Tinder - D.JH.

twenty-two

(real life representation of the slumber party group. maya on the left, andrea in the middle, dan on the right.)

     By the time Dan, Andrea, and I make it through three rounds of Mario Kart, it was about midnight. Andrea had insisted for Dan to stay, her reasoning being, "If you Uber back now, the creepy clowns could getcha." which was enough to make him stay.

I offered Dan my bed since Andrea and I would be making a fort and didn't want to annoy him if he slept on the sofa, but Dan waved me off, saying he'd never been to a real life girl's slumber party. So, to give him the real girlish experience, we decided to read some of Dan's fanfiction on camera with him.

I need bleach for my fucking brain.

We read smutty oneshots to make Dan uncomfortable, but eventually, we stumbled across something... worse.

A little something called The Hat Fic.

Let me let you in on a little secret, if you've never read The Hat Fic. Never do it. You will never be the same. I have never experienced so much smut and destruction in anything before. Pornography would fluster and hide its face at this short story.

After painstakingly trucking our way through the fanfiction, we make an awkward sign off as I flick the camera off.

We sit in silence, none of us daring to make eye contact with each other.

"So," I say.

"So." Dan repeats, his brown eyes wide open, staring at my carpet.

"I'm gonna be sick." Andrea pushes herself up from the ground quickly, sprinting around the corner, down the corridor, and into the bathroom.

Dan and I make eye contact for the first time in half an hour. As soon as we meet each other's eyes, we erupt in fits of giggles.

"That was disgusting!" Dan yells.

"Who the fuck are your fans?!" I yell back through laughter.

     Dan lays back on the floor, his entire body shaking as he laughs. "I don't fucking know!"

     "I—I," I stutter out, "I LOVE THEM!"

     "ME, TOO!" Dan yells, half choking half laughing.

     Eventually, the laughing calms down as we lay staring up at my white ceiling. Every now and then, one of us will remember something and start giggling again, which makes the other one giggle, too, but it dies out quickly. Now in silence, Andrea stumbles back into the room. "Butterbeer is not nearly as good coming up as it is going down." she decides, gripping the doorway with her sweaty palms.

     "We should make a fort." I decide, standing up from my crossed-legs position and stretching my arms above me.

     "Where are your blankets?" Dan asks as he stands, too. I tell him that they're in the corridor closet, and that we could take my duvet and pillows off my bed and the throw pillows off the sofa to make it more comfy.

     I go to my bedroom and strip my bed of all the bedding before coming back to the lounge and putting it in the middle of the floor. Dan returns before Andrea does, seeing as she's grabbing stools and weights to help make the fort. Dan drops the blankets he had in his hands into the centre of the room, on top of my bedding and looks back at the doorway momentarily.

     Deciding silently that it's peaceful, he turns back and grabs at the onesie fabric around my waist, pulling me to him quickly. He wraps his left hand around the small of my back and his right goes up to the back of my hair. He balls my hair up in his fist and pushes my face to his, connecting our lips.

     Seeing as this all happened in approximately.2 seconds, I was taken aback and a little bit shocked. After I came to my senses, I kissed back and wrapped my arms loosely around his neck, resting my elbows on his shoulders.

Then, Andrea walks in.

"Okay, I'll leave you two horndogs alone." she grins, shoving a handful of fresh popcorn in her mouth.

"I thought you went to go get stuff to build a fort." I say, quickly wiping my bottom lip as I turn around to face her.

"Yeah, so I was looking in the pantry, right?" Andrea starts in on a story.

"For stools?" Dan asks.

She completely ignores him, "And then I saw this popcorn. I was like 'Damn, this looks like some good ass popcorn' so I popped that bitch and I don't regret a second of it, if I'm being honest." Andrea waves around another handful of popcorn while she speaks.

"Sure." I say, narrowing my eyes, a smile on my face.

"Yeah, now I'm too lazy to walk all the way back to the kitchen." she sighs. "So, what are we watching?" she points to my movie box.