After dinner was finally over, everyone pitched in cleaning up the veranda and washing the dishes. Raven, Annie, Renee and Mira were friends since middle school and it showed as they all joined in singing songs as they cleaned, Deimos and Kalmin exchanging reaction looks whenever they did something hilariously overdramatic like raising a huge dripping plate up in the air and singing the Circle of Life. Sophie and her girlfriend Rika came home afterwards and popped in to say hi to everyone before wandering into her bedroom. Annie, Deimos and Mira ended up in the living room after everything was clean and Kalmin was in the kitchen making cookies with Raven. She hummed as she worked, music a constant thing as it played softly from her phone. They decided to make M&M and chocolate chip cookies, and both of the mixed kids had to keep the kitchen on lockdown as Mira and Annie kept stealing the chocolate chips and M&Ms.

“Your house is crazy,” Kalmin laughed as he folded in the chocolate chips and M&Ms into the dough to Mira and Annie’s despair. (They were pouting in the living room watching him bake.)

“When it’s just the five of us, it’s the most insane,” Raven laughed, pulling out the cookie sheets.

“I’m amazed you guys have been able to stay together for so long.”

“Eight years is a long time,” she laughed. “I’ve known them for half my life. But what about you and Aaron? You two are close as well.”

Kalmin nodded. “We met in high school, so five years. Been through a lot.”

“God, I know how it feels, I’ve known Mira the longest. Ten years of my life with that idiot,” she snickered. “I love her to bits.”

“I love Aaron too,” Kalmin sighed. “I guess both of us are kind of going through the same thing.”

“Our best friends finding bester friends?”

He chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Raven sighed. She took the bowl from him and started scooping out the first batch. “It is a little lonely at first but they’re finding someone who loves them.”

Kalmin leaned on the counter and glanced at Deimos and Mira. They were cuddled up on the couch, silently watching whatever was on TV now.

“Do you think it’s going to work out between Gabriel and Aaron?” Raven asked suddenly.

Kalmin looked back at her. “I just want the best for both of them. And hey, maybe this road trip will be a good bonding experience for them.”

She nodded. “It’s going to be a bonding experience for all of us.”

“That sounds foreboding,” Mira commented. Kalmin jumped as Mira had suddenly appeared right beside him with a clean spoon in her hand. Raven laughed and immediately shielded the bowl of cookie dough away from her.

“Dude, chill,” Raven said as Mira crept up to her.

“Just one scoop!”

“You’re not seven! Wait until I’m done and then you can lick the whole bowl clean!”

“Raven!” Mira whined. Kalmin chuckled as they bickered, Raven finally letting Mira get a monstrous scoop. After the first batch was finished and in the oven, Raven had everything under control now and Kalmin wandered back into the living room. Mira had already cleaned her spoon and smiled at Kalmin as he sat down beside them.

“Hey,” she said happily.

“Hi,” he replied back.

For a bit, all four of them silently watched TV until Mira checked her phone and untangled herself from Deimos.

“What’s up?” Her boyfriend asked calmly.

“Gonna check on the paintings in the garage,” she murmured, walking around the couch.

“The paintings in the garage?” Kalmin blurted out.

Mira paused and smiled at him. “Yeah, you wanna see? They’re from the art party.”

“I’d love to,” he said quickly.

Their garage was very different from normal garages Kalmin has been in. Usually there was a car and shelves of storage but what he got was the remnants of the art party. Empty paint cans, water guns, soiled paint brushes, the occasional bright paint splatter and the little army of paintings lining the floors. They varied in size from printing paper to four feet wide, incredibly bright and colourful and contrasted strongly against the dull grey concrete. They were all an individual a burst of colour that ranged in styles from star-cluster splatters to stringy streaks. Some pieces looked like colourful rivers or psychedelic mountains or inverted galaxies. One piece in particular caught his eye for not only being the biggest piece in the collection but also the most intricate and detailed. Every millimetre of the piece was covered in tiny dots, tiny coloured stars. From far away, the dots molded into new colours, into clusters of shades of pink, blue and yellow, but up close they were all miniscule dots of several colours. Unlike the other works, there wasn’t any variation in shapes. They were all dots, no stringy lines or streaks or strokes of a paint brush. The painting looked like galaxies colliding, its stars swirling into an intergalactic tango, twirling and twisting and circling together. It was beautiful.

“Wow,” he said softly.

Mira walked over beside him and smiled. “I finished varnishing them this morning.”

“This is incredible,” he said, astonished. “You’re incredible.”

“It was a group effort,” Mira laughed.

Kalmin bent down to look at the detail in the work. Mira sat beside him, cross legged with her knees touching him. He asked about how she was able to get such fine dots and apparently the technique was by diluting the paints and tapping the brush’s handle instead of whipping the paint.

“Is this for any kind of exhibition?” He asked.

“No, this is just for fun. I might sell some but, I’m thinking of keeping this one,” she replied softly.

“Any reason why?”

Mira glanced at him and smiled. “For this one, we assigned each other a base colour. I was red and so all the shades of red, including pink, symbolize me in this piece.”

“I was blue,” a new voice interrupted. Deimos leaned against the door, staring down at the two in the garage. Kalmin couldn’t decipher that stare. Was he jealous? Was he indifferent? He walked over and sat beside him.

“Oh,” Kalmin said softly. He glanced down and noticed the pronounced blue and red in the piece and how the colours never really separated.

“Gabriel was yellow and Raven was purple,” Mira murmured. “Hey, I think you’d be a nice green.”

“Me?” Kalmin blinked. He looked down at the painting again and noticed there was an absence of green.

“Yeah, I can see that,” Deimos pondered out loud. “A rich green. Like pine forests.”

Mira nodded happily. “Yeah, yeah, a green that reminds you of home. Warm and soft.”

Kalmin blushed. “T-Thanks?”

The two of them chuckled. “It’s a compliment,” Mira said, leaning against him. Kalmin felt his face burn up and he rubbed his neck nervously. Mira and Deimos were great.

Too great.