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Senior year had not panned out as Janis pictured. She expected to stare at a graduation countdown daily, skip as many days as possible without receiving detention, and avoid any sort of extracurricular event with her classmates. Barring the school musical for Damian, of course.
This year, though, she had a larger friend group— definitely an unconventional one. Damian, of course, Cady, occasionally Shane Oman, Aaron visiting from college, and all three of the ex-plastics.
One of which she was dating.
Kind of seriously, actually.
If someone told Janis a year ago that she’d be dating Regina George, she probably would’ve tried calling the police.
She made good on her promise, and though she was still rough around the edges at times, Regina made a genuine effort to change. She’d never be a saint, but Janis didn’t want her to be. That just wasn’t the type of person Regina was. There’d been a lot of trial and error at the beginning, both with Regina trying to find her footing and the budding relationship between the two of them.
The latter scared Janis at first quite a bit, honestly. She’d never really opened herself to such a thing and doing that with someone so crucial from her past was just… unthought of.
But things changed.
Regina’s smirks often transitioned into smiles, digs in the hallway became genuine conversations, and her overall bad attitude turned into someone Janis enjoyed being around.
Graduation was nearing now, and Janis had been with Regina for the better part of a year. She glanced over at the girl on the other side of her bed, face buried in her phone, and Janis inched herself closer.
“You’re gonna break your glasses laying down in them,” Janis lightly scolded, resting her head between the crook of Regina’s shoulder and neck.
“How else am I gonna be able to see your pretty face?” Regina questioned, moving her phone away to actually look at her, and Janis nudged her for the cheesy remark.
“I can’t believe no one knows you wear contacts.”
“ You only know because you were there that one morning I woke up with them still in.” Regina frowned, dropping her phone to rest just below her pink sports bra. “I should’ve convinced you the redness was from being really high or something.”
“Hm.” Janis leaned a little more into her, her left arm wrapping around Regina’s waist. The Regina in bed with her was not the version she presented to most people. Her hair was very much in a messy bun atop her head, blonde strands haphazardly strewn over her pillow. She had a clear face with absolutely no makeup, which Janis knew she was secretly very self conscious about, large black frame glasses, and her spandex workout clothes— glorified underwear, in Janis’s opinion. She’d seen the way Regina worked out; she wasn’t burning anything off with the way she crawled on her treadmill.
It had to be one of her favorite sights. No one else was privy to it. The number of her paintings inspired by it was definitely high, but she knew she wouldn’t be showing them to anyone else.
“We still doing date night?” Regina asked, dropping her head a little to rest on Janis’s.
“Isn’t that why I’m here?”
“You’re always here,” Regina deadpanned.
Janis simply chuckled, fighting the urge to close her eyes. “We could do something we haven’t before.”
“Like?”
“Uh, I don’t know.” She thought for a moment, a comfortable silence forming around the two of them. “Like, um, bowling?”
Regina let out a hearty laugh, the motion jostling Janis’s head around a little. “Bowling? You hate sports.”
“Correction: I hate school sports teams. Northshore has no bowling team, meaning that bowling isn’t, like, even a sport,” Janis tried defending, ignoring Regina’s look of judgment.
“You want me to rent shoes? From a grimy public place? For a date?”
“For me?” Janis lifted her head, bottom lip jutting out, and attempted to bat her eyes. “We’ll put up the bumpers.”
Regina laughed again, turning onto her side to face her, phone dropping between them onto her mattress. “Pretty sure that’s just for little kids. Anyone above, like, thirteen, would break them. They probably won’t even let you.”
Janis blinked, the thought never even occurring to her. “Well, we can still try. Plus you have a lot of white clothes you can wear under the black lights.” She smiled. “My girl will glow .”
Regina rolled her eyes, willing the blush to go away. “I always glow.”
She took a moment to take in Regina’s entire appearance then. Reddened cheeks, crooked glasses, small smile, messy hair. Janis could practically feel her eyes soften, butterflies whirring in her stomach. “You are beyond beautiful.”
The words must’ve taken Regina aback, eyebrows lifting just above the rim of her glasses. Of course she heard compliments like that all the time, and she was known to always take them in stride. But here, in bed with Janis, while she was less than what she would consider presentable, it wasn’t what she expected. Regina lifted her right hand to Janis’s arm, delighting in the goosebumps that rose from the contact. “You’re something else, you know that? I love you so much.”
Janis’s face drastically changed suddenly, and it wasn’t for another few seconds that Regina realized what she said. They’d been stepping around those three words for, as far as Regina knew, the last month or so. Still, they held a lot of weight to them, and they were nothing but the truth. She would’ve said them even earlier if Janis wouldn’t have rebutted with a U-Haul joke.
“Wait, you’re-“
“That totally wasn’t how I wanted to say it,” Regina groaned, hand sliding down from Janis’s arm. She slammed her eyes shut and dropped her head onto her pillow. “I’m sorry. That sucked.”
Neither of them said anything for a minute, and Regina was worried her heart was going to beat out of her chest. Before this, she hadn’t worried at all about Janis saying it back, but the silence was telling her another story.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Regina felt her stomach clench roughly at that, opening her eyes to see Janis’s expression. She was preparing to tell Janis that no , she meant exactly what she said but stopped at the smile on the other girl’s face.
“Regina,” Janis started, sneaking her arms back around Regina’s waist. “Dude.” They both chuckled, and Regina felt some of the tension leave her. “I literally wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”
“Seriously?”
Janis nodded, smile practically overtaking her face now. “I get to imagine you just like this when I think about you saying you love me.” She motioned toward her, and Regina fought the urge to pull the blanket up to her R necklace.
“I look like shit.”
She rolled her eyes, placing a soft kiss to Regina’s cheek. “You definitely don’t. I love seeing you like this.”
Regina schooled her expression at hearing the word love , but she evidently failed when Janis pulled her in just a bit tighter.
“And for the record,” Janis paused, kissing her other cheek. “And so you can start breathing again.” She kissed the tip of her nose this time. “I love you, too.”
Regina pulled her in for an actual kiss, both of them grinning into it. They fell back onto the mattress, arms still wrapped around each other.
“Fuck date night and stay in?” Regina mumbled, kissing Janis’s neck.
“Yeah,” Janis agreed a little breathily. “We can’t have you breaking the bumpers.” They both laughed again, meeting for a kiss, and Janis pulled off Regina’s glasses, leaning over to set them on the nightstand. “Or these.”
Regina rolled her eyes, pulling Janis back in for a kiss. Though the moment wasn’t as either of them planned, neither was their relationship. Despite the events from only a year before, there they were now— happy, young, and in love.