Becoming the Luna

Chapter 44

"Oh, wow." Is all I say and the room goes quiet.

"I'm going to get back at Elise." Shana promises dangerously. "Don't." She cuts off Dale who's starting to say something.

Dale just rolls his eyes. "It wouldn't kill you to let me finish, you didn't even know what I was going to say."

"Fine." Shana agrees with much difficulty.

"I'll go with Elise to the dance."

Silence crashes into the room at Dale's words.

"W-What?" I stutter when Virgil and Shana remain quiet.

He shrugs like it's no big deal but I can see the cold fury in his eyes. "We don't know what she's going to do next if we don't agree to her terms, I might not be Virgil but I'll have to do."

Shana makes a face. "Are you just playing martyr because you can't take Hayden to the dance?" She glares at him.

A guilty look passes Dale's face but he quickly hides it, crossing his arms pettishily. "I have no idea of what you're talking about." He says convincingly.

Shana just bites the inside of her mouth obviously swallowing a very ear damaging come back. "You're lucky that all you got was ineligibility to take him to the dance, Virgil was being nice I would have punched your face in."

"He still did." Dale whines.

I'm very confused about what's going on but I remain quiet, content to let conversations fly over my head as long as why I went bananas after Elise tricked me was not brought up or talked about.

"Hayden?" Virgil's quiet voice drags me from my head and I glance at him only to gasp and flinch back.

"Dramatic." Dale scoffs, unimpressed.

He's kneeling on one leg, holding out a bunch of delicate white flowers that smell like vanilla and I forget how to breathe.

Shana is silently screaming at her end, vibrating with excitement and managing to take rapid-fire pictures at the same time.

"Will you be my date to the Spring Dance?" He asks seriously, looking at me with hopeful eyes.

I try to reply but my voice box has gone on a vacation and I just sit there, hands over my mouth and face growing redder by the minute.

"I-I" I try to say, overwhelmed. "Yes." I breathe out, panting slightly with the exertion of surviving through Virgil asking me out on a date to the Spring Dance like a marriage proposal.

How did I live through that?

He gets up and hands the flowers to me, sitting beside me and nonchalantly pulling me to sit on him. This is routine but I can't help burning up a little more, it has been a while since I did this.

"W-What i-is the n-name of this f-flower." I stutter softly to him, trying to hide from his intense stare which seems impossible with our positions.

"Clematis terniflora" Dale replies.

"In English professor." Shana scolds, rolling her eyes.

"Sweet Autumn Clematis." He says gruffly, obviously very unhappy. "Do you know what it took me to find those flowers, they don't bloom till the fall." He shakes his head at this.

"Well, that's what you get for kissing Hayden without our permission." Shana blurts out.

I was starting to relax into Virgil's body heat when Shana's words crash at me. "W-What??" I shoot upright. "You knew."

Shana frowns, and she and Dale turn to look at me. "You don't remember?"

I blink. "Remember what?"

Shana's eyes widen then darken in anger and Dale looks traumatized, I look up to catch a similar look on Virgil's face. "W-What h-happened?"

"These two morons" Shana starts glaring at them separately for emphasis on their idiocy. "Got into a fight and nearly broke my arm"

"I said I was sorry." Virgil whines and I hide a smile.

"You're lucky I'm not wearing a cast to the Spring Dance or I'd have returned the favor." She threatens casually. "And it won't be your arm that the metallic bat will hit."

"But that's not fair, I just nearly broke your arm."

Shana just shrugs. "And I missed your arm." She threatens with an evil smirk then turns to look at me. "Virgil um gave you a hickey then you passed out." She wraps up quickly.

I gape at this. "T-That was real!?!" I exclaim, leaning forward enthusiastically that Virgil has to throw a hand around me so I don't fall off his leg. "I thought it was all a dream." I say stricken, a hand unconsciously going to the side of my neck where the bruise still lingers.

Images of Virgil biting down over Dale's bite and whispering 'mine' crashing through my thoughts and my cheeks darken.

"Apparently it wasn't." She says drily.

I just fishmouth for a while, well that explains why the bruise suddenly doubled and felt ten times worse.

"S-So you give hickeys with bites too huh?" I accuse Virgil, glaring up at him with my arms crossed.

He tries to look contrite but fails woefully and ends up chuckling deeply.

"Sorry."  He nuzzles my neck and I make a strangled noise.

"Ah sorry!" Virgil recoils, raising his hands in front of him.

Before I can formulate a reply, a throw pillow whizzes past my head and whacks him in the face. I whip my head around at record speed to see who threw it and I see Shana proudly flashing a smug smile.

I just shake my head fondly at her unrepentant look, Dale is busy convulsing with laughter which ends abruptly when Shana uses a pillow to smack him straight in the face as well. "You're still on my blacklist." She tells him seriously. "So act right."

"We convinced Renee to let us tag along on your doctor visit." Dale says and I blink wondering if my ears and back swapped places because I couldn't be hearing him right.

"W-What?" I splutter in confusion.

Shana chirps in at this point with a happy bright on her pretty face. "Yeah, we all decided that we'd spend the summer holidays together in the city, go to the beach, sightsee, go window shopping, or maybe real shopping." She invited, wagging her eyebrows suggestively.

I just shake my head in silent laughter, starting to warm up to the idea of spending the summer holidays in the city. "We could use my beach house that Grammy bought for my twelfth birthday and I never use." I say seriously, getting invested now.

Shana gasps at this. "You have a beach house?? That's all yours??"

I blush, shrinking into myself. "Y-Yeah." I mumble half-heartedly.

I had actually just said that in the heat of the moment, even though I was born rich, I never was really comfortable with it. Content to live a life of comfort, appreciating the little things.

"Yaaaaaaaaaassssss!!!" Shana exclaims excitedly, pumping her fists in the air. "Beach every day!!!" She announces, throwing her hands haphazardly around.

"I'd show you around the city." Dale says with a soft smirk, I forget he's a city boy sometimes.

"Awesome!" Shana exclaims again, obviously thoroughly excited for our extravagant plans.

"Feeling sleepy?" Virgil murmurs to me and I blink the drowsiness out of my eyes, somewhere in the middle of Shana's excitement, the exhaustion had hit hard. I'm fighting a losing battle with sleep.

"Mhm hmm." I hum sleepily to him, feeling nostalgic for no reason, actually, there's a really good reason why.

When we were younger, Virgil would ask the exact same thing because he knew I was scared of the dark and would refuse to go to bed even though I needed to sleep and get adequate rest.

Gently, he picks me up and heads for the bed.

"We should turn in too." Dale suddenly cuts in when he notices Virgil making his way over to the bed with me in his arms.

Shana just gives a done look and scoffs. "You just want to bug Virgil." She accuses, in a peeve at losing her partner in fawning over the upcoming summer holidays.

"I'm not that honorable." Dala throws to her, getting on the airbed beside me.

Virgil replies to this by tucking me closer to him, letting my head rest against his chest.

Dale doesn't do anything obvious like sidle up against me which would have effectively put me in a sandwich like the first time we all slept together, instead he carefully treads his hands through my own like my fingers were alive and breakable.

I remember his obsession with them and my lips curve sadly at his actions. At the end of this holiday, I'm going to be picking pieces of my heart all over Reef because they both know how to twist hearts and they were good at it.

Shana makes a noise of frustration but gets up anyway, the night practically over now because they had both decided to not let me sleep peacefully all by myself.

She showers and comes back out in Virgil's t-shirt and one of my mom silk pyjamas, she had made it a routine to always wear one to bed ever since she found out that my mom owned tons of expensive silk nightwear that she never used, most likely a product from her sporadic and spontaneous shopping sprees.

"Scoot." She orders grumpily to Dale, whacking him with a pillow.

Dale groans but does as she says. "You know if you weren't so mean, maybe someone will fall in love with you." He muttered darkly, more to himself.

The movement had brought him closer to me but I relax anyway, it was familiar and reassuring after having Elise nearly shatter my perfectly imperfect dream world.