Ticktock Love

[9] The Sisterhood of the Traveling News

Until the Olsen twins' party, the most embarrassing thing I had ever done was run butt naked through my elderly neighbor's garden, sparkling like I had just spent the night in a glitter powder factory.

There were two mitigating circumstances in that situation. One, I was five years old, evading my mother who tried to scrub me clean after I coated myself in glue and confetti. My art project had been inspired by a show on Hollywood celebrities that 'shone like night stars', and I already knew back then where my aspirations lay. Two, we moved away four months later, and I never even glimpsed that woman again. The only time I got reminded of this memory was during sleepless nights when my brain would decide to bring up fun scenarios for us to stress over together.

The most embarrassing thing after the Olsen twins' party?

I slept in Aiden's t-shirt.

There were no excuses this time. Sure, it was midnight by the time I dropped Amber home, helped her sneak into her bedroom, and then repeated the same procedure within my own four walls, again bumping into that damn elephant statue. But I wasn't drunk, and no stimulants clouded my judgment. There was a slight possibility that I was a stereotypical heroine in a romance novel, but my clumsiness was a sporadic rather than a perpetual trait.

Once in the safety of my humble sanctuary, I took off both his t-shirt and my ruined polka dress, shed them on the reading recliner in the corner, and donned my favorite pair of pajama shorts covered in clapperboard emojis. I usually slept in old, faded t-shirts, but all the usual candidates seemed to be in the wash. I glanced at the discarded blue fabric draped over the rolled armchair, a semi-clean alternative with the added benefit of a lingering Aiden scent.

I put it back on.

There was no excuse; I had become the ultimate cliché. Remarkably, not even that dreadful thought could have stopped me from sugary, peaceful dreams of me enjoying a garden stroll with Robert Pattison and Mr. Darcy. The latter suspiciously resembled the guy whose clothes I was wearing, the only difference present in the shape of sensational sideburns.

A garbage disposal truck woke me up, rolling down the street like a bowling ball aiming for pins. I groaned as I checked the time – 7:54 a.m. – but no matter how many times I turned my pillow over and kneaded it like stubborn bread dough, there was no way I could fall asleep again. I rolled the blinds about one quarter up and flopped on the mattress, stomach down, like a heavy wooden plank. With my head propped on my palms and my legs akimbo, I covertly sniffed the t-shirt one last time, and then closed my eyes to daydream about the recent events.

Was it possible that he... liked me?

The evidence was there, scattered across a two-week time frame. He wanted me to join him and his friends during their movie night hangout. He asked me to partner up for our Film Production class. He lent me his clothes and paraded his surprisingly defined pecs. And maybe the most important clue: despite my half-assed attempts to convince myself otherwise, I could have sworn he wanted to kiss me right before Amber and Troy interrupted us.

But a tiny voice in my head still wouldn't leave me alone. There was, after all, a pretty solid possibility his abs had warped my sense of perception. The bathroom was poorly lit at best. And maybe his asking me to work on a project together was actually a bad thing – maybe an A+ in Film Production class was his sole goal all along.

Because... why? I asked the cackling devil on my shoulder. Why would a guy who had over two million followers on a video-sharing app want to collaborate with a girl who had zero? I shook my head at his flawed logic and turned on TikTok.

The break-in material from two nights ago was still uploaded there, its views unsurprisingly nonexistent. I remembered my promise to forward it to Amber, but I had no option to share anything while the video was set on private. I clicked on its privacy settings and scrutinized the options, opting for the public access so I could get the link. I also checked the 'Duet and React' box so she'd be able to comment. At the time, I had no fear about the video going public – it had no description, no hashtags, plus it had been up on the server for over twenty-four hours, so the algorithm surely wasn't going to promote it.