Marissa smiled. She was feeling a little better too. Having a place to hide out, where people weren’t talking about sex and it didn’t feel like anyone was staring at her, helped. There was no way anyone knew already, but it still felt like they did. No one was staring at her (if anything, people had stared at Russell for freaking out, poor thing), but she just… felt it. As soon as people found out, she knew the staring would become real. She didn’t care as much about that as she did about how her friends would feel. She really messed up, and she didn’t want her friends to stop liking her. Maybe they should, though. She disliked herself quite a bit right now; why wouldn’t they?

Marissa, you’re spiraling again. Stop.

She tried her best not to stare when Russell took off his glasses, but she hoped to catch a glance of his eye color, anyway. She almost suggested moving to somewhere darker, but this is where Russell brought them, so it must’ve been where he wanted to be. Right? She couldn’t imagine things being too bright to look at all the time. She got headaches sometimes, but all she had to do was take a nap or a potion and it’d be fine.

She’d been content to just sit quietly for a while. Staring at the baby thing she had with her helped keep her calm. From her experience, tiny humans fed off of the bigger humans’ emotions. If she was panicked or something, then the baby would start freaking out too. That’s how it worked. So sitting in a quiet library with a friend was working wonders. Their two month project was staying calm, for sure, and seemed to enjoy staring at everything it possibly could. She couldn’t help but wonder if the baby inherited personality traits from them, too. If it did, then this baby definitely had the Kendrick curiosity down pat. At least it was quiet.

Russell explained why he was so upset without her asking. Marissa wouldn’t have pushed for an explanation, but it was nice to hear him give one. Even though he skipped ahead to naming the baby, a tactic clearly meant to change the subject, there were a couple of points Marissa wanted to address. Well, actually, just a big one, but she’d loop back around to it.

“We could pick a gender neutral name,” Marissa pointed out, smiling at the fact that Russell seemed to notice and care about that stuff without being close to Holland. That had to be a point in the pro-Russell column, which she was always trying to get people to pay attention to. He was such a sweet person. It was weird that no one seemed to care. “What about… I dunno, I like Casey. Or Dakota. Or Taylor?” She thought those all sounded pretty gender neutral.

“More importantly,” Marissa looked away from the baby and at Russell, “I know a lot about kids, so we can totally do this. It’ll work out. And… I’m never stuck with you, you know. I like hanging out with you. We’re friends.”