24 Dates

Date One

DATE ONE:

Place: Ed’s Italian

Time: April 9th, 7:00 pm

Yelp: 5/5 stars | Date: ⅖ breadsticks being shoved into a purse

Jennie's hands are sweating and she wipes them off on her dress without thinking. Her lip has been wedged in between her teeth all day, she’s picked out five different outfits and three different hairstyles so far. Now her hair is down, mussed but not particularly messy. It’s a sexy mess.

She fidgets, brings her hand up to her hair and then rips it away because in less than five minutes Rosie is going to be here, and Jennie can’t mess up her hair after getting it like this.

This date needs to be perfect. Everything is on the line now that she officially doesn’t have Rosie as her patient anymore. If it’s terrible Rosie could decide to never speak to her again, and then Jennie wouldn’t know what condition her health is in (and she’d never see her smile, or laugh or hear that God awful RosiePosie! thing again).

Jennie glances at the door and then at the clock on her wall. Rosie's supposed to be here at 6:45, and Jennie's supposed to take them to the restaurant; though Jennie doesn’t know why she didn’t just pick Rosie up from the apartment and go straight to the restaurant. Poor planning.

Jennie sighs and looks at the door again, and that’s when she hears a noise. Murmuring, actually.

She walks up to the door, puts her ear against it.

“Hello! Are you ready for your date with the greatest super idol in the universe RosiePosie! - No, that’s dumb. Maybe - Jennie must be super excited to finally buy Rosie dinner and - err… no. That’s too forward.”

Jennie can feel her lips turn up, can’t stop the small laugh from leaving her mouth. She chews the inside of her cheek before opening the door to suppress the smile, only to have her mouth fall open at the sight of Rosie.

Rosie's cheeks turn bright red. “Hi.”

Jennie looks her up and down a few times. Her light pink dress, the silver necklace around her smooth, pale neck; the black heels, the way her hair curls around the edges of her face. Red lipstick, nude eyeshadow, glimmering eyes. She swallows and unconsciously brings her hand up to her hair, begins to twirl one strand.

“Hi,” Jennie says back. And they’re both quiet and neither can stop staring, but Rosie's gaze seems almost penetrative - or gross - maybe not the right word, but intense. It’s intense. She looks at Jennie’s eyes and lips and nose, down to her chest, down at her legs, and then back up.

“Hi,” she says again. “You look,” she swallows, “nice.”

“Not the introduction you planned on?”

Rosie grows even redder, all the way to the tips of her ears and top of her chest. “How much of that did you hear?”

Jennie quirks her head to the side, and places a finger against her lips. “Well, there was: Are you ready for your date with the greatest super idol in the universe RoseiPosie! - and then--”

“Okay, okay! ” she waves her hands and shakes her head. Making Jennie finally give in and laugh. “Anyways, my driver is waiting outside.”

Jennie creases her brows together. She was pretty certain she was driving them. Afterall, she’d been the one to pick the place out, it was her date; theirs, but still hers. “I thought I was driving.”

Rosie shrugs. “I just thought, you know, since he brought me here and everything.”

Jennie looks at Rosie again, really looks. And suddenly it doesn’t even matter because Jennie would take public transit right now if it meant going on this date. “Okay,” she says. Her stomach flutters, like when people talk about having butterflies. She always thought of it as sort of melodramatic, but then she sees Rosie and feels that pull, that light brush.