Rising Shards

I wiped a tear from Oka’s cheek. “My poor baby going through all this.”

“I’m so scared,” Oka said. “I don’t want you to break up with me.”

“I don’t want to break up with you, either.” I said. I one hundred percent didn’t want to break up with her, but something made her afraid of the idea and stuck on it. Maybe it was just the show, maybe it was what that Clover girl said, or maybe it was all of that amplifying an already brewing fear. I had to be careful with this, if I brushed it off too casually, she might see it as me dismissing her fear, but if I pushed too hard against it, she might think I’m lying or something. I knew too well what fears like this were like.

While it was a vastly different relationship, when I first started dating Jeans, I remembered how scared I was that it would end quickly. That my inexperience and general awkwardness would blow it right away. It was kind of comforting to think that Oka had the same fear about us.

“How do you make the worry stop when it gets bad?” Oka asked. “When you can’t stop thinking of a specific thing over and over? I can just picture us sitting across from each other at a lunch table like Evonne and Delphine in Teensly Street, talking about how it’s over. And then we move on to other people. Or get in a cluster. And that all just keeps playing over and over in my head.”

“I try to distract myself, I guess,” I said. “3WMB doesn’t have everything. And probably doesn’t help either. I wish I had a better answer.”

Oka still looked like she was wrestling with this worry internally as it looped over and over in her mind. I strained to come up with a more comforting answer.

“Since we don’t know the future like you said, we can’t know for sure if it’ll stay good forever,” I said. “It could all go bad quick, or later on, or whatever. All that stuff in the show, the stuff Clover said, I don’t want to say one hundred percent that they could never happen. And that scares me, too. But we made it through a lot already. So maybe we should give ourselves a break from worrying about it and just enjoy each other? It could also all turn out good too, we don’t know that either. I write ‘Zeta Ohri’ and ‘Oka Faleur’ in my notebook enough times that I’d like to be with you that far out.”

“You do that too?” Oka asked. “I think I like Oka Faleur. I’m not really attached to my last name, and anything to not have Kilander in my name would be great.”

“Aw,” I said. “I doodled us in wedding dresses once.”

“You did? Let me see!” Oka said.

“If I can find it, I hid it somewhere because Kalei got that look where she was getting curious about what I was doing, and she always makes fun of my drawings.” I said.

“You still have to show me that game profile that has all the stuff you wrote about me in it, too.” Oka said.

“Oh, I think I do have that game with me,” I said. “It’s in my bag, Kalei made me bring it. When we’re back out there, I’ll show you. I was on a big Oka kick when I wrote that stuff.”

Talking about mushy stuff made us both feel calmer. Oka rested her head on my lap and looked up at me.

“I wish I could’ve just told you right away,” Oka said. “But I was so stupid busy this week with dumb Kilander stuff. I’m sorry I didn’t text you about it, at least.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t catch it.” I said.

“You had plenty keeping you busy too,” Oka said. “I wish I could’ve been there for you more.”

“You’re there for me plenty,” I said.

“I mean, I wish I could’ve saved you from them.” Oka said. She didn’t have to say who she meant.

“You did, remember?” I asked.

Oka thought about it.

“The main thing that kept me me when they were trying to make me go all beast tendency was thinking about you.” I said. I brushed my fingers against her cheeks gently. “But I don’t want to talk anymore about my parents tonight. If I focus on them, I miss out on you. Which, again, maybe I didn’t catch any of this because I was distracted by thoughts of them.”

“I probably don’t make it easy to catch this kind of thing,” Oka said. “Kalei said I must be really good at hiding it, and I think she’s right. I keep it bottled in too much.”

I moved from her cheeks to start stroking her hair. “You’re not alone, alright? I’m here for you no matter what.”

“Mhmm,” Oka said. “Can I get two more little fears out? The first one’s really stupid.”

“Sure, yeah.”

Oka hugged my waist, smushing her face in my right hip.

“This may have been my imagination, but I saw Amara make eyes at you.” Oka muttered.

I started laughing. “What?”

“I might have just been seeing things!” Oka said.

“Was Rain nearby? She was probably looking at Rain.” I said.

“No, it was one morning when you were talking to just her,” Oka said. “She got her tail fur tangled up in one of the tubs in the cafeteria somehow. After you helped her get out, you walked away and she just kinda looked at you longingly? It…” She hugged my waist and buried her face in my side. “It made me kinda jealous.”

“Oh…” I said, remembering helping untangle Amara that morning. I didn’t remember a longing look, but I bolted as soon as Amara was freed as the mix of her fur and whatever food was in the tub made a rancid odor.

“But just for my sake, you wouldn’t date her, right?” Oka asked.

“I don’t think so, she’s in deep with Rain and KJ, right?” I said. “Plus, she gives me more like…I dunno, Amara just kinda makes me want to help her. I guess what I imagine having a little sister is like? Like little sister vibes when she gets stuck in something. Amara’s like little sister vibes and Kalei’s close to my age sister vibes.”

“Alright…” Oka said. She dove her face back into my hip.

“You’re really jealous.” I said.

“Maybe…”

“It’s actually really cute.” I said.

“Mrrhmhmh.” Oka said.

“I wouldn’t date Amara,” I said. “I really love you, you know? More than anyone.”

“I love you too.” Oka said.

“What was the second one?” I asked.

“It was Friday morning in Diast’s class, I saw you looking at me. And you made a face and turned away when you saw that I saw you. Seeing. Me. That I saw you seeing me.” Oka said.

“O-oh!” I said, knowing immediately what she was talking about.

“And you made a funny face, and in my worry-brain it was like. You were trying to think of a way to say something.”

“Well, kinda.” I said, blushing.

“What? If it’s anything I was worried about, anything Teensly Street adjacent, you have to tell me—"

“Oka.” I said.

“Please, I know I’m being stupid.” Oka said. “I know it’s my fears getting the better of me, but…what were you thinking when you looked there?”

“I was…” I couldn’t not say it seeing how torn up Oka was about this. “Dude, I was staring at your boobs. And then you caught me looking and I got really embarrassed.”

“Oh!” Oka squeaked. “Really?”

OK, here’s the deal. It was first period with Diast like Oka said, and not a fun Diast class but a super science heavy boring class, and I wasn’t feeling school at all that day. So I was looking at my girlfriend, and to be honest, my girlfriend is beautiful, so my eyes wandered from her pretty face to, er. Lower. She only had the button-down shirt of the uniform on that day which accentuated her, er, features. So I was staring at my girlfriend’s breasts when I probably should have been finishing a worksheet. I know I thought to myself something like Wow. Oka is beautiful. That’s my girlfriend. And then Oka spotted me looking at her cleavage, so I panicked and pretended I wasn’t looking.

“I’ve caught you looking once or twice before,” Oka said. “You can, you know!”

“I know! We’ve even talked about it before!” I said, remembering when Oka babbled out something about how she looked at me that I didn’t fully catch the details of since she said about twelve sentences in three seconds, but I got the vibe. “I still just, I dunno. Feel like a jerk.”

“You shouldn’t,” Oka said. “Really. It’s cool if we look at each other, right?”

“We did have that whole showing each other our backs thing to settle that,” I said. “I probably should have warned you by now it takes a lot of repeat lessons for something to sink in for me in that regard.”

“Same here,” Oka giggled.

“So I wouldn’t mind repeating that back sundress thing you did if you really wanted to sometime.” I said.

“And if you ever want to repeat that walking out of the shower thing with me…” Oka said.

We both got really embarrassed and just kind of stewed in our imaginations for a moment.

“So to be clear. Just for my worries,” Oka said. “To conclude the session, so to speak. We’re not gonna break up, right?”

“Not right now, I hope.” I said. “Or ever.”

“Like nobody’s gonna suddenly change their mind about us? Because I really don’t want that?”

“I really really don’t want that either,” I said. “With all the crap we’ve been through, I need you.”

“I agree. I just want to be with you.” Oka said.

“And I know you said you pulled a Jeans earlier,” I said. “But I never thought of you like Jeans. Ever. Even when we’re mad at each other…it’s just like normal mad. I was always scared of Jeans. You just make me feel better.”

“I feel the same way.” Oka said.

“We don’t have to this week with everything we have going on,” I said. “But can I go out on a date with you very soon? I think it’d be really good for us.”

“Yes,” Oka said. “Date date!”

“And if any clustery related business ever happens that feels remotely like that show, or if Ko or Clover does any dumb drama, we stay out of it.” I said. “Like…fifty to one hundred miles out of it, minimum.”

“If we get even a sniff of some triple cross cheating-y business going on like on Teensly Street, we run.” Oka said.

“Like full on sprint.” I said.

“Hand in hand!” Oka said. She smiled softly and nodded. “I’m sorry if that’s boring.”

“I’d take boring with you over any drama, Oka,” I said. “And besides, you’re never boring. Remember when we got Feral Flu? What did you say back then when I was being boring?”

“I don’t remember.” Oka said.

“It was something about us needing to embrace being weird because if we don’t things will be boring.” I said. “So do you wanna keep being weird with me?”

Oka's immediate answer was to sit up and kiss me. I'd never felt so relieved to kiss her before, like the pain Oka had been holding in dissipated between our lips. 

“Yes.” Oka said. “A million times, yes.”