Chapter Three

“So how many different values of x make this equation true?” Edward asked, tapping on the math question on his homework booklet with the tip of his pencil.

Fay, who was lying on her stomach in her blue pyjamas, exhaled sharply enough to make the corner of the paper flap around. She looked up at Edward with eyes that told him that she wanted to die and sighed the answer it always was, “Probably one.” Since she had been going to public school, the accent that she had adopted from her parents had started to fade�"half unconsciously, half out of wanting to fit in. It only ever came out when she was around only Edward and his family, making her pronounce probably as prububly. He was the only one outside of her family she trusted with that image of her.

“We have the unit exam tomorrow, you know.”

“I don’t care.” Fay sung, rolling onto her back. By that point, she was familiar enough with Edward’s house to know when his parents had just gone shopping, and the thought of food had just entered her mind. “I’m hungry,” she said, frozen on the carpet. Edward laughed because she looked like a raccoon who had just spotted a sandwich. He knew her better than her parents, he thought. They always did everything together. She was on a different plane of love than everyone else in his life.

Edward closed his math book with a smirk. “I think we have some cake in the pantry.”

“Ooh, what kind?”

“Coffee cake, I think.”

 “Ew. I don’t like the kind of coffee cake your parents buy,” Fay grumbled.

Edward laughed, “Not all cake needs to have a diabetes-inducing amount of icing and candy.”

“Cake without icing is just sweet bread.” Fay said, kicking her fuzzy slippers off and waving her feet in the air. It was nighttime and Fay was in her blue fairy-printed pyjamas, which Edward thought was cute. “You know what? Let’s put ice cream on the coffee cake. Like smother it in ice cream. Yeah, that’d do it.”

“We’re out of ice cream.”

“Kill me.”

Edward laughed and lay on his stomach resting on his elbows so that his face was over Fay’s. “We could order a pizza and get one of those giant cookies that take a week and a clogged artery procedure to finish.”

“Clog my arteries.” Fay said, wide-eyed.

He nodded, “Okay, but we’ll have to get it delivered to your house. My father’s not going to let us get pizza this late.”

“Deal-io,” she said, reaching into her pocket and handing Edward her plastic gem-adorned cell phone. At fourteen years old, she was the only one between the two allowed to have one. Edward had been mad at his father for a few weeks since they could afford a cell phone for him but his father just didn’t want him to have one yet. That seemed to be a recurring thing between the two, and Fay was always there with her parents buying her everything she wanted to make him feel better and worse at the same time. He dialed the usual pizza place and sat up to speak with the man on the other end. While he was ordering, Fay rolled around on the ground with a huge grin stuck on her face until she hit the couch against the wall and landed on her stomach, waving her feet in the air.

And then Fay turned her head to look at him while he was distracted with the phone call. She liked looking at him. In the past few months, he had grown from a few inches shorter than her to a head taller than her. It was a little funny how not everything grew at once so his head just seemed a little oversized compared to his body, but he was handsome. His hair was short and proper and he always sat up a little straighter than everyone else. The kids at school called him the teacher’s pet but he was easily correct enough to rat out the teacher. Yeah, it would annoy her sometimes, but it was easy to know that the little boy sitting there was her Ed, the boy who had always been there for her.

When Edward finished, he put down the phone and started to pack up his math books. He looked across the room at Fay and chortled. He did sound mean but Fay knew it was in good spirits. That was their thing. “You okay over there?”

“I’m feeling happy.” Fay said. “You made me happy.”

“I’m happy if you’re happy,” Edward said back. Whenever she wasn’t paying attention, he would always steal an extra glance at her. He had seen her so much that tiny shifts in her brow and lips were enough to tell him exactly what she was feeling, and she looked very happy. She was so beautiful when she was happy. It didn’t seem like there was anything better in the world. Just then, his smile disappeared beneath his skin. She had just reminded him of what he had planned to do before she came. Sure it wasn’t the best time, but there wasn’t ever going to be a significantly better time for it. “If I ask you something, would you answer honestly?”

“Go ahead,” Fay said, her smile turning into curiosity.

Edward slid closer to her, still leaving half a room between them. “Have you ever wanted to be in a relationship?”

Fay was silent as she sat up, having to think for a bit about how to put her thoughts into words. “It would be fun, but to be honest, I really don’t know right now.”

“Oh, okay,” he said. “Can I say something? And when I do, I’m absolutely one hundred-percent not kidding. You have to be serious about this because this is hard for me.”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

Edward slid even closer�"probably too close�"until their kneecaps were awkwardly touching. The smile disappeared from her face and intrigue flashed across her eyes. Edward sighed and looked down at the carpet between his legs. “We’ve been best friends our entire lives, so how would you feel about me wanting us to be more?”

She stuttered a little bit to Edward’s horror. “You mean like… be your girlfriend?”

He breathed, “Yeah.”

Edward waited in horrified silence for a bit before he realized that he was still staring down at the floor. He took a tiny breath in and summoned all the strength he had to look up at Fay. She was smiling.

“I’d think that’d be really cool,” she said. Edward smelled her perfume dart past his nose for a quick moment as she leaned in before his eyes screwed shut on instinct. He thought he would know how to kiss her but actually doing it was something else entirely. Their first kiss was soft and quick and if it weren’t for a tiny warm breath, Edward wouldn’t have been able to tell he was touching her. He was grateful her eyes were shut so she couldn’t see, but then she leaned back and the panic washed off. It was washed off by something he had never felt before, but that he knew he liked.

“So what now?” he asked after a short moment of her waiting for him to say something.

Fay shrugged, “Dunno. I’ve never done this before.”

“Should’ve planned this out better.”

Fay laughed and put her hand on Edward’s knee. “Well if we’re dating now, I guess I can pretend to care about the math test tomorrow. At least until the pizza gets here.”

“Swimming tomorrow?” he asked.

“Sounds fun,” Fay said, lying down on her back with her hands under her head and twisting her hips to stretch her back, “Can’t wait, boyfriend.”