At the Reception

Part 3

Connor closed the door to his room behind him and began to pace around nervously. Two dates; that was all he had to sweep Jude off his feet. He had to plan the two most perfect dates that the world had ever seen or else this was all going to fall apart. So Connor did the only logical thing he could think of, picking up the phone and dialing Mariana.

"Mariana?" he said nervously when she picked up.

"Something you need, Connor?" She asked smugly.

"Look, I know it's your honeymoon and all but I need your help to plan the perfect date." Connor explained, pulling the phone away from his ear so Mariana's squeal wouldn't burst his ear drums.

"Wait, wait okay, so tell me what you had in mind first. I need to get a feel for what Jude would be expecting from you so whatever you do still feels like your idea." Mariana chattered away excitedly.

"Um," Connor said biting his lip, "I was thinking that we would go out for a nice dinner and then uh, we would go to this arcade place I know. It's called Kokomo's (A/N: that's an actual place by where I live and it's exactly what I'm basing this arcade place in the story off of) and they have mini-golf and go-karts and lazer tag and lots of arcade games and I don't know, I thought Jude might like that."

"Okay Connor, so why the hell did you call me then? Sounds like you already have the perfect date in mind." Mariana chided.

"I-I do?" Connor stuttered.

"Yes Connor, you do, so just go with it." she answered sharply.

"Wait what about after that?" Connor asked.

"What do you mean, 'after that' Connor?" Oh, right he didn't explain to Mariana what they were doing.

"Well," Connor said, drawing out the first word. "We're doing like a, I don't know, 'trial dating' thing. We're going on two dates, and after that, I don't know. That's why this date is so important," he explained. Connor couldn't see her, but he swore that he could sense that she rolled her eyes.

"You're going to knock it out of the park, you know, since you both are obviously madly in love with each other. There's no way this could go wrong!" Mariana exclaimed. "God, if you two weren't both so freaking scared you'd already be married by now."

"You still haven't answered my question about the second date." Connor sighed, ignoring her comment.

"Follow your instincts," she replied, hanging up. Connor stared at his phone for a moment. He had expected Mariana to be more helpful. But then again he did call her while she was on her honeymoon, so he supposed that she probably didn't want to talk to him. But anyway, their call meant that Connor felt pretty set on what their first date was going to be (for the most part; he just needed to pick a restaurant), and he was getting more nervous by the second.

Jude stood in front of the mirror, nervously fixing his hair. He and Connor had known each other for four years and they were just now going on their first date. He had almost a full two days to warm up to the idea, but "warming up" to it meant that he was now fully terrified that he was going to mess up the whole date.

He examined his outfit again. Connor had told him to wear something "casual, but also sort of dressy" to use his words, so Jude had chosen green skinny jeans (green being Connor's favorite color), a blue button-up (foregoing his usual bow tie since Connor did say casual and choosing blue because it was Jude's favorite color), and black converse shoes. Or at least that's what he was wearing now. Since he started getting ready at 5:00 (yes he started getting ready two hours early), he had changed at least six different times, deciding that nothing he had tried on to that point looked good. He was thinking though that the combination of their two favorite colors in his outfit seemed to be working quite well, so he went back to fussing with his hair.