❝I know it's hard for you to be friends with a girl without objectifying her - but lucky me, not everyone's you!❞
❝Oh yeah. 𝙁𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙨. The lady goth protest too much.❞
❝𝘿𝙤𝙩𝙝, Gavin. Doth.❞
→ From Van Zandt family disappointment and Grade 8...
"Hey," he said in an unfamiliar tone. Nerves. Definitely nerves. The feeling was mutual.
I nodded and greeted him in return. Everything around us seemed to be going so fast, it was all a blur of movement as we remained stuck in our awkwardness and silence.
"Did you get home okay?" The way he spoke made me think he was trying to say something else like we were speaking in code but only one of us was in on it. He paused and seemed flustered. "Of course you got home okay. You're here."
"Yep. I mean, I'm totally grounded, but other than that..."
"What? Seriously?"
"It's fine. I mean, I'm not a party person anyway." I waved it off despite the sudden dip of disappointment as I said it. "And in all fairness, I'm the last person who should attend a Paige Michalchuk celebration. It's not my scene."
"That's not true." He said it in a way that made me think he was taking offense on my behalf.
I ignored the way the words cut through me and changed the subject with a short huff and a smile. "So, ready for your grand musical gesture?"
He gave me a confused look despite having his guitar case in his grasp.
"The song you wrote for Ashley." I was never one to mince words.
Understanding dawned on him but dissolved into a look impossible to read. "Right. The song. For Ash."
"You okay there, buddy?"
"Yeah. Just...glad we got some quality time." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I missed my best friend."
"Yeah, it was...nice that we got to do that." And I wasn't sure what I was referring to. All I knew was that I hated this conversation with everything in me. My brain caught up to my mouth, and I panicked a little. "Spend time together. Productively, I mean. For the song. Which Ashley will obviously, like, swoon over."
"Well, that's the point. The swooning."
"Obviously. What girl wouldn't want an angsty love song written about them?" I tried to lift my tone, but it was heavy as a boulder at the foot of a steep hill — and I was already so exhausted. "Good luck."
I turned around and walked to my locker, and I thought for just a second about how this would happen in a movie. How a hand would grab my arm and there's be some cheesy love confession. A small part of me wanted to turn around, to be the one to give in.
It reminded me of all the standards my mother would talk about, the rules her potential dates had to abide by, and how every single qualifier flew out the window every time. What she dreamt of and what she accepted never met in the middle, and I was only beginning to understand why.
Only as I was turning the corner did I actually look back the way I came and, as I predicted, he was long gone.
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