OK I Pull Up (Chase POV)

A cool evening breeze wafts through your open truck window as you still your engine in front of Pearl’s sidewalk. Her bedroom window is lit up, shining as a beacon of pale yellow in the corner of the house’s silhouette, contrasted by the setting sun behind it. You can see a bit of movement as Pearl putters about.

You pause for a moment, hand still on the ignition. You may have woken up in her bed this morning, but the thought of seeing your friend again after the bizarre, sensual, and entirely self-inflicted circumstances of last night is… daunting, somehow. There’s no denying how suddenly life-altering the last twenty-four hours have been, and being coming face-to-face with your old-friend-turned-new-lover after not seeing her all day is the real truth-or-fiction moment to cement your new reality. More than anyone else, Pearl will happily call you out on your shit given any opportunity. She’s self-assured and does not respond well to being told what to do. Like Yutong said, if even Pearl will willingly give up pieces of her soul for you upon request, then that proves your near-god status more than claiming a tank’s worth of gas or a three-dollar latte ever will. And spending your afternoon just being given those small things was wild enough. Not even to mention your other friend reconstructing her whole workout routine around you and a third texting you regular innocuous details to in order to keep you updated on ‘your’ relationship.

Maybe if you enter that house, your callous best friend will be back to normal. Maybe she’ll be dressed in far too many layers for early summer, and will have forgotten any and all ideas of ever having sex with you or wanting to have your children. Maybe that’ll be for the best. But maybe also a concerning amount of your brain very much doesn’t want that to be the case.

Maybe she does remember everything, and called you out here to thoroughly chew you out for overriding her consent and toying with her head, body, and memories. Then she’ll dump you on the front doorstep, along with the broken remains of your friendship. Your powers could pull you out of that dire scenario, should it occur, but there’s only so much claiming parts of your friend she can take before she isn’t even herself anymore. And that thought is more than a little chilling.

The moment passes.

Whelp, that was heavy. You’re here to have a good time with your best friend and potential babymomma, and you’re not gonna let existential dread drag you down. Besides, these powers are too fun and too enticing to let overthinking get in the way of their overuse. Slippery slope, indeed.

Denial isn't just a river in Sudan.

You pick up your phone to let her know you’re here, but before you can open your messages, your vision is obscured by two crisp twenties being shoved through your open car window and right in front of your eyes.

Momentarily stunned by the person suddenly occupying your driver’s side, you turn your head towards them, only to find their face six inches from your own. The twenties are attached to a lanky arm, which is attached to a young woman, wearing jeans and a collared work shirt. Her hair up in a bun, her mouth up in a childlike grin. Unperturbed by your lack of response, she continues waving the bills in your face.

“C’mon, where’s my double pepperoni, Mr. Pizza Man?”

Her smile fades as she takes you in. You blink owlishly at each other for a couple seconds.

The woman slumps her shoulders.

“You’re not pizza, are you.”

Teasingly, and with false confidence, you pluck the loose bills dangling in front of you and slowly pretend to tuck them into a bra you are definitely not wearing.

“I can be whatever you want me to be, with that kind of money,” you say in the most faux-seductive voice you can manage.

She scrunches up her face, an adorable gesture indeed, and tries to make an offended ‘how dare you’ kind of noise, but loses to breaking back into a grin.

She reaches in, grabs your shirt by the collar, and shakes vigorously, forcing the money to come out the bottom. She snatches it from your lap before turning to stalk back to the house.

She calls over her shoulder. “Are you coming inside or not?”

It’s at least comforting to know Macy’s still quite the same.

“I can’t believe I was propositioned by a high schooler.”

You follow beside Macy as she walks up the steps to the house. The stifled smile on her face betrays her teasing tone.

“Hey, not anymore. Got the diploma and everything. Besides, you were the one who groped me and then said, and I quote, ‘are you coming inside or not?’”

Macy pauses and blinks, one hand on the door handle. She tilts her head towards the sky, wipes away a fake tear, and says mock-exasperatedly, “oh my god, I’m a pedophile.”

When you first met Macy, her unabashed bluntness and overly-familiar nature caught you off guard. As the years went by, though, they’ve allowed you two to gain a natural and comfortable rapport despite your being closer with her sister.

“Uh huh. Aren’t you, like, twenty?”

“I’m twenty-one in September, I’ll have you know. I’ll be able to drink and everything.” Macy finally enters the house, guiding you into the Nowak foyer.

“I don’t care if you’re eighteen now, you are still but a child to me, and I will hear nothing of you engaging in the hanky-panky. Un-ac-cep-ta-ble.” She punctuates each syllable with a playful slap to your shoulder.

Well, then she might not be all that prepared to hear what you’ve been doing with and to her sibling. That news is probably better broken from the horse’s mouth. In the meantime, you might as well take the opportunity to catch up with your acquaintance newly back from college. You saw each other briefly at the grad ceremony a day prior, but there wasn’t much opportunity to interact between the masses of hugging family members, the arduousness of sitting through toasts and ceremonies, the being toted off to a party, and the being up inside her little sister.

“The Vampire can you have you all she wants later, right now I’m stealing you for some company while I make dinner.”

You can feel the exhaustion seeping off her after a full day of work, but Macy seems newly rejuvenated now that she’s got someone to talk to. She makes cheery chatter while she chops ingredients for a keto salad.

“I took a food health class last semester and the prof was really big into cutting out carbs. I gotta say, I think she was onto something.”

You’ve gathered that Macy’s been enrolling herself in every low-level course she can access as long as it’s got something about health or human biology in the name. She doesn’t seem to have any plan of what direction she’s taking her education or career other than a vague concept of ‘medical’.

“Right, that’s why you’re eating it with pizza,” you playfully jab.

She brandishes a stalk of kale like a limp, unthreatening knife and uses it to poke you in the throat. “No fab diet and no you is gonna keep me from my double pepperoni. Don’t you forget it.”

Macy fixes you with as intimidating a glare she can muster, which is to say not at all. She is definitely not the scary one in the family. She is closer to you in height than Pearl is, though.

Macy Nowak stands in front of you, eyebrow-to-forehead. Her hair is a couple shades lighter than Pearl’s, and her skin a couple darker. Said hair is tied in a tight messy bun seriously struggling to hold itself together, and she still dons her red-and-blue PetSmart work shirt complete with HI MY NAME IS Macy employee’s tag. Her face, currently scrunched in attempted ire, is visibly more angular than her sister’s oval features, while still maintaining a distinct softness about it.

Not wanting to further anger the legume-armed scary lady in front of you, you raise your hands in a ‘don’t hurt me’ gesture. Satisfied, Macy grins and drops her weapon before returning to regaling you with stories from college life.

The two of you swap personal anecdotes for several pleasant minutes. She rants to you about the new dating show she’s been binging, you tell her the gory details of the prank you and Sully organized for your Lit teacher on the last day of class. The even banter allows an easy system of normalcy, the most you’ve felt all day.

“Seriously, Chase, I’m glad you’re here. I haven’t seen a friendly face since I woke up. All my co-workers are zombies and Pearl’s been holed in her room since I got home, didn’t even come down to say hi.”

As if on cue, you hear a thumping from above you as someone descends down the staircase and enters the kitchen. Macy turns towards the noise.

“Speak of the devil, and she shall… appear? What the heck are you wearing?”

Pearl freezes and stops dead in her tracks as she turns the corner and is slapped in the face with your sudden presence. It’s clear she’s got no method of which to respond to your being in her house. Her hand frozen partway through mussing with her hair, her mouth slightly parted, her eyes wide.

For a moment, despite her shock, an electrical feeling passes between you and your friend. You are briefly but sharply reminded of all the intimate encounters you two had the night prior. The tangling of torsos, the sensual warmth, the rush of hormones and emotions, the command you had over her body and soul. Like a rock in your gut, you realize in that moment you can never return to the breezy, friendly setup you had before.

A small spark within you gently suggests that might not be so bad. Pearl seems to feel it too, her eyes softening slightly, her arm lowering a fraction of an inch.

Macy’s confusion is warranted; Pearl is dressed in a very un-Pearl-like manner. No typical hoodies or cargo pants, she dons only a tight-fitting tank top tucked into short sweatshorts that only extend to her mid-thigh. The way her chest hangs suggests a lack of anything underneath.

This is a much less covered and purposefully composed Pearl than you’ve ever seen before, yesterday notwithstanding.

The very lightly-clad girl in front of you seems unable to break eye contact. A million different feelings seem to flit by behind the pale blue of her irises. Her throat bobs, and it’s apparent that at least a few of those feelings are arousal. Arousal that she is utterly unsure of how to address.

Completely ignorant to the emotional hurricane passing right in front of her, Macy takes a loud crunch out of a baby carrot and talks through it, gesturing to Pearl’s clothing. “Aren’t those mine?”

Broken from her reverie, Pearl lowers her hand and glances frantically back and forth between you and her sister as she pieces together the situation she just walked in on. You see one specific, distinct emotion pass over her face, an emotion you swear you’ve never seen on her before, but is written in the normally stoic Pearl’s expression clear as day.

Panic.

Pearl tries and fails to compose herself. “Uh, I’m borrowing them. And I need to borrow Chase too. Right now.” She rushes forward and grabs your wrist in one quick motion.

Blissfully unfazed, Macy raises an eyebrow and swallows. “Could’ve at least asked. Do they even fit you?”

Pearl ignores her sister and speedwalks towards the backyard, dragging you with her.

“Are you even wearing a br–” Macy’s final shout is cut off by Pearl’s slamming of the back door.

You’re **** to awkwardly stumble behind her as she yanks you towards the center of the yard before finally releasing her iron grip. Her bare feet swish against the grass as Pearl aggressively swivels towards you.