Rising Shards

I sighed as I put my fifth nice shirt away, finding its vibe not right for the evening. I shut the drawer it was in firmly to really put the point on not picking anything from it.

“How much time do I have?” I called over to Kalei, who sat at the tiny table near the front of our dorm room.

“Uh,” Kalei said. “Like a half hour?”

“Dang,” I said.

“Why don’t you wear like a funny t-shirt?” Kalei suggested. “I have some you can borrow. That’ll be a conversation starter when you or Oka inevitably make this weird for each other and get all quiet.”

“That’s,” I sighed. “Not a bad idea. But I wanna look cute!”

“You saying my funny shirts aren’t cute?”

“Yes, I’m saying a shirt that just has ‘UH OH ALERT: FARTS’ on it in big letters isn’t cute!”

“Then pick a cute dress?” Kalei said. “Cute boots?”

“I don’t have any boots,” I said. “Wait, OK, I have a few, but I already wore my Raina boots for a different date."

"And you can't wear those again because...?" Kalei asked.

"Because," I pouted. "I don't know, the vibe isn't right! I have some winter boots, but they’re not cute, and they’re in a box back at the apartment. At one of them, I don’t know how much of my stuff’s even left at the old place.”

“I wonder if Marmalade has any cute boots,” Kalei said.

“Hmm,” I said. “Where is she, anyways?”

“She said she’s going to a movie or something with her family,” Kalei said. “Then she said something about having a nice Marmalade self-care night. If I wasn’t busy, I’d be having a Kalei self-care night. Kalei’s self-care Saturday, if you will. I’m working on getting the trademark, but the patent office is being a bit picky, you know?”

“Are you just rambling now?”

“I’m hoping it’ll annoy you and get you to pick your clothes faster.” Kalei said. “Oka’s probably seen you in all that stuff anyways since the whole former roommate deal.”

“I have some new stuff in here,” I said. “I went shopping a bit ago with Stella. There's a pretty nice place by that movie theater we went to...”

"Are you just rambling now?"

I just wanted the night to go perfectly. Outside of the night at the movies when we had dinner and officially became a couple, Oka and I hadn’t had the chance to have a real date date yet. Well, we had some hangouts that I felt were dates, but Oka decreed they weren’t of the true, near mythical ‘date date’ variety.

After I finally picked an outfit I liked, I went to go check on Kalei.

“So how are you doing? Tonight’s yours too, right?” I asked.

“I, uh.” Kalei said. “Mine’s later than yours so I’m just trying to have some self-care time before my date. You know. Just like trying to stay chill.”

“I get that,” I said. “Screaming on the inside, right?”

“Uh huh.” Kalei said.

“Well, you’re gonna have an awesome time.” I said.

“Thanks.” Kalei said. “Preemptive apology if I frantically text you at any point during this. I’ll try to like not to not interfere with your date. Or like send to a group chat so both of you can be involved.”

“If you’re feeling really bad don’t worry about it, we wanna help!” I said.

“Yeah…” Kalei said. “Hey, also.” She held her fist out to me. “Your date will kick ass, too.”

I bumped her fist. “Thanks!”

“Get some hongus fonongus time in, got it?” Kalei asked.

“You’re really pushing that one still, huh?” I asked, mostly to deflect from my blushing at getting some ‘hongus fonongus’ time with Oka on this date.

“I indeed am.” Kalei said.

I gave Kalei a few last words of support before heading out to the parking lot where Stella waited for me. The plan was for me to get picked up by Stella and brought to the mall, where Oka would be getting dropped off by her dad.

“You’re lucky I’m willing to drive you back and forth so much lately,” Stella said. “You could’ve just stayed at the apartment last night.”

“Kalei needed words of encouragement.” I said. That was half true, but if I went with “I wanted to pick my cute clothes the day of and all my cute clothes are in my dorm room,” Stella would fire back with “You really could have just picked your clothes the day before, it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

So instead, I just stayed quiet on the car ride until Stella had a declaration.

“Alright Zeta, here’s the itinerary.” Stella said.

“Stella, don’t plan my date itinerary.” I said. It was a fruitless protest I knew, because Stella already messaged me her official plans for the evening earlier in the week.

“First, we’re going to go to this nice pizza place near Twin Wolves.” Stella continued, ignoring me. “The Faleur family tradition dinner will open the evening. Then Evy and I will be seeing a movie, so for approximately two hours and forty—the run time is two and a half hours but I’m adding time for trailers, et cetera—you two may wander around Twin Wolves and do whatever you please there. Then after the movie is over, we’ll bring you back to the apartment you can have time in the basement to yourselves. Evy and I will do our best not to hover around too much so you can enjoy your date. Now—”

“It’s OK, I don’t…I don’t need to hear this, I think.” I said.

I could immediately tell by her tone getting a touch more serious where this conversation was going, and my mind was already racing so I didn’t need burning embarrassment on top of it.

“I’m being a cool big sister here!” Stella said. “If you get the basement relatively to yourselves for a few hours, you have to hear this.”

“No, I know, it’s just…” I sighed.

“I know, I’m just teasing you,” Stella said. “Alright, I’m half doing this to tease you, but half of this is still me being responsible. I didn’t say this for Jeans because I was just hoping things wouldn’t get that far with her.”

“Stella…” I said.

“But Oka’s a lot cooler of a person, and when you’re dating a cooler person, well, you start to want to do more cool things with them. Cool things like—"

“Stella, I’m good,” I said. “We watched that Cani hygiene part of the Thadley video. I’m good!”

“Just shush and let me say it!” Stella said. “As a responsible big sister guardian, I just wanna say, if you do anything, just be safe about it.”

“A-alright…” I said.

“I’ll leave it there because your face is very red and if I go into any more specifics than that you’re gonna start screaming and hide your head in your hands or something.”

“O-OK.” I said.

“I’m talking about sex, if that wasn’t clear.”

“AHHH!” I yelled, burying my head in my hands.

“You know why I’m telling you this, right?” Stella asked.

“To embarrass me so bad I don’t do anything wild tonight?” I asked.

“Well, I was gonna say safety, but yeah, that works too.” Stella said. “Mostly the embarrassing part, you know me pretty well, don’t you?”

“Yeah…” I groaned.

“I’ll leave it there, just fun big sister Stella from here tonight, OK?” Stella said.

I didn’t entirely believe her, but I really needed this date.