I Bleed Stars (Book 1)

Chapter 31

Sunny's (P.O.V)

The last two months have been crazy.

We won the tournament and when I got home I moved out of my three bedroom apartment and into the mansion with Roxanne. Ivy and Benjamin went on vacation so it was safe to move at least until they get back. Elizabeth and Amanda were sad to see me go but were happy that I was moving on to the next stage of my life.

I still had dinner with my dad every weekend and I was sad that I couldn't tell him that I had broken up with Kyle.

Joey started tutoring me in math and we have gotten really close. He was the first one I told about my relationship with Roxanne and he was ecstatic . He said he knew Roxanne and I were going to be a thing two months ago when Roxanne left her party for me.

I found out that Sandy broke up with Ethan the same day I showed up to Ethan's house with a baseball bat. Sandy has been seeing this new guy from her history class who treats her with the love and respect Ethan wasn't capable of showing her.

Cody wasn't in the picture for awhile. Roxanne said that they got in a fight because she had kept something from him but she didn't tell me what that was. When Cody did finally come back in the picture I was able to finally try his homemade tacos which were amazing to say the least.

After the tournament my mom and I started to talk a lot more. It was always about school and church, never really about anything else.

I started going to this new church closer to Roxanne's place. The new church had a different view on the lgbtq community than most of the other churches I'd ever been to. In one of the sermons the pastor at Stitch Point preached that you can still love God even if he rejects you. It was a new kind of unconditional love that I was going to have to get used to but it definitely made me think. After I started dating Roxanne I felt like an imposter in church but it wasn't like I could stop going because I knew that would break my parents' hearts.

School was going well too. We're in our last month before school was over and Roxanne and I had made a lot of progress on the project. Roxanne's paintings for Romeo and Juliet was beautiful and the videos we made for the project was just as beautiful.

"Do you always have to write that beautifully?" Roxanne said as she held the camera close to me.

We were on the cliff that overlooked the water. I was writing my last piece of poetry for the project or at least I was trying to. I couldn't really focus today. I kept zoning out like I did earlier.

"Shhh now we're going to have to cut that out." I said putting my pen down.

"Or we can keep it in." She said.

I gave her a look.

"I love it when I'm being ridiculous and you look at me like that." She said turning the camera off and giving me a kiss on the cheek.

"I think we should take a break." I said, getting up from where I was laying down on the cliff with my notebook in front of me.

I went over to where Roxanne's final painting stood on the easel and just stared at the painting of Juliet holding Romeo in her arms after she found out he died.

"Romeo Romeo you are not my Romeo how dare you die." Roxanne said, coming up from behind me and putting her arms around my waist.

I smiled a little bit and without thinking about it I said, "Juliet, Juliet you're not my Juliet how dare you live."

Roxanne laughed. "Can you imagine if that's how the story actually went? Juliet says that and then Romeo."

"That would be wild." I said.

Roxanne sighed before unwrapping her arms around me and moving to go sit at the edge of the cliff. She usually did that when we would take breaks from doing the project. I would stay a little ways away from the edge just looking at the clips we had filmed that day, but today I decided to follow her.

"Hey, is everything okay?" I said taking a seat next to her.

She looked surprised to see me next to her but didn't say anything. "Yeah, everything is fine. It's just so weird to think that the semester is almost over and then summer's coming up. I still haven't fixed the AC in my car. It's been needing to be fixed for months now."

There was a moment of silence between us.

"Hey if you need your car fixed my dad can do it for you. He's good with cars."

She looked up at me. "Really, you would risk your dad finding us out for me?"

"I'll just introduce you as my friend. I told him I made some new friends and he's been wanting to meet them so I say this is perfect timing."

"Okay, thank you beautiful." She said smiling at me.

"I'll ask him when we can come over. He's usually off work on the weekends."

"Sunny what is your dream?"

"You," I said without thinking.

She laughed. "My dream is to make it to graduation."

What she said alarmed me. "Do you plan on dying or something?"

"No," She paused. "No, no I was just thinking about how no one is promised tomorrow. So I just hope I make it because I'm not promised tomorrow." There was a sadness to her voice.

"You'll make it. We'll make it." I said reassuring her.

I made the dumb decision of looking below me and started freaking out as intrusive thoughts after intrusive thoughts came to my mind.

"Look at me. Sunny look at me." Roxanne said gently, moving my head in her direction.

I looked into her eyes and suddenly felt calm again. "Thank you."

"I'm going to help you get over your fear of heights."

"How?" I said.

"I don't know but I'm going to figure it out."

"How about we start small. Let's tackle a different fear I have first and then we can move to heights."

"Okay, what else are you afraid of?"

"Getting a tattoo."

"Are you saying you want to get a tattoo?"

"Yes!"

She laughed then stopped when she saw I wasn't laughing. "My god you're serious."

"Dead serious." I said smiling.

"Okay, when do you want to get this tattoo?"

"Tomorrow."

"And what do you want this tattoo to be of."

"Your name on my wrist with a small bird flying out of its cage below your name, but the bird is flying towards your name."

"That's so specific. Why that?"

"Because you freed me."

She laughed as if she was amused. "From what?"

"A lot of things."

"I need one reason if I'm going to let you do this."

"From my little world that my parents had created for me and I locked myself in."

She looked surprised.

"Okay I guess we're getting a tattoo tomorrow. I'll get the same one as you but with your name because you had freed this little bird too."

We stared into each other's eyes just smiling for a second before I said, "I should probably get back to writing that last poem for the project now."

"Good idea." She said laughing as we broke eye contact.