An unhappy smirk pulls up one corner of his mouth.

"Yeah so," he rubs his eyes. "You were being weird, yeah, but I guess that's okay. But like, Trent has been weird lately, too. I haven't hung out with the three of you. I tried hanging out with Lindsay 'cause we used to kinda get along but I mean, there's a limit to how much Lindsay you can take."

I grin at him. "Don't tell me you're down in the dumps because you realized Lindsay is an idiot and I'm a jerk. If that's enough to break your heart then your heart should be a fine powder."

"Well, there is one more thing." He looks up at me. "But I dunno if you wanna hear."

I shrug. "I survived at least an hour of talking to Izzy last night. I think I can handle just about anything."

"Well, I talked to Gwen and she was being a bitch." He says sharply. His brow furrows. "I wasn't really trying to hit on her. Of course I stared at her a bit too long, and maybe stood a bit too close, but I didn't say anything. I just tried to like…how do you say it when you, shoot the…?"

"Shoot the shit?"

He snickers, a bit sadly. "My Dad used to say 'shoot the breeze', but close enough."

"But I mentioned Trent, and she got cranky. She was all like, do you even know anything about me? She was making it seem like I only knew her 'cause of Trent, or something, and like I swear I know more than that, she means more than that. And sometimes she's nice, but sometimes she just turns on me, you know? I don't understand it. But…I think I should stop going on about this Gwen stuff, eh?"

I squint, pensive for a moment. "No, I have a question, actually."

He peers up at me.

"Yeah, why do you like Gwen so much? And for once I don't want to say it to be snarky or to be mean, I'm genuinely curious. What is it about her that you like, enough to keep bothering with her when she seems disinterested."

He draws his knees up to his chest and sighs "I know what she's like, who she is. She's exactly like I am. So as you may notice I like showing off my 'pimp side' even though I have to admit it's not the most agile part of my personality. Because you know me pretty well, Noah, you know deep inside I like electronics and anime and video games and candy. And yeah, I like looking at pretty ladies, but I'm not really much of a player. I pretend I am for a few minutes 'til I meet someone to fall in love with!"

He makes a smile, gap-toothed and hopeful, but his brows are angled downwards; his eyes a reflection of sadness.

"I know that she put up her walls here; she wants to be tough and mysterious. But she draws so well – that's all she wants to do is art. I still have a drawing of hers, a drawing of Trent. She threw it out, I guess she wasn't satisfied. I don't know why – it looked beautiful to me. Like him, but simplified. His chin was too tapered but his eyes were perfect. She built up this strong and bitchy attitude because…because I guess people in school weren't nice to her or something. I can relate. I can understand. And I know whatever's under that shell is amazing, I can just tell."

Still staring at him, intently. "How? How are you sure?"

"I'm not. And I'm sort of starting to think I might be wrong, but I don't want to believe I'm wrong, you know? Guess when you like someone enough, you begin to forget they're faulty. Or maybe you just look at someone and think their problems are the same as yours, you can fix yourselves together."

"I wouldn't know the feeling." I reply loosely. "Some people just aren't worth fixing."

"But when you-"

"-Love someone. I know, I know. But maybe you only love the concept."

He looks up at me through his lashes, his eyes are sallow and reddened, but I don't know if he's actually cried. For some reason, I feel an echo of sympathy resonate through my body and it drives me to wrap an arm around his waist. He doesn't pull away –his shoulder tenses up for an instant then melts into me, pressing lightly into my chest. "I don't really understand, but you're smart and I believe you."

A few stray hairs from his head irritate my nose. I take a while to respond. "Or maybe you really do want something, but aren't prepared for the reality of that dream being fulfilled."

He grunts in approval.

We stay like this for a few minutes, quiet. My voices rises without me telling it to, adding: "Even after two months" to the end of the sentence.

He peels a little further from me. He utters a sound of 'hm?'

I raise my eyebrows, backpedalling pathetically: "Everybody wants different things, I guess." The line seems a lot less philosophical and well-thought out than the other things I've uttered along the way. Before I know it, I'm on my feet. I sort of stare at him and then walk out the door.

I'm getting cold feet, aren't I? And not just because I forgot my sneakers in Cody's room, either. It's four days from the finale, and I'm getting cold feel. Cody is a Gwensexual, plain and simple, and I'm a hermit. I gambled all my karma on my success with Trent. What a waste! I'm not even Hindu, but I wrecked my Karma!

I'm strutting down the hallway at a rapid pace. I don't know what I'm looking for. Maybe I want to find Owen and Izzy for the moral support. My pace slows and I begin to think. Okay, first of all, that's not how Karma works. Karma is about your acts and how it will reflect on your chances when you continue through Samsara after your death. What I did with Trent probably did give me bad karma, but mostly because it was for selfish reasons, not because of what the act was. But I really don't care, it was selfish, it was fulfilling.

How can you want to be with someone and have it not be selfish? You pretty much want to lay claim to them. Even if they want someone who isn't you. Of course, on the other hand I'd be 'saving' him from his misery.

Or maybe Gwen isn't even that bad.

What kind of thought is that?

I'm not sure why I'm still walking through this hallway, but as if on cue, I bump into Gwen at the end of the hallway. I'm startled to see her, and all that comes out is 'hi.'

She slides her cellphone shut and looks at me with a shrug. "What do you want?"

"Eh, I…" whenever Noah gets lost for words, you know there's something fatally wrong. She rolls her head, eyes shut.

"Please tell me," she begins "That you're not another one of Cody's little buddies trying to play character witness to me! I thought once he hooked me up with Trent that he was done with this Casanova shit, he actually started to be nice. And now he's back to where we started."

"I was talking to Cody. And actually, I don't need to be asked to provide a good review of Cody, because he's actually a real winner, unlike some people. And you…" I bite down on my lip. I decide, surprisingly, to not burrow any holes in her self-confidence.

She heaves and leans against the wall. "Tell him he needs to get a girlfriend, or something. There's gotta be more than one artsy cynic in the world. And tell Trent the same. Why do the crazy people always fall for me?"

I look into her heavily lined greyish eyes, and for the smallest instant I feel sympathetic for her, sympathetic for Cody. She looks tired. And for a moment I almost feel like if they dated, I'd grow to like her.

But that's not what she wants, or what I want, and maybe not even what he wants. "Maybe it's the hair." I offer her as an answer. "I'll see what I can do."

I turn away from her, and put myself on the exact same path I'd been walking before, right back to Cody.

The door isn't locked. It swings open easily when I push. He's standing at the window, hefty curtain parted.

As if he is a basilisk hiding in a corner, I'm wary of gazing upon him. By force of nervous habit, I slide my phone out of my pocket and look at it, almost trying to appear busy. But as soon as I look up, his eyes are on me. I'm in the doorway, he's in the windowsill, and I'm unable to escape his soft but vacant gaze.

"Your attempts at being brooding are belied by your Spongebob Squarepants lounge pants." I quip, relieved that the sarcastic remarks flow freely from my lips. I approach him – he stays beside the split curtain. He grins at my statement.

His eyes are wide, expectant. I fidget my fingers in my pocket, blindly mashing the buttons of my phone.

"It's almost midnight." I say softly.

"Midnight," he repeats, perplexed. "What does that mean?"

"If my life were a book," I start, with a deep inhalation, "Midnight would be a sort of motif. Did you learn about motifs in English class?"

"Kinda…" he says while slowly nodding.

"Things tend to happen to me when midnight rolls around."

"Like what?"

"And coincidentally, things tend to happen at midnight when the seventeenth becomes the eighteenth."

"That's happening right now." He says flatly.

"Listen, I need to ask you," I cut in sharply, "I need to be direct for a change because I've spent so much of my life saying the opposite of what I mean that I never get a chance to really say what I mean: Do you remember what happened that midnight, in August, when the seventeenth became the eighteenth?"

"The eighteenth, that was the day we did the Drama Drama thingy."

"The night before. At the…" my voice softens and I stall. "…The piano."

He backs up, placing his palms against the windowsill. He briefly looks to one side before speaking. "We kissed, for some reason. On the lips that time, not on the ear while sleeping." His lips move with restraint as he says this, almost as if articulating it fully would bring the details out more vividly.

"Dude." I groan, for lack of better words. "If you remember, why did you literally never bring it up again?"

"After everything that happened at that party, I didn't know if I really wanted to…do what I ended up doing."

"Well if you didn't like it, you could have told me." My hands begin to gesture frantically. "Like if I banged Trent and it was awkward, I may as well directly tell him that it wouldn't happen again instead of leaving him hanging." I drop my hands to my side. "Hypothetically."

He bites his lip. "I didn't say I hated it, I just said I wasn't sure if I wanted to."

"Why did you do it, then?" I say, my words fragile and glassy, but not confrontational.

He looks at my feet for a moment, pensive. His finger twirls around the string of his pyjama pants. "Even though you're you…Even though I hadn't ever really thought about it too hard before….I guess it just felt like the moment was right."

I rub my fingertips together, my hands feathery and loose by my sides. Vocal chords strained and cracking, I manage to speak: "Will the…right moment ever happen again?"

His voice suddenly comes to a squeak as mine had. "Judging by my increasing sweatiness, I think it's happening right now."

His eyes refuse to meet mine and for an instant I'm completely bolted in place.

This moment in time is even more surreal than the events at the piano, in a way. Though less dreamlike, more druglike. I take one step forwards towards him, and slip my hands beneath his jawbone. He tenses up at my touch, muscles coiling like a snake, but he quickly surrenders.

And I kiss him.

The memory I'd never forgotten comes back in full colour, in full touch-o-vision.

I feel my heart pound and I feel my doubts swirl into an entirely different form, a form that finally allows room for an iota of hope.

When we stop actively kissing, we still spend a moment face to fact, lips grazing each other's as lightly as a spider's footsteps. And when we pull apart for real, I find myself in a quiet fit of giddy giggles.

Sure enough, the clock reads 12:01. The motif appears again.

"It's not like you to giggle." He says, voice small and shy.

"It's not like you to kiss boys." I tease.

"It's actually not like me to kiss anything, I take what I can get." He looks back at me, with a smile.

"Does that mean…you like it?"

"Well, it means…at least….that I'll let you do it again. I think."

The words are only tentative, a bit uncertain, but for now it's a victory I can't ignore. We stand face to face, again wrapped in silence. He sighs and leans into me, placing a quick smooch on my lips.

"I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing, but this week I'm yours."

And that's as much as I've ever hoped for.

I did it! Two chapters in a month! That's like 12000 words :D. But soon I'm starting school again, on 5 September, and then unless I have one of those bursts where I write like 3000 words in an hour, I don't think the double header will happen again for a while. Also today (22 Aug) is the three-year-anniversary of the last time I ever updated my old fic. I'm glad I've got this one now!

On the topic of the chapter itself, I think it got A LOT done, like all the action was HERE. Some Trent breakage, so friendship development with unlikely buddies Owen and Izzy, and of course some decent Cody resolution.

PS: It's impossible to write Owen dialogue that doesn't have LOTS of '!' in it! He's just always so upbeat. He's the most upbeat motherfucker in all of Kalamazoo.

PPS: omg sex scene. I don't like making them hyperdetailed, I find that very vulgar. Instead I just wrote vague feelings. People don't have the consciousness to describe stuff when they are superbangin.