by Star

Part 3 ~ Maya's POV

     The things I do to avoid telling my crush.

     Terri looks nervous, excited and strangely panicked. The dare wouldn’t bother her, I know Terri, she has no qualms about doing stuff like this. Maybe it’s the trouble we could get into.

     I consider taking her hand, but I’m slightly worried. Is it ok to take a girls’ hand if the two of you are only wearing underwear? Especially if one of those girls is crushing on the other.

     Damn her. This is all her fault. If she wasn’t so cute I wouldn’t crush on her and we wouldn’t be doing this dumb dare.

     “See you later!” Annie grins once more, then she and Marie head back to their room.

     “Why do I play this game? It only lands me in stupid situations like this?” I mutter.

     “It could be worse.” She says cheerfully, grinning at me, then quickly looking away.

     I don’t manage to look away. I’ve seen Terri wandering around in her underwear before – if you share a room with someone it’s bound to happen. But I haven’t seen her in just her underwear since I figured out that I’m crushing on her.

     It’s very distracting. She’s wearing silver. I felt sure that she would wear purple. Silver velvet, I bet it feels nice… ARGH! Brain! Do NOT have that thought!

     “So, do we walk calmly or run like feic?” She asks.

     “What’s a feic?” I ask in return.

     “Irish word. I’ll let you puzzle it out.” She grins. “I say we run?”

     “Sounds good.”

     She takes my hand. Then frowns a little and lets go, looking strangely panicked again. Has she figured out I like her? Is she worried that I’ll hit on her? Should I be worried that I might?

     I feel a hot blush flooding my face and take a subtle step backwards.

     “Um…” She starts tentatively. “Should we be running now?”

     I look around and realise that while we’ve been talking (and I’ve been worrying) we’ve walked a fair distance from the door.

     “Maybe we should.” I agree. “Now?”

     “Now.” She confirms.

     We take off at a sprint, I have to hold back because Terri isn’t very athletic at all. She’ll go to amazing lengths to get out of doing anything even remotely sport-related. Unless you count that idiotic bouncing that she does when she gets excited. Except it’s not really idiotic, it’s cute. And she pulls this little face where she scrunches up her face and wrinkles her nose, she looks so adorable…

     “You stopped.” She comments, staring at me.

     I blush, realising that I have in fact stopped.

     She takes my hand again, and this time she doesn’t let go, and I don’t move away. In fact, I squeeze it.

     She gives me a thousand-watt grin. “We could just walk really fast.”

     “Ok.”

     So we set off again.

     As we round the corner of the building we come to another dead halt. This time it’s because the grounds-man, Mr Hatch, is patrolling with a flashlight, and he’s coming right this way.

     “Feic.” Terri murmurs.

     “What shall we do?” I whisper. “I have no intention of being caught wandering the school grounds in my underwear.”

     “We could hide?” She replies in a low voice, as we back away slowly.

     I look around and notice a clump of bushes. I point. “How about there?”

     “Works for me.”

     We take off at a run towards the bushes and fight our way inside. It’s a tight squeeze, so it’s probably a good thing Terri and I are so short.

     I realise Terri is staring at me. More specifically, at my stomach. I move my hands to cover myself up a bit. I hate people staring. Especially Terri, who’s so perfectly proportioned that it makes me want to scream.

     She reaches up and brushes my hands away. “Butterfly…” She murmurs softly. Her fingertips trace the outline of the birthmark on my stomach. I shiver under her feather-light touch. My breathing speeds up through no choice of mine.

     “It’s perfect.” She says softly, still staring. I haven’t seen her so focused on anything before, except her art. She says when she draws she’s taken to another world and forgets anything else exists.

     I let out a shaky breath, suddenly very aware of how close we’re standing, we’re almost nose to nose, her fingers are still touching my stomach, but I now realise that my hand is resting on hers.

     She finally stops staring at the birthmark and looks in my eyes. She’s not wearing her contact lenses tonight, her eyes are blue… and they’re very pretty.

     I seem to have no control over myself, my body is making all the decisions, not my brain. My other hand reaches out and brushes some hair out of her eyes so I can take an unobstructed view of them. Once the hair is out of the way, I can’t seem to call my hand back to my side, it remains resting on her shoulder, my thumb stroking her cheekbones.

     She gives me a fearful, but beautiful smile as she reaches out to do the same to me. As her hand moves to my face I see her fingers are shaking.

     Me move towards each other, needing no words. My lips graze hers for the briefest of seconds before a voice yells, “Is anyone out here?”

     We break apart, then jump back together in a fit of girlyness. This time we’re hugging out of fear, there’s none of the gentle, tentative touching this time. Right now we’re two girls hugging because we might get caught standing in a bush wearing only our underwear.

     Damn it!