CHAPTER SIXTY

wide eyed

"all this directing is making me hungry," i thought i heard maeve say to me over the rest of the voices in the foyer. "is jordyn going to be back soon?"

my stomach had been grumbling too, probably caused by hunger or the nauseating amount of people surrounding us. though too many remained, some kids had already taken the much appreciated initiative of leaving. according to one girl, the filming ruined the party experience, which i detested. to another, the pizza was taking too long, which i had to agree with.

jordyn left around an hour and a half ago. his friends harley and timmy and gavin volunteered to help deliver the myriad of pizza boxes, but i'd only met two of them once at jordyn's middle school band concert, so i had no clue if they were the right ones for the job.

"i don't know," i painfully called in response.

we had just finished the take before the anticipated dinner break, and since that was obviously off schedule, the cast had been impatiently waiting near the dining room-closet hallway. walker stood behind me all tense and claustrophobic, and when i turned to face him, i was met with wide eyes that expressed pure discomfort.

"should we go across the room to the alcohol table," i sarcastically suggested. "it'll fill our stomachs and loosen us up!"

"we should. i don't think i could do this anymore."

out of nowhere, the door barged open and in came a towering stack of flat cardboard boxes which reached up to just under the doorframe, balanced on two skateboards, and was pushed like a little kid on a swing by my cousin and his friends.

the crowd of drunken specimens gradually stopped dancing and talking as they comprehended the food source, the necessary simmering down of natural habitat commencing. they did their instinctual swarming of the source, some even pausing their untimely mating rituals for it!

"finally!" maeve ran up to her heroes and began helping them unload the stock eagerly.

i followed close behind, determined to grab a cast-selective box before the ravenous crowd devoured everything. jordyn caught my eye and flashed a grin as he wrestled one of the skateboards out from under the stack. "we had to improvise," he said, gesturing to the tower. "you're welcome."

"impressive work," i admitted.

he snagged a box from the top of the tower. meanwhile, the ones underneath were being dispersed in an assembly line manner by his friends: pulled out like jenga blocks by harley then passed to timmy who opened the box, and lastly thrown to gavin who ushered the pizza to the extras in paper plates.

"follow me?" jordyn requested as he started on his way to the dining room.

i did follow him, happy to leave the pizza box throwing mess waiting to happen. plus, i suspected by the earnestness in his voice and his behavior this whole night that he wanted to clean up the residue our own mess.

he set the box down on the table. then he faced me sheepishly, putting his hands in two of the many pockets in his cargo pants. "look, i know this is long overdue. but i wanted to say sorry for being such a jerk to you."

i blinked, caught off guard by his directness. "oh."

"i feel like you're my sister, and what i did to you was totally not cool. like, if you consider maeve your sister too, then that's, like, incestuous and i-- basically what i did was disgusting."

i burst out laughing. "wow."

he smirked, his head low. "i dunno. that's why i tried super hard tonight. i wanted to try and get you to forgive me."

"i noticed your efforts. and i appreciate them a lot. this is like that time at the 2017 family reunion when you sucked up to grandma. it was so obvious that you just wanted an extra slice of the chocolate cake."

"was it that obvious?" he said, shocked. "i thought i was just that good!"

i laughed again, relief seeping in, because i detected the return of our sense of humor and memories that we shared along with our centimorgans.

"so. are we cool?" he asked hesitantly.

"yeah, i'd say we're cool," i said softly, nodding. "just one thing i never got to tell you: if you ever, and i mean ever, hurt maeve, i will kill you."

"got it." jordyn gently punched my shoulder, the tension between us dissolving like the last remnants of winter frost. "thanks, y/n."

walker, maeve, connor, and violet eventually joined the exclusive pizza party held in the dining room. as we chewed and chatted, the night solidified into a conflicting calm outside.

"i'm so glad you found the flash," said walker, holding his plate, leaning against the wall near an archway to the foyer. "it's so dark in here now."

"yea-- you'll never guess what i walked in on when i was searching the closet," i said with growing exuberance, yet cringing at the memory. "madeline and michael. making out."

walker's eyes shot open. "they're already back together? i heard from someone in my math class that she officially broke it off on valentine's day." oh yeah! i had forgotten that i kept the events of that fight after school from walker, since the ending was revealing of my crush. simpler times those were.

"i know. crazy, right?" i laughed.

violet had overheard. "did you just say michael and madeline were making out?" she said loudly in shock.

i checked over my shoulder to see if anyone had heard that. we were standing right by the foyer, violet even closer. maeve instilled it in me, almost like an instinct, to be paranoid of someone who was not a friend having heard the latest scoop.

only a few people were close enough to hear violet: a random dancing couple who looked old enough to be seniors, and jake. jake, the lonely extra on his phone in the corner of the room, had definitely heard. he glanced up from his phone, then to violet, eyebrows raised and slightly curled up like a cartoon dog asking for a bone.

before i swung my head back around in vicarious guilt, i saw jake walk outside. then i pursed my lips and said to walker and violet, "he is probably the worst person who could have heard that."

"what happened?" asked walker.

"jake heard me," said violet. walker made a sympathetic frown, and she nodded. "he probably feels bad. i'll go talk to him outside."

if i were jake, i would probably feel awful too if i heard that the girl who broke up with me and the one she cheated on at the same time got back together with him. it wasn't like i included the part that the two were drunk as well, so the out of context gossip was bound to hurt him.

violet stepped through the archway and out the door behind him. i wondered how well they actually knew each other, since that whole group's dynamic was probably all screwed up. but i saw, through the window that overlooked the porch, the silhouettes of jake and violet facing each other, exchanging words much more gently than the crazies had at the alcohol table.

i had to smile. this was another pizza party, many years after the sixth grade, but maybe jake would find someone better to kiss this time around.

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thank you for reading chapter 60!

happy new years!!