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Talking to Tallulah had helped. She'd been convinced that she'd done the right thing, which of course Dani had known on a peripheral level anyway, but it had also been nice to just spend some time with one of her only girlfriends and chill out after the stressful events of the days prior. She had a few things that she'd left at Parker's place, and earlier that morning she'd totally talked herself into heading over there, ducking in to gather her clothes, and heading out without much more than the barest conversation. It had seemed like a great plan at the time. Parker couldn't get annoyed that she was just taking back her own stuff, right? He would probably not even be home. Who knew where he'd be.

She tried not to think about it, worry about it. Him. Dani wasn't used to considering anyone before herself, and though she'd adjusted when it came to Parker, she still predominantly thought of herself. (Obviously. Her own future was way more important to her than preserving her relationship with Parker. The more days that were put between her present and the proposal, she found herself glad that he hadn't wanted to continue dating. Really.

Really!)

But once she got to the building, she was swamped with an intense, crushing wave of sadness. How many times had she snuck in to see Parker? How many times had she tucked herself up against him in bed, fallen asleep listening to him breathing? They'd slept together, innocent and not-so-innocent, had breakfast, showered. She'd started to come to see his and Tate's apartment as a second home, even if his roommate was clearly and definitely less than thrilled about that. It was just too much, too soon. Dani was expecting way too much of herself.

And it really pissed her off that she would stand there and consider that she was expecting too much of herself. She was Dani Rymner! ******** this weeping-after-the-fact bullshit. She wasn't some pathetic, simpering ex-girlfriend. She was a strong, independent teenage girl! She could do whatever the hell she wanted!

She could kick down his goddamn door and demand her stuff back if she wanted!

Yeah!

Except, instead of Parker and Tate's door, she found herself in front of Grayson and Paul's. Though she'd only seen Paul in passing from time to time, she wasn't there to visit him; she wanted to talk to Grayson, maybe see about getting together to patrol with him again. She still wasn't really feeling the whole skirted warrior of justice routine yet again, but she would be. Magellan wasn't going to sit at home and cry into her pillow, after all. She didn't need Taranis any more than Dani needed Parker!

And Dani didn't!

(She had to pause a moment and scrub her hands over her face at the thought, but she didn't.)

She took a deep breath, gripped the doorknob, and turned it. Grayson often left it unlocked, so if he was home, this would be as good an indication as any. The door gave easily and she stepped through, peering around for any signs of her lazy, curly-headed friend.

She didn't see him, but she did see his roommate. Well, when he came around the corner, anyway.

"Hi," she said, with the casual tone of someone who Belonged Exactly Where She Was. "Is Grayson here?"

Well, crap. She'd initially come to the building to storm in and take her things back, but the wind had left her sails a bit at the prospect of dealing with A) Parker B)Tate or C) Parker and Tate. She didn't want the trip to be wasted, so she'd thought to go spend a little bit of time with Grayson and fill him in on the completely important details of her personal life, but he wasn't even around. What the hell was up with men, anyway? They were constantly doing exactly what you didn't want them to do.

Sure, it was great that he was working and all, and Paul probably appreciated it considering it meant he was able to pay half the rent, but it was really inconvenient for Dani.

She scowled.

"How long is he going to be at work, do you know?" She fussed with the hem of her sweater, tugging it a little further down over the pockets of her jeans. "I don't want to like, hang out here all day, but if it won't be too long then that's fine."

It seemed she'd just noticed the burrito in his hand, and in doing so, she raised her eyebrows. After a few beats of silence, she asked, "What kind of burrito is that?"

She wasn't hungry. She was just curious, and it would be awkward to just stand around and stare at each other if she was going to hang out there for a bit.

Dani checked her watch, decided that she could stand to wait for Grayson. She had no plans that afternoon and was caught up on her homework, which meant she now had enormous pockets of free time that had previously been dedicated to her boyfriend. She could always go running or rock climbing or something, but she'd just done both of those yesterday and her life was going to become really boring and repetitive really fast if she kept it up.

Seating herself on the sofa, she crossed her legs at the knee, raising her eyebrows when Paul disappeared into the kitchen. He hadn't even given her a chance to say that she wasn't hungry, so whatever. It would be his own fault when he came back with twice as much food. He'd probably eat it, anyway, since she thought she remember Grayson saying they were cousins and Grayson ate like a bear. Where he put it, she would never know, but it was slightly annoying to behold.

At the mention of her boyfriend, Dani's foot stopped its idle jiggling and her expression cooled. Paul couldn't see it, certainly, as he was still in the kitchen, and for his sake, Dani hoped he stayed in there. Well, it was largely for her sake too -- when it came to Parker these days, her reactions tended to be one of two very polarized, very powerful options. Tears or temper.

She didn't know Paul nearly well enough to be crying on him, and so she grasped at the fastest, easiest reaction available to her: anger. What business was it of his, anyway, how her relationship was doing? He didn't even know her. Ugh, why the hell were people such busybodies?

Annoyance strong in her tone, she balled her hands into fists atop her knees and said, "We broke up." No, that made it sound mutual. "Okay, actually, he dumped me because he's a dumbass and I'm responsible and mature." That sounded a little better.

"He wanted to get married," she fumed, apparently unable to simply let things lie. Why she felt like she had to clarify, she didn't know, except that maybe trash-talking Parker to anyone who would listen would make her feel better about herself and the situation she found herself in. Yeah, that was probably it. "And I said no, so he got all butthurt about it and decided he'd rather die forever alone than date until we're out of college."

To be fair, Dani hadn't even mentioned anything about college. She'd told him she didn't even know if she'd be with him in ten or twenty years; she'd actually been pretty mean about it, in her panic. But she didn't feel like being fair. She felt slighted, hurt, angry and completely justified in her response. Like she was going to sit back and undermine her own decision.

Anyway, as far as she knew, Paul didn't even know Parker. Or maybe he did, they lived in the same building. Whatever. Parker didn't want anything to do with her, so he could deal with the repercussions of breaking her heart.

"I'm fine," Dani said darkly. Her expression was an odd mixture of a scowl and a grimly satisfied smile; she was fine. At just that moment, she was perfectly fine. Maybe she had her moments where she fell apart at the seams and acted like any other teenager in the wake of a ruined relationship, but she was going to come out on top of this because she was Dani Rymner and god damn it she was not going to let some boy dictate the rest of her life. Obviously.

Her hands were balled into tight little fists on her knees, so she relaxed them, flexing her fingers. In, out, in, out; like little spider legs. Gross. "What sane guy isn't happy with dating and sex anyway? Getting married at this age is like, stupid."

She cast him a very unamused look. "Even Grayson doesn't want to marry Elke for like, ever. Ugh. Though they're going to prom."

And that was a hot, pokey little knife in her heart. She wanted to go to prom. She desperately wanted to go to prom.

But she was single.

God damn it.

"Not romantic delusions," she said, lifting one hand, finger extended. Her expression was serious, eyes slightly narrowed. "I love Parker. Loved. Ugh. Whatever. There were... things, there."

She was slightly uncomfortable, but wanted to make her point known. Dani was not just some loose, sex-mongering machine; to date, the only boy she'd ever dated for longer than a few months, and certainly the only boy she'd ever slept with, was Parker. Just because she hadn't wanted to run down the aisle with a ten-foot train behind her didn't mean that she hadn't been serious about the relationship, after all. That kind of thinking was narrow-minded and insulting. She liked Paul well enough, in the kind of peripheral sense where she didn't actually know him so she hadn't decided whether she really liked him or disliked him, so it would only be polite to correct him.

"I just wasn't ready for that kind of commitment. Dating is fine, but marriage? Is so not fine. Right now, anyway. I have a lot of things I want to do before I'm Mrs. Anybody, and instead of waiting for me to be ready, he decided that he didn't want me at all so, yeah. It's not like I'm some kind of heartless, raging skank who doesn't have an ounce of romance in her body."

Despite how harsh her words were, she didn't actually appear to be angry. Dani was just stating facts. Now, if Paul argued with her on whether or not there was truth in what she'd just said? Then she would get angry. But just about everyone got one chance to have their thinking Corrected By Dani, and she didn't hold it against them for being wrong.

At the question about prom, though, her shoulders inched down slightly. "Yes. Of course there's a prom. I have a dress and shoes and a matching clutch handbag, tickets, pretty much everything. Except, oh, you know. A date."

And now her scowl was dark and impressive. "Parker would have preferred I go in a wedding dress, after all."

Dani abruptly leaned back against the sofa, dropping her head so that her neck rested snugly against the top of it, and sighed. It sounded easy enough when you suggested oh, just go get another date! but it wasn't really that easy. Sure, maybe prom shouldn't have even been that big of a deal, but she'd missed her own sixteenth birthday party. She wanted to do something normal like all of her peers, and given the fact that she was Super Sailor Magellan on nights and weekends, she didn't exactly have a lot of opportunity to do that. Even having a boyfriend, which by all rights should have been completely normal and standard fare for a high school girl, had blown up in her face.

Couldn't anything just go simply and smoothly? Before awakening as Magellan, before Parker, her life had been simple. Exercise, school, homework. She'd been the only daughter to a couple of middle-class citizens, working her way through high school while she tried to pinpoint what she wanted to study in the future. Her main concerns had been grades and staying fit, and maybe boys, but only with the kind of idle curiosity that someone who wasn't really ready to date would have. Then she'd gotten a little older, had suddenly become a superhero, and had gotten a Very Serious Boyfriend. In short, things had spiraled out of control. And Dani really hated being out of control.

She'd been working on getting her life back where she wanted it, and she'd thought things had been going well. Well, wrong again. Her grades were fine, but her boyfriend was living on planet Stepford Wife while she was still firmly on twenty-first century Earth, and she was still expected to go out and fight the horrors of the Negaverse even though she'd almost died more times than she cared to count. So what if she was taking prom a little more seriously than she needed to. She thought she deserved that.

Luckily, her long silence didn't betray her thoughts. It just made her look kind of tired.

"It's not that easy. Everyone has a date already. Everyone who doesn't have a date? Probably doesn't have a date for a reason." She lifted her head, giving Paul a bland look. "And sure, some girls think it's all powerful or independent or whatever to go to a prom alone, but for me? It will look like exactly what it is. The recently dumped going to prom alone."

She crossed her arms and sighed. Parker couldn't have proposed to her after prom? Really?

"Who doesn't know about the prom," she asked, surprised. After a moment, however, it occurred to her: duh, Paul had just asked her about the prom. She gave him a long look, then asked, "Seriously?"

What followed was probably a little offensive overall, but that wasn't her intention. She subtly and quickly swept her eyes from Paul's socked feet to the tip of his head, making a mental note to get over the long hair, before settling her gaze back on his face again. As far as dates went, at this point she was pretty much a beggar and could definitely not be a chooser, but Paul wasn't so bad. She liked Grayson well enough, and his cousin seemed to be tolerable. They wouldn't look completely ridiculous if they went to prom together.

She pursed her lips and tapped her fingers against her knees. "Well, why don't you go with me, then?" She waited a beat, then added, "Like I said, I already have everything. We could even carpool with Elke and Grayson."

This was sounding better and better by the moment! In fact, it hadn't occurred to Dani that he might say no. The wheels in her head were already turning. If Paul didn't have a date, he'd definitely want one, right? Right! She was just the girl for a job!

Low-maintenance, already prepared, platonic date! It was pretty much perfect. He was going to be embarrassed that he hadn't thought of it himself.

If Dani could have been any more self-satisfied, she might have exploded. Sure, she hadn't accomplished her original goal by any means, but she'd managed to snag herself a date for prom with minimal effort. (Given who she was, though, if she'd actually been looking for a date, there would have been minimal effort anyway. She was attractive, athletic, and intelligent. Of course it would be easy to find a date.) She had to iron out a few details and let her parents know that she was back on for prom, but otherwise, it would be smooth sailing.

It seemed to be just the thing she needed to lift her spirits. For probably the first time since she'd arrived at the apartment, she smiled, lifting her hands to clap them once in front of her. Clasping them, she said seriously, "Purple. My dress is purple with black lace and trimming. It's a dark purple, but you could probably get away with like, a violet vest, or something. Unless you want to wear dark purple. I can swing by with my dress before prom and we can go shopping to make sure that we match if you want."

She scooted forward a little bit on the couch, her excitement apparently not allowing her to sit back against it anymore. "And yeah, we'll go to dinner beforehand. Usually there's like, a chocolate fountain or something there, but nothing substantial for dinner. We can go dutch on the meal."

What good was her allowance doing just sitting in the bank anyway? She could afford half a meal. She'd already paid for her dress and tickets, so it would be more of a waste of money not to go than to buy dinner.