"Nothing. Hey, Puroko, are you coming over today?"
"Can't." Puroko barely looked regretful about this, as she continued to eat her lunch.
"But you promised!" Amber sulked.
Puroko's eyes widened at the prospect of breaking her promise, but after thinking it over, she remembered it was a promise for "someday" not necessarily this one. "It's Tenshi's birthday, and I gotta stay home, but I will come over, Amber-san. I really want to see your house!" She looked at Kono and told him excitedly, "It's s'posed to be really big and fancy and pretty! Amber-san says we'll have lotsa fun!"
"Can I come?" Kono asked with interest. Now that he was back in Puroko's good graces, he wanted to spend more time with her. Plus, if Puroko was going to make a new friend, he wanted to make sure that that friend liked him too.
But Amber made it clear that she didn't want to be friends with him. "Only girls allowed," she told him derisively. She didn't need him there, only Puroko.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Neko didn't need to go home to change to go to Tenshi's birthday party, as she had brought decent after-school clothes to change into after soccer practice that day. But she made sure to call and let her parents know where she was going. Ami, who had answered the communicator, had seen nothing wrong with her attending the event. Clueless about her father's knowledge of her earlier transgression, Neko ran out to meet Tenshi, who was patiently waiting for her outside the locker room.
"Happy birthday!" She handed Tenshi the dozen red roses she'd been hiding in her locker all day and gave her a kiss.
Tenshi was rarely the recipient of flowers. Generally, she was the one to get some for Neko, or her past girlfriends, as she tended to take the male role in the relationship. But Neko didn't care about sticking to the conventions of a heterosexual-based world and tried her hardest to let Tenshi know it was okay to be as feminine or as masculine as she wished. This suited Tenshi just fine, but flowers were still a surprise.
"Arigatou," she responded, a little more bashful than usual. Then she got over it. "Let's go celebrate!"
Home
