Chapter 214

                                    

                                          
The drive back to Hollingsworth had been quiet, not in a way that made Juliette at all uncomfortable... But it had made her bored, and she couldn't keep it up much longer.  Shelby seemed very at peace with the level of volume that they had going, but she wasn't on that wavelength.
No, she had to talk.
She just had to.
"Shelby?" She asked, and Shelby lifted her eyebrows, not taking her eyes off the road even as she acknowledged that Jules was speaking for the first time in half an hour.
"Hm?  What's up, babe?" That wasn't something she'd thought ahead about... She wanted to talk and break the silence, comfortable as it was, but she wasn't sure what she wanted to say...
Ask her about her night plans.  That's a good one.
"What's the first thing you're gonna do once we're home?" She asked, and Shelby shrugged, drumming her hands on the steering wheel as she turned off the highway and onto the darkened roads that led into Fransted and Hollingsworth.  Juliette felt her heart squeeze with excitement at the idea of getting to see Esme again, getting to hold them and kiss them and tell them how much she'd missed them... They hadn't talked as much as she'd wanted to while she was gone, and she was looking forward to the reconnection, even if she had only been gone for that short time. 
Did that make her clingy?  Yes, but she'd more than earned the right to be a bit clingy after everything that both her and Esme had been through.  They'd helped her discover who she was, and more importantly they had been a driving force in her learning how to accept who she was, and that was not something that she took lightly.  Falling in love with someone who made her fall in love with herself was not a blessing that was lost on her at all.  Most people never found a love like that, and she was lucky that she had found it so young.
But that wasn't the point, she wanted to know what Shelby would be doing.
"Uh... Probably gonna shower and then watch a show and go to bed.  Maybe call Micheal and see if he wants to watch with me." She said, smiling softly when she spoke his name, a movement that seemed like it was almost involuntary when she said it... It was a disgustingly cute habit that she had gotten into.  "I missed him, it'd be nice to see him." She said, and Juliette chuckled, shaking her head.  Sure, she completely understood that, and she had the same thing going with Esme, but that didn't mean that she couldn't bully Shelby for it, right?
She placed a hand on her leg, looking at her seriously.  Please don't kill me for this, you goddamn Amazonian.
"You'll also see him tomorrow... Clingy." She said, and Shelby rolled her eyes, smacking Juliette's hand off of her arm with a look that told Juliette everything she needed to know - she didn't want to fight Shelby on this or bully her too hard, she valued the integrity of her bones and that was something that could quite easily be compromised if she wasn't careful... Not that Shelby would ever actually hit her, but she just wanted to be careful just in case.
"Okay, so I know that I'm not hearing you call me clingy when you literally moved in with your partner at eighteen." Shelby's statement was very true, but she had neglected to remember one very simple and very useful fact:  Juliette would always be a known hypocrite, it was one of her favorite things to be.  She shrugged, scooting down a bit in her chair as she crossed her arms across her chest.  Do as I say, not as I do.  Don't point out my hypocrite behavior, I have no shame for it.
"That was partially for survival... And partially because I never wanted to leave her side again, but that's different." Her protests fell on deaf ears as Shelby snorted, shaking her head, clearly not believing her for a second that it was different which was fair because it wasn't, but still... She wanted to pretend like it was, was that too much to ask?  Why couldn't she just play along with her bullshit for a second, was that too much to ask?