Rising Shards

On the Friday before the sleepover, I had my first normal, non-grounded night at the new apartment. In a way, it was kind of like two sleepovers in a row. After school and before dinner, I worked to unpack my stuff and start setting my room up some more, as well as my new basement den. Once I was pretty beat from that, I sat on the couch and daydreamed about bringing Oka down and having a cute date with her there. I sat in daze for a good amount of time until Stella called down.

“Zeta! Dinner’s ready!”

I rushed upstairs. We were eating at the kitchen table, which had me oddly pumped. But with Dr. Diast joining us for the meal, it gave me more of that family feeling that I’d been craving.

“You’re gonna love this,” Dr. Diast said. “Stel made this for me a bit ago, they’re amazing.”

Stella looked bashful as the gestured to the big plates in the center of the table. I recognized the little smokies wrapped in bacon, that was a Stella classic. But she had also made chicken skewers, which I didn’t remember her ever making for me before.

I dug in right away, but also immediately had some trouble with the chicken skewers. The chicken and veggie parts kept like rolling around when I tried to bite them. “How da heck do I eat dis?” I gave up and went for the tried and true bacon smokies.

“Evy tells me you two had an interesting day last Monday.” Stella said immediately as I ate one of the bacon wraps.

“Last Monday?” I asked. “When I was suspended?”

“The one before that.” Stella said.

“Huh? Oh!” I sputtered for a bit. I thought we were in the clear after accidentally setting off a Cani power charged prank Diast had left for the last librarian. I honestly had forgotten about it already. We were trying to keep it from Stella, but now she knew about it anyways. I wasn’t prepared to go back to something I’d moved on from and was unprepared to get grounded again. I figured I should do the right thing and own up to it. “Dr. Diast! Did you rat us out? Secret traitor! Betrayer!”

“After everything was fixed, yeah!” Diast said, wincing. “I’m usually a lot better at keeping secrets in, but…”

Diast looked to Stella, who shrugged.

“OK fair, she’s good at that, yeah.” I said.

Plus side, it meant Stella was getting back to her normal self if she was drilling me about this.

“Poor Stella was so sad yesterday, she thought I figured out I still had feelings for Caya and was going to go back to her.” Diast said. “So telling her it was just us fixing a prank I did forever ago didn’t seem so bad.”

I squinted. I didn’t want it to be tradition to be so lost in most conversations I had with Diast and Stella at the new apartment, but I couldn’t help getting lost there.

“For…Caya?” I asked. “To go back…?”

“Evy, I don’t think Zeta knew about that, did you mean to tell her…?” Stella said.

Dr. Diast processed what she’d just told me for a few seconds, blinking like her mind was suddenly running on slow internet.

“Oh. Oh my god. Eugh.” Diast said. She recovered after a few bites of chicken before pointing at me with one of the skewers. “Alright, don’t spread this around, please, but I used to date Caya. We were together a long while, but it’s been done for a long while. We’re both good now, we’re friends and stuff, but things have changed. We’re better friends than partners, and I have a better partner…right…” Diast coughed, blushing.

Stella had a very smug look on her face, which I understood. Diast was basically saying she’d pick her over Caya. Having a win of sorts against such an intimidating presence had to be good for Stella’s self-esteem.

“Still, I’m sorry, Stel.” Dr. Diast said.

“I’m not mad at you,” Stella said. “We talked it out, it’s all good! After you told me some of those Mrs. Paine stories, it made me wish she actually went through those pens and smashed her stupid case before she retired. She had it coming. I also find it very sweet you went through all that trouble for me. And you know I appreciate you bringing Zeta along.”

Dr. Diast smiled as Stella held her non-skewer-holding hand on the table. Stella gently rubbed her thumb over Diast’s knuckles.

“What?” Stella asked when she noticed my dopey grin.

“You guys are super cute together.” I said.

“You’re not allowed to tell us that,” Diast said. “I don’t need you to see me blush any more than Stella makes me on her own. I have to be your teacher still, I need some kind of…teacherly…whatever…”

“It’s the truth!” I said. I really liked that they were getting comfortable being couple-y around me already. Stella’s smug look somehow got a bit more smug.

“I will say thank you both for taking care of the whole old bookcase thing,” Stella said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, either.” I said.

“No, no, don’t you start now,” Stella said. “That first day was a lot and I didn’t need to know about that in the moment on top of everything else. If it was day three maybe, that was pretty boring, I could’ve helped then. But that first day, you guys did nothing I’m upset about."

“Alright…” I said.

“My life advice for you today,” Stella said. “Is that talking it out may be hard, but in the long run it’s a lot better than keeping things bottled up even if you’re trying to protect someone.” She paused for a second. “And I realize how hypocritical that sounds given how I was about the family stuff.”

“Eh, I think that makes it even better advice, really.” I said. “Less hypocritical and more…we all learned something from that? I hope we can get something good out of it at least.”

“There we go,” Stella said. “The main thing I’m trying to say that in a relationship, be it family, romantic, friendship, what have you, it’s best to not keep a bunch of secrets. It’s better to just talk things out.”

I tried not to think about our parents again from that, but I couldn’t help it even if I just said I wanted to get something good out of the ordeal.

“I didn’t mean to make us all mopey.” Stella said, judging the silence that fell over the table.

“I’m mostly just enjoying the food,” Diast said. “But I do feel bad about making you think I was going back to Caya.”

“That was me having some doom imagining,” Stella said. “We all beat ourselves up too much. I say this week we should all do something nice.”

“Like what?” I asked. 

“Like a self-care weekend?” Diast suggested. “Like take time to do something nice for yourself.”

“Self-care weekend! Stella demands it.” She said. “Got it, you two?”

“Yes, ma’am!” I said, saluting with a skewer.

After dinner, we all went to the living room to watch a movie. It was Dr. Diast’s idea to include movie night in my Friday visits, so she got to pick first. She showed us an action adventure anime with really wild and fluid animation that was a lot of fun to watch. I tried to remember the last time Stella had a romantic partner that actually lasted long enough to make it to movie night status. The only time I could think of her having someone I knew she had feelings for was one that said some really crude things about Stella to me that made me cry and made Stella dump her immediately. But none had gotten to the point where Stella actually lived with them. Even the longest-term partner she had I never really talked to.

I enjoyed the movie, but it was even more fun to see Stella basically curled up in a ball as she leaned against Dr. Diast. And when she kept telling me to shut up when I giggled at them.

After the movie, Diast had some school work to do and Stella wanted to do her pre-sleep yoga, so I was banished to my basement dungeon. I stayed up for a bit, almost falling asleep on the couch but I dragged myself to my new room. In just a night, I’d be spending the night at another new place. I’d only seen Kalei’s house through her void memory trial, which wasn’t really seeing it. The last sleepover I had ended with me and Oka under the same blanket sleeping nuzzled against each other, so I had high hopes for this sleepover to top that.