Hey guys! I got your reviews to update so here I am, with a long overdue chapter. Sorry it took you guys to tell me to get going, but there's been a lot of stress at my college rn. My roommate's actually crazy, pm me for the story lol.

But hark, here is your short, bad chapter.

-Jang

Chapter 23

"What does this make us?" Fang had asked her, and she just bit her lip and played with the hem of her longsleeve.

"What do you want it to make us?" She had asked back. She wanted him to say that they should go see a movie and hold hands and that he wants her to be his girlfriend, but he didn't. He looked defeated. He has some sort of pride left when he made the suggestion in the coffee shop, but it's gone. He doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything that could get him hurt.

"Whatever you want." He had said half an hour ago, and now she lies on the floor under a blanket, her face against his thigh with her sleeping eyes closed while he plays video games. Was she a bad kisser and he didn't want to be mean? Or was his ego actually the size of a pea.

He jumps a little and curses, and Max groans and rolls on her back to look up at him. Either he doesn't notice her, or he's too busy with the game to notice that she's moved, so she just watches him. She doesn't quite know what she wants, but the itch at the back of her mind wants her to say that yes, she'll date him, or whatever. When she says it in her head, it sounds stupid.

"Are you hungry?" He asks in a monotone, and Max blinks and furrows her brows.

"What?" She asks, and he pauses the game and looks down at her. She blushes furiously when he looks down at her and looks away.

"Do you want anything to eat? I think I have frozen pizza." He says, putting the controller down and shifting his weight like he wants to get up, Max rolls away from him and he straightens up, cracking his knuckles on his left hand. He's incredibly lazy when it comes to grocery shopping, he'd rather eat questionable celery than go outside most days.

"What If I'm not hungry?" She asks, sitting up and re-tying her ponytail. She's only asking him to see what he'll say, and he smiles knowingly.

"Then I'll eat it all myself." He says, taking his sweatshirt from the arm of the couch and pulling it over his head. Max climbs to her feet and follows after him. In the shiny silver kitchen, dishes were beginning to pile up in the sink and Max boosted herself back up on the counter in the same spot she sat at last time she was over.

"I was kidding." She says, and he opens the freezer, half smiling and shaking his head.

"I figured." He mumbles, and takes the pizza out of the freezer. They continue the evening in quiet conversation, and Fang basks in how nice it is to share the house with someone other than his dog. When Max falls asleep on his couch, he covers her with a blanket and leans back on the middle cushion of the couch, the back of his head inches from her thigh.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Later that night, Fang sits on the edge on his bed in his pajamas. This is normally where he wanders around the house, namely his parents room that's been smelling stale for a few months. But tonight, he didn't feel like drowning in the heavy sadness that always hung over the too-big house like a fog.

Instead, he's sitting, watching Total snuffle and shift on the navy blue duvet. He feels light and warm, like all the darkness in the house has been chased out, and by the girl he was so mean to for so long. he relaxes his back and flops down on the bed, rolling himself so he's lying vertical. He never really hated her, he disliked her at times, but it was because she never reacted. If she'd glared at him once, or told him to piss off, maybe he would have, but she never did. He kept looking for a response, something behind her eyes. The last shreds of his ego had told him that she would never even glance at him if he was kind.

So he just lies in the dark, not even thinking about his twitching fingers and the muted throbbing just below his shoulder. She's behind his eyelids, all her kind comments and thoughtful silences before she speaks.

Across town, Max thinks it would be nice to cry for a while. Her mom grabbed her as soon as she came home, crushing her to her chest and holding her there for a while. Doctor Valencia Martinez's chest trembles as she holds in a sob. The school called her at ten sharp, about an acid attack on her unstable daughter. She could have had a heart attack right there. Pulling away and sniffling, she wipes at her eyes and Max avoids her eyes.

"Do you want a bath? You missed dinner..." She offers. She really doesn't know what to say, or what to expect.

"I'm fine. I ate at a friends. Sorry if I worried you." She says with a hollow eyed smile and inches towards the stairs. She lets her daughter go, sending her off with a sad smile. She feels terribly lost. Between Max's detachment and Mayas rebellious streak, she wishes she wasn't the only one wrangling those two. As Max turns to walk up the stairs, she catches a pink patch of her burned scalp behind the braid, and she feels shot in the heart.

Max wanders past her sister's room where she's laughing on the phone. She loses feeling in her fingers and lips but she keeps walking. In her room she locks the door, takes two pills and sits heavily at her desk and pulls up skyrim. She needs to kill some bandits or something. She goes through the motions of starting and playing the game. When it's nine she hears the door close to her mom's room and switches her lamp off and pulls off her sweatshirt. She plays until her phone rings in her pockets and she fumbles to find it and answers to Dylan's bright hello on the other line.

"Hey! What's up?" He asks, in the background she can hear a piano and a cello playing together badly. She smiles a little bit.

They talk about little things like TV and how his little brother is learning to play cello and he's in the second grade. He asks if she's okay and she lies and says she's just a little angry. He says he'll find out who it was and will have a talk about it with them. He says it's cruel and she agrees. When they say goodnight it's ten and she turns off her computer and washes her face. She picks an eyelash out of her eye and goes to bed.

She thinks about her day and why Fang's such a weirdo. She doesn't think about hurting at all.