I agree Cookie. She did get a little closer to smut there. We should be very proud.
:rotflmao: how is that closer to smut?!!? well i suppose its closer then "they kissed [the end]" but... *sigh* you guys are trying to corrupt me!!!!!!
Chapter 34
After a not exactly relaxing Spring Break filled with many awkward moments, school began once more. Just a week after they’d returned, Sydney was sitting at her computer working on an assignment (aka playing Spider Solitaire), when she heard a very overzealous knocking at her door. Before she could even get up though, Michael burst through the door looking shockingly like Kramer from Seinfeld, at least, in his entrance fashion anyway. “Um… hi,” Sydney said slowly.
“Guess what?” he asked, his grin stretching from ear-to-ear. She shrugged and gave him a confused look. “I got in!”
Sydney squealed. “You got into Penn?!”
“I got into Penn,” he grinned back at her. Sydney squealed, bolted from her desk and jumped up into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist.
“What’s with all the scream- oh god,” Jessica moaned and covered her eyes when she saw her brother and friend embracing. “Jesus you two, it’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“Jess!” Sydney groaned as she slid down from Michael. “We’re just celebrating! Michael got into Penn!”
“Oh excellent!” Jess grinned. She gave her brother a quick hug before retreating to her room to avoid witnessing any more “celebrations.”
“I’m just so… I don’t even know,” Michael laughed, his goofy grin never leaving his face. “This is
so great!”
“I know,” Sydney said before kissing him. “I’m very excited to you. You’re going to go to Penn and become a great, successful lawyer.”
“Assuming I don’t flunk out…”
“Puh-leeze,” Sydney rolled her eyes. “You, Michael Vaughn, have never failed anything.”
“Oh that’s not true,” he shook his head. Sydney gave him an utterly confused look. “Yeah, in seventh grade I failed my project in Tech Ed… yeah, my little metal car totally fell apart.”
Sydney rolled her eyes again. “Yeah, that’s like failing something.”
“I got an F!” he defended.
“Well, I got an F on that project too,” she laughed recalling how her car was so misshapen and mangled it didn’t even roll properly. Michael muttered under his breath and sat down on Sydney’s bed. She walked over to him and sat down on his lap, combing her fingers through his hair. “You are going to do awesome in law school because you love it and you’re totally kicking ass in your law classes now. You’re going to be the best student at that school and I’m gonna be so, so proud of you.”
“Yeah?” he asked, his smile slowly beginning to return.
“Yeah,” she said, nudging him playfully. “So we need to celebrate. You wanna go out to dinner tonight, on me? Anywhere you want,” she enticed with a smile.
He shook his head. “If we’re going to celebrate I
definitely don’t want to do it over dinner,” he informed her with a wicked grin. Then, he bit her neck playfully and she squealed loudly.
“
God,” they heard Jess moan from behind the bathroom door. “I can’t even pee without feeling the urge to vomit. We’re going to have to soundproof that room!” she shouted to them. Sydney and Michael exchanged eye rolls.
~*~
Michael was on his ‘I got into Penn!’ high for two more weeks until the full reality of what going to Penn entailed hit. He realized he needed a place to live and things to live with in that place, not to mention the fact that he was essentially moving across the state. Slowly he gathered everything he needed with the help of Sydney and his parents, which helped ease his moving trepidation.
As the semester wore on, Sydney was too busy to notice how quickly the time was passing. Easter blew by her since she hardly had time to enjoy it at all; she was writing papers. With the week before finals, she finally got a break from her work. Extraneous class work, that was; she still had finals to study for.
One night, she was finally crawling into bed around one a.m. when she heard her cell phone ringing. Groaning, she took her phone out into the hall to answer it so she didn’t wake Cara, who was already asleep. “Oh my god, I’m graduating!” she heard Michael’s voice the moment she grumbled a hello.
“Um… yes…,” she said slowly.
“No, but I’m
graduating,” he said.
“Yes…,” she sighed. She wasn’t sure if it was just her exhaustion that was making her befuddled or whether it was actually Michael making no sense at all. “Are you just now realizing this?”
“Yes!”
“Are you freaking out?”
“YES!”
“I’ll be over in a minute,” she sighed. She quietly walked back into her room, grabbed her sweatshirt, keys and ID card, and then left to go to Michael’s dorm room.
When she arrived and walked to his second floor room, she found him pacing the hallways. “I mean… I’m
graduating; I’m going to be a college graduate. That means I’m no longer a student!” he exclaimed.
“No it doesn’t. Michael, you’re going to
law school – that makes you a student still,” Sydney told him.
“But it’s not the saaaaame,” he groaned. “And law school, god, what was I thinking?! That’s crazy – that’s FOUR more years of school!! Do you know how long that is?! I’m going to be twenty-six by the time I’m done. TWENTY-SIX! That’s more than halfway towards thirty and I’m going to have no money and no job and no place to live and I’m going to end up in the gutters of downtown Philly next to a homeless bum shooting up cocaine!”
Sydney couldn’t help but laugh at this. “Seriously, Michael, you need to calm down. First, I don’t think you can shoot up cocaine. Second, you’re not going to end up in a gutter and being twenty-six and jobless is okay because you’re going to have a degree that’s going to land you an awesome job.”
“You think so?” he asked cautiously.
“I know so,” she told him with a smile. Then, she walked over and hugged him around the waist. “It’s going to be great.”
“Thanks,” he sighed into her hair. “Sorry for freaking.”
“It’s okay,” she said, looking up to him with a smile. “Freaking out is allowed.”
“I love you.”
“Yeah I love ya, too – can I go to bed now?!” she groaned, though she was only half-joking.
“Yeah,” he laughed. She kissed him gently before walking towards the stairway, but before she reached it, he called out her name and she turned. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” she winked.