Pearl was ecstatic when Jasper really did decide to stick around and taste a few of the dishes and just enjoy the general atmosphere. And she was impressed with just how well Mala seemed to take to everything, but after having her as a student for some time now, she already knew the proper rhythm to step in when teaching the child; making things even easier. Soon, Mala could likely make all these meals on her own if she wanted to and wouldn't have to rely on takeout. Pearl chuckled to herself. Now if only her mother could follow that as well, but Pearl didn't mind the thought of making meals for Jasper in the mean time.<br/><br/>"There's a... oh wow. I didn't even..." She burst out laughing, pressing a palm to her forehead as she gazed at the dishwasher magically appearing from the cabinetry. "I just assumed your place was like mine and didn't have one. Of course somewhere as nice as this has a dishwasher..." Her face was flush from laughing and embarrassment as she helped Jasper fill the machine and stuck around to even clean a few after that she insisted the machine would break trying to wash.<br/><br/>Pearl did end up staying the night that night after having danced her heart out and having a much better time than she would have otherwise wallowing at home over the unhappiness of missing her loveless lover. She loved it there and they seemed to accept her happily even as she tried to be polite and feign the need to leave. Mala would not have it and her mother was happy as long as she was. Pearl would of even happily treated it like a sleepover had the girl not had school the next day, but the nights didn't end there. For the next month, it seemed Pearl was often sleeping over that house on Sundays after she and Mala tuckered themselves out cooking and prepping all the meals for the three of them for the rest of that week. Only one of those weeks did Pearl legitimately have to go home in the evening because she had someone waiting on her for a private lesson and even still, Mala held tight to the woman practically to the door. Pearl didn't want to leave either, but she knew there was no way her time away while she was with her girlfriend would get paid and so she had to take what she got.<br/><br/>As that time went on, Pearl started noticing her infatuation was developing even more into something of a solid crush on the mother of her student. She almost felt like she was betraying Shay for even having a semblance of these feelings, but it was having those feelings that made her realize she hadn't felt this way in a long time. Pearl had always assumed things were stalling out with Shay, but she always believed they could be fixed. When was the last time she'd felt about her girlfriend how she felt about Jasper, though? Pearl was weighed down with the guilt of having these feelings and was left wondering which way to lean. Either she'd keeping trying to fix whatever was wrong between Shay and herself, a task she'd already been a few months into, or to drop everything and explore whatever this was with Mala's mother? But who was to say Jasper even had feelings for her? The woman spent a lot of their time together teasing her, but she'd never done more than that and the teasing could have always been a friendly thing.<br/><br/>Pearl went into that Saturday's class with a heavy heart and a clouded mind. It was clear she wasn't all there, but if Mala and Jasper paused to ask if she was OK, she'd just smile and evade it and push Mala harder onto the next exercise, convinced that they could power through the lesson with Sunday on the horizon for her to relax a little more. She unfortunately didn't make it that far, however. Between her confused heart, clouded mind, and her exhausted body, all the running around Pearl had been doing finally caught up to her that evening and in the middle of showing Mala one of the newer moves, she ended up passing and collapsing to the floor.