566. Chapter 566

She’s never understood how people can forget things like their homework. Don’t they have checklists and don’t they panic when they don’t have their things?

How can they sit there and, cool as a cucumber – she’d had to bring out an actual cucumber to explain that particular expression to Kara the other week – just tell the teacher they didn’t have their homework?

She didn’t get it.

Maggie said it’s just about different people having different priorities. That if you’re feeling checked out of school, it won’t feel like it matters so much.

Alex listens, because – especially since she’d come to live with them, after everything that happened with her parents – she seemed so… wise.

When she wasn’t a firey ball of anger.

Which, truth be told, Alex thought was adorable.

But now?

Now, nothing is adorable, because nothing is right, because everything is wrong. Because she’s wrong.

Because she knew the assignment – she knew the book like the back of her hand, because Kara loved it, so she’d been reading it with her to practice English over, and over, and over – but this morning?

This morning was a flurry of waking up late because she’d been texting Maggie late into the night, going out surfing because she never felt right if she didn’t, skipping breakfast because her stomach might be screaming for her to eat something but she would never forgive herself if she was late to first period chemistry, and then…

And then, she dug into her bag, and realized that she’d forgotten her third period English homework.

She texts Maggie to meet her in the third floor bathroom.

Stat.

She’s shaking by the time she gets there, because she’s been doing so well, how could she have been so stupid, are they going to call Eliza, what actually happens when you forget homework, what –

“Hey, Danvers, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay. You didn’t hurt anyone, you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s homework, and yeah, it’s a big deal to you so that’s a big deal to me, but it’s not going to ruin everything, I promise. You don’t ruin everything. Hell, Alex, you don’t ruin anything.”

Alex blinks a few times, looking down into Maggie’s warm, comforting eyes.

“Was I saying all that out loud?”

Maggie nods sympathetically. “Second I opened the door. I’m glad it was me, not some poor slob of a freshmen who’s just trying to pee.”

Alex laughs despite herself, and the knot in her stomach lessens somewhat.

“What if Ms. M’orzz is mad at me? What if she’s… disappointed in me?”

Maggie sighs and kisses Alex’s chin, her cheeks, her nose. Her lips.

“She won’t be. She knows you. She knows you always try your best, and that your best is damn good. And if she is disappointed, Alex? Or mad? For like a hot second? She’ll get over it. Because her disappointment or anger doesn’t reflect on you, and it doesn’t… I dunno, stain you or anything. Okay?”

“I am rubber and you are glue? That’s your advice?”

“M’orzz loves you, Danvers. More than a stupid homework assignment. Okay? And even if it were for some jackass teacher, like I said: no one else’s judgment makes you a bad person. Okay? I promise.”

One of the toilets flushes in the stall nearest them and both girls jump back from their impending kiss.

“Jesus, Danvers, Sawyer, you’d think if you were gonna coordinate bathroom breaks, it would be for something good, like good old fashioned bathroom sex.”

“Lane!”

“I swear to god, Lucy!”

Lucy steps out of her stall wearing an enormous grin. An infectious grin.

Alex sighs and kisses Maggie with a little extra gusto, partially to make Lucy groan. Maggie giggles into her lips.

“Thank you,” she tells her girlfriend, with her words, her eyes, her body.