“Hello?” She stopped short, taking the quivering woman in the doorway in her arms, and rubbing her back comfortingly. “What happened?”

“My mom… What a bitch.” She sobbed, tightly grasping Shane’s T-shirt.

“What?”

“She said she’s not OK with…”

“Oh.”

“And then she threw my dad in my face. I can’t believe she did that, Shane!”

Her voice was barely audible, the sobs taking over her body and smothering the words trying to escape from her mouth.

“Hey, shh… It’s OK, baby. It’s all gonna be OK.”

Shane kept her wrapped in her arms for what seemed like hours, her shoulder completely drenched by Carmen’s tears.

“Hey.”

Shane tilted her girlfriend’s face up. She looked beautiful, even with running mascara and puffy, red eyes.

“It’s going to be all right. OK? We’re together, we’re going to get through this together.”

She placed a gentle kiss to the Latina’s lips.

“I knew it.”

The two looked over to the source of the voice, Jenny. Her lips were a thin line and her eyes were hard, her arms crossed over her chest.

“I knew it!” she started to giggle. “I’m so happy for you two!”

She ran over and hugged the two of them at once.

“This is so exciting! Wait. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, we didn’t exactly have time to talk about it, you spent all the time we had together talking about who I fucked last night.”

“That better be me.” Carmen chuckled, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand.

“Of course.”

Shane leant down to place another chaste kiss to Carmen’s lips.

”Awww.”

“Shut up, you.” Shane said, playfully grabbing at Jenny who shrieked and ran away.

Carmen watched through the tears, her eyes displaying genuine happiness. It was just like before all this bullshit. Just the three of them hanging out and laughing together. Maybe Shane was right. Maybe everything could be OK.

“Hey, Howie, you in here, I did your… OH MY GOD!” The door slammed shut again and Dana leant against it, panting heavily. “I THOUGHT I SAID NO SLEEPOVERS!” she shouted into the other room, trying frantically to find something she could use to gouge her eyes out.

The door opened and she fell backwards into the room.

“Trust me, we weren’t sleeping. Besides, it’s the daytime!”

“Yeah, and what kind of a person does… that… in the daytime! That’s a nighttime activity, Howie!”

“I don’t know I seem to recall you and Alice playin’ a little dress-up during the day, if you know what I mean.”

“That… That is not fair. We are two mature, consenting, adults. You… You are not.”

“I’m 17, Dana. I’m almost an adult.”

“But you’re not.  And you… hi, nice to meet you, I’m Dana Fairbanks… Have to go.” Dana said grabbing the boy by the hand and pulling him out of the room.

“All right, I’ll call you, Howie.” The blonde boy’s surfer accent drawled. He was kind of like Bill from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

“Sure, and sorry about all this.”

“It’s OK.”

They shared a quick kiss before the boy was out the door.

“That’s disgusting.” Dana mumbled, walking away to find her girlfriend. She would empathize with her.