FOUR MONTHS LATER

"Is your mom doing better now?" Summer's eyes were alight with unease, like there was a soft candle sizzling just behind her irises, flickering in a reminiscent ballet that appeared vaguely like home.

Bellona gnawed at her bottom lip and nodded, her gaze downcast. She toyed with the cotton, flower-patterned fabric of her sundress, twirling fragments of the printed orchids between her fingertips, watching as the glimpses of the pink flowers flickered simultaneously with the fractured phrases that were traipsing through the lobes of her brain.

My mom is doing well. The doctors still don't know what's wrong with her. She'll get better soon. She's dying.

She knew what her nod had really meant. And Summer knew too. The simple jerk of her head had turned Bellona into a liar, because her mother was most definitely not doing better. When Summer repeated her question, this time accompanied by an adamant "Are you sure?", Bellona nodded once more. This time, her nod was more forceful. Insistent.

'I'm fine,' the extra burst of force promised.

As if that would matter. Promises hold no integrity when they are laced with lies.

Bellona's fictitious insistence that her mother was healing would be inconsequential in a matter of months. Her assurances to Summer, her hope for an ample future, all bundled up together to be protected like a swaddled child - none of it would make a difference in a matter of months. Not if Agnes Wesson couldn't be diagnosed.

It had been months since she'd received that first phone call. Since the tips of her fingers had gone numb along with every muscle and nerve ending in the rest of her body. Since she'd slammed the brakes of her car in the hospital parking lot and stumbled out onto the layer of gravel, just to stand atop it and wait, wallowing, while the rain and the tears mingled on her face in an indecipherable torrent. She'd stumbled into her mother's hospital room, her sweater torn and her boots ridden with moistened mud.

Her return to Stanford hadn't been much better. With most of her time being spent at her mother's side, she'd nearly failed her classes. But she hadn't cared. It'll be worth it, she liked to swear, teeth gritted and throat contracting. Mom will get better soon.

When weeks passed and all the medical personnel in the state still hadn't been able to give Agnes a diagnosis, much less a cure - how can you cure that which you do not know? - Bellona's shoulders had begun to slump. Her back had begun to curl, her spirit shriveling in concurrence with her posture.

Bellona pinched a piece of her sundress between her nails. The flower bended in half, and she scowled. It was a grotesque reminder of the perpetual loop she'd gotten herself into. Bills. Schoolwork. Doctor's appointments. Schoolwork, bills, appointment, bills, appointment, school, work. Cry. She used to be an orchid too. Coruscating, her petals reaching out to grasp every bit of sun within reach. She'd held on tight, tried to absorb the light so it would reside in her for all eternity, so her joy would have no maturity date. It would be young forever. She would be young forever.

She would be naive forever.

She'd forgotten the closing chapter of the fairytale she'd woven. The words that were scrawled on an age-old page, its corners yellowed and wrinkled - the part that said all good things must come to an end. All good things must die. The world was too malicious to let virtue prevail where evil lived eternally.

So her petals shriveled. They fell off of her face and her chest, her fingers and her toes, weeping as their ends retracted and peeled themselves away from their stem.

Without her joy - her hope - Bellona was useless. Because what good would a flower serve without its petals? She'd become a weed, with no purpose but to sneer and lament and mourn the beauty it once held, now forsaken to be replaced with cavernous holes where buds once resided, waiting to mature into a flower. She was ugly. She was a weed.

And now she was lost, her summer long gone and a new semester begun, with nothing to do but occupy the caverns of her desolate body and infect the luminous petals of everyone around her. The ones who were not yet lost.

"Well, Derrick and I are going out tonight," Summer said, the orange solace behind her eyes still stretching out towards Bellona, still reaching. "If you want to come, I'm sure he would be fine with it. Besides, you haven't gone out with us in months."

Bellona's shoulders tensed, the wheels of her mind suddenly torn from the normal railroads it usually traveled on. She'd moved from rungs of hospitals and IV tubes to rungs of boys and giggles, and it was a rather jarring transition.

Derrick Hoffman was the most recent boy in Summer's long line of suitors and, Bellona had to give it to him, he'd lasted longer than most. If she was a more courageous soul, she might've even ventured out on a limb to say Summer actually cared about him.

Bellona pressed her lips together, folds of skin rippling on the bridge of her nose as her face squinched in mock disgust. "No, I don't think so. Social, uh...social interaction isn't really my thing, you know? And let's be honest...I've been the third wheel for you guys enough to last a lifetime."

A bubble of laughter escaped Summer's lips and rose in pitch like a hot air balloon until, suddenly, it popped. Her jaw fell slack, her eyes widening into bulbs filled to the rim with awe.

"Bellona," Summer chuckled, the corners of her mouth turning upward. "You are not going to believe what I'm seeing right now."

Bellona's brows turned inward, straying from the horizontal arch of her eye socket. "What? What do you mean?"

The brunette pressed her torso forward, yearning to draw her friend's gaze to meet her own, but Summer wasn't paying attention. Her mind was elsewhere, poring over some far off fantasy that did not concern Bellona. At least, that's what Bell had thought, when she'd glimpsed the beguiled incline of Summer's eyebrow and the foggy mist that had glazed over her cerulean irises, suggesting she was standing on a mountaintop all her own.

Oh, how wrong she was.

She whipped her head around, coils of frizzy hair whipping in her face, to peek at what Summer was so intrigued by. Yet, when her eyes fell upon the coveted figure that had enveloped Summer's buoyant attention, her peek evolved. She no longer wanted to look through slightly parted fingers. She wanted to sprawl across her desk, stomach down, like a child in front of a television system, and gape shamelessly at the silhouette that was blocking the library's doorway.

She almost did. Because suddenly, nothing else in the room mattered. Everything - the pile of paperwork that lied in front of her, the shelves of books waiting to be stroked, the squeaky chair beneath her bosom - dimmed in comparison to the structure of sinew and ligament she was gazing at. Nothing else mattered, because Sam Winchester was there.

She watched as he sauntered, one gangly leg in front of the next, to an empty wooden table in the back of the library. His head was tilted downward. Strands of distraught hair waved teasingly in front of his forehead, like they were taunting Bellona. Begging her. Demanding that she go to Sam and tell him how she'd sometimes thought about him over the summer. How she barely knew him, but even so, the thought of his laughter coaxed a smile from her lips, even while she sat in a hardbacked chair at her mother's bedside.

Sam pulled a chair out from beneath the table. Its legs emanated a reverberating, shrill squeak through the hushed library, and he let loose a teeth-baring grimace, earning a muffled laugh from Bellona.

"You should ask him to come with me and Derrick, too! It'll be a double date," Summer inserted. Her audacious phrases uncoiled the string that was tying Bellona's eyes to Sam, and she turned to her friend instead.

Panic shot through Bellona's body like it was a rubber band, stretched tightly for ages, and finally let loose. She shook her head fervently. "No way, are you crazy? I can't ask him!"

She snuck a glance out of the side of her eye towards Sam, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear so she could see him more clearly. He had a book in front of him now, and he was poring over the typed words on the pages like it was his first time reading. A grin crawled onto Bellona's face. Summer cleared her throat, a deafening noise in the tranquil library, and Bellona jumped, her cheeks flowering with a color as red as a rose.

"You can't be serious," the blond urged. "Bell, this is the first time I've seen you smile in...gosh, I can't even remember how long, and you won't even talk to the person who made you do it? Why can't you just ask him out?"

Bellona tugged with her upper teeth at her bottom lip, and mere seconds of her silence passed before Summer said, "Exactly. Because you're a wimp."

Bellona's jaw fell slack. She cocked her head to one side and jutted her chin forward, playing like she was offended by Summer's words. "Am not."

"Uh huh. I believe you."

She did not. It wouldn't take a genius to decipher that Summer was being sarcastic, especially when satire dripped from her tongue like it was her job to wet the floors with it. Still, Bellona couldn't find it in herself to prove Summer wrong. All of the things she'd had to survive through over the summer - and not only survive, but thrive, for her mother's sake - had taken a toll on her. Her heart no longer felt like it gave her life. It felt like a constant weight, incessantly tugging at the strings in her chest, hoping its core of gravity would pull tears from her eyes along with it. Though it wouldn't mean the definite end of her world, she wasn't sure a rejection from Sam was something she could endure.

So she put it up to a bet. Nothing assured, nothing certain. A mere wager. If she lost, she would ask Sam out on a double date. If she won, then she would stay where she was, watching from afar and protecting her glass heart with her linen chest. That way, if Sam said no and her heart sunk just a little bit more, she could blame it on fate. It would not be of her own doing.

"Rock, paper, scissors," she said, holding a closed fist out to Summer.

Summer smirked and held her own hand out to match. "Best two out of three?"

"Best two out of three."

In a moment, the second-year law students reverted to their elementary school ways. Their hands bobbed like ducks in a stream, one, twice, until the third time, when both girls held their breath. The game was tied. It all came down to this one moment - the state of Bellona's heart depended solely on whether she opted for a rock and Summer for a scissors, or Summer for a paper and her for a rock. Bellona couldn't help but think that it was a foolish prospect, how her emotions would be determined by which hand signal she exhibited. But it was one she welcomed gladly, when faced with the alternative: make the decision on her own. She would much rather let fate choose for her.

Bellona let out an exaggerated groan. She'd chosen paper, and Summer had chosen scissors.

"No!" Bellona whined. "Best four out of five?"

Summer chuckled harshly. "Not a chance. You know the rules. You lost, so you have to own up to your side of the bet."

"But what if he says no?" Bellona's voice wavered on the last syllable, but she clenched her vocal cords before Summer could take note of it. She was scared, terrified, of having to ask Sam on a date, but she would not boast her fear in something as simple as her voice spiraling out of control.

Summer simply shrugged, the waves of her purple blouse billowing as she did so. Bellona leaned back in her chair, flung her head back, and closed her eyes, trying to let the ebony tint of the back of her lids soothe her. And it did, for a moment. She forgot about the violent pounding of her heart in her chest, how it was pummeling up her esophagus, threatening to leap out of her throat every time Sam drifted to the forefront of her mind.

And yet - there it was. Sam. The very thought of him, and Bellona went numb. Her tongue fell limp in her mouth, her breath hitched in her throat, and she suddenly forgot how to breathe. No, scratch that - she knew how. She knew she was supposed to push her chest up - breathe in - and compress, releasing a rush of air through her nostrils - breath out. She just couldn't.

She'd never asked someone out in her life, and she hadn't had a boyfriend since the ninth grade which, according to Summer, didn't count now that they were grown women. So how was she supposed to ask Sam on a date?

Bellona began to twirl in her chair. She pushed off of the desk with her feet, twirled for as long as the momentum would allow, brushed her fingers along a towering stack of copy papers as she flew. Pushed off the desk, twirled, brushed her fingers. Push. Twirl. Brush.

Stop - that was it.

The paper that she'd been running her fingers lazily across - it was useless paper, and Mrs. Darrow had been meaning to throw it away for ages. She was surprised it was even still present on the front desk. Surprised, but not displeased.

She yanked a piece from the top of the pile, not bothering to see what was printed on the other side that had made Mrs. Darrow deem it worthless. She plucked a blue pen from the cup in between hers and Summer's computers. Scribbling on the scrap paper, she watched scrutinizingly as the cobalt ink traced loops on the white surface. She wrote in curves for what seemed like hours, ignoring Summer's peering eyes, only declaring herself done when she'd stopped biting the tip of the pen in concentration and had filled half of the page with her cursive writing.

Her eyes flicked cautiously over the shaky writing:

Are you free tonight? My friends and I are going out - it'll be a double date.

If you say yes, that is.

— Bell

Bellona sighed. It sounded like a child had written it, but it would have to do.

She rose to her feet. Slowly, prudently, like prey sliding from beneath the cognizance of its predator. Only, in this case, she was both the prey and the predator. Her fears and anxieties were what plagued her. Her shivering hand, the nervous biting of her lip, her quaking knees - it was all her own fault.

Bellona urged herself past it anyway. She strode to the shelf of books nearest Sam, ducking her head in fragile hopes that he would not take note of her presence. Without looking, she plucked a book from its place, leaving only vacancy and disconcerted dust behind it. She hadn't needed to watch with her eyes to know where the novel lied. She'd only needed to watch with the ends of her soiled fingers. The book, Emma by Jane Austen, was one of her favorites, and she would know the feel of its worn binding anywhere, courtesy of how many times she'd snuck it into the back room to read during her breaks.

She flipped it open to a random page. In one fluid movement, she folded her note and slid it into the centerfold crack of the pages. She took a deep breath. Slowly in, slowly out, and then quickly whirled around to face Sam.

"Sam!" she hissed, and his head jerked. His eyes flitted around the room, searching for the orator of his name until finally, they landed on Bell. He grinned, his eyebrows elevated, and Bellona felt her chest swell.

When she'd first met him, his eyes had been a soft honey. They'd appeased the searing ardor in her chest. But now, they set her torso ablaze. They were the color of a field in the summertime. A violent, vivid chartreuse, and when his delighted gaze fell upon her, the vines of his irises curled around her throat and halted her respiration. She'd never known hazel eyes to be so literally breathtaking.

She pointed to the book in her hand, saying nothing but simply shoving it back in its place on the shelf, hoping he understood what she was suggesting. Her feet tumbled over each other in their rush to return to her seat and be away from him in case he did.

Just as she sunk into the cushion of her chair, Sam pulled the book off the shelf. He let it dangle open where it bulged, and the paper flew out, drifting to the carpeted flooring like a feather in the wind. He bent over to pick it up and Bellona's cheeks flushed.

"Oh my god, he's smiling," Summer muttered, an eagle analyzing from the safety her perch. "Bell, he's smiling!"

Summer was right. Sam was smiling, surprisingly enough. His cheeks blossomed in a gentle pink tint, and at the sight of it, Bellona felt hers do the same. He pressed his lips together, only parting them to run his tongue across in contemplation.

When he dug in his pockets and pulled out a pen, Bellona's heart leaped to her throat. She swallowed, trying to will it back down to where it belonged, but it would not oblige.

Sam wrote on the paper. Shoved the paper back in the book, and then shoved the book back on the shelf. Returned to his seat.

Bellona blinked, rendered impotent by her worry. As she walked shakily over and picked the book back off of the shelf, she swore she was the most nervous she'd been in her life, and would ever be. But, when she gathered her note in her trembling hand, she could do nothing but smile and blush. There it was, in Sam's scrawled, narrow handwriting, right beneath her own written request:

Yes. I'll meet you here so we can drive there together.

If you say yes, that is.

— Sam

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hi guys! I just wanted to check in with you all and thank you for the support I've received on this story! This chapter was much longer than usual, but I couldn't find a way to avoid it, though this does bring up a question...do you guys prefer short(around 1500-2000 words) or long(2500-3000 words)?

Anyway, thank you all so much for reading & commenting & voting and whatever else you may doing, and I hope you have a lovely day!