There was a moment when I thought he would kiss me. He didn’t. “This, might be stupid to ask, but…can you do something for me?” I asked tentatively.

Ryan sighed again, pulling back from our foreheads touching. “Adrian, literally, nothing you can ask is stupid.” He began to speak, but stopped. “Unless it is stupid. Then I’ll tell you.” I snorted. “What do you want me to do?”

I snorted and smiled. “What you promised me we met with my dad. Can you, promise me that again?”

Ryan smiled. “Okay. I don’t remember it all, so, just bear with me,” he said, and began, “I’ll try to not leave you alone. I will always try to be there for you. If you ever feel lonely or unloved…” He trailed off. I raised my eyebrows, waiting for the rest. He continued after some time, “Can I revise it?” I nodded nervously. “Okay, um…if you ever feel lonely or unloved…” He paused, grabbing my hands. “…you’re so incredibly special to me that I really don’t want to see you feel that bad again, so I’ll try to make you feel happy and loved and special and stuff. And you need to smile always. I’ll try to do that, too.”

I softly smiled. “Is that a command, or a request?”

“A request. You’re too nice and too handsome to not be smiling. And I meant what I said; I’ll do anything I can to make you smile again.”

“Then make me smile,” I told him, now feeling incredibly fatigued. But then Ryan spent the next half hour making me laugh so hard that his mother came downstairs to tell us to go to sleep.

“Okay, okay,” I choked between laughing. “Stop before I pass out!”

Ryan smiled. That smile that could melt anyone’s heart. “No, no, no, no no,” he repeated as I began falling over. He pulled me back to a grounded sitting position and grinned. “Good, you’re smiling again.”

“You win.”

“Okay, cool.”

Now I had stopped laughing and had turned solemn. “No, you win.”

He stared at me blankly. “What…does that mean?”

I looked down, slightly embarrassed. “Sometimes, being kind isn't enough to win someone over. Sometimes, we’re so guarded that we can’t see it happening right in front of us for the fear of being hurt.”

“You’re a good example,” Ryan told me teasingly.

“I’m trying to make a point, you jerkface.” He put up his hands, allowing me to continue. “We open ourselves up to that person, but they have the choice to hurt or accept us. I opened up to you. You’ve won.” Ryan fell silent. What was there to say when I had just told him that he had won me over? Was it redundant? Did I say it right? Because when I finished, he just stared vacantly at me for the longest time before doing anything. I looked away. “Why did you walk?” I asked tentatively.

Ryan grabbed my hand. “Because I was angry; I was sad.” He paused briefly before continuing. “There was, just, no one I felt like I could turn to, and I felt like I was alone in this. I felt like I didn’t really have any options in being happy until college.” He smiled at me. “I’m so glad I walked. Wouldn’t of met you.”

“What? I saved you?” NOPE THAT WASN’T HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO COME OUT.

“Well, emotionally, yes,” he admitted. Ryan paused and grabbed my other hand. “But, you’re, you’re not like an emotional crutch.”

“Really?” I asked, frowning. I felt like he was making me out to being one.

Ryan shook his head. “No, you’re legitimately brilliant. A true friend. A potentially awesome boyfriend.” I blushed slightly. “I think that I would’ve just felt sorry for myself, and upset for a long time if I hadn’t met you.”

I slipped my hands from his and hugged him. “Don’t ever feel that way again.”

I heard him chuckle. He wrapped his arms around me. “Is that a command, or a request?”

“Command. You’re now officially not allowed to feel that way. Ever,” I told him jokingly.

I heard him chuckle again. Ryan held me tighter. “I’ll try to oblige happily.”

“Good. Just like how you can’t stand seeing me not smile, I can’t stand seeing you being miserable.”

He pulled away. “Isn’t that just general?”

“Well, duh.” We both smiled, then Ryan tried to lean in and kiss me again. I put my hand over one of my eyes and sighed. “If I knew that I was going to be in a relationship with you two weeks ago, I probably would’ve laughed.”

“I guess that answered my question.”

“What? When did you ask a question?”

“Will you go out with me?”

“Oh yeah.” I looked down, still very nervous and whispered, “Yeah.”

“Was that so hard?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I told him nervously.

He put his forehead to mine. “Shut up, Adrian.”

I smiled, and kissed him again. “Will you be going upstairs now?”

“Why?” he asked, his arms wrapping around my waist and pulling me in. “It’s Saturday tomorrow,” Ryan told me with an air of newfound confidence.

“Yeah, but it’s Friday today. Well, technically, it’s…” I looked at the clock. “…just after two thirty in the morning. So, yeah, Friday.” I smiled, and pushed him back with my hands on his face. “Let me go to sleep, all right?”

“Can I cuddle with you?”

“I need to sleep.”

“Adrian, do you know how long I have waited to cuddle with you?”

“No. We can do that tomorrow or something, okay?” I realized what I was agreeing to, and then spoke as I tried to push away from him. “No, wait. We should take this slowly.”

“But cuddlllllllless,” he whined. I was finally able to unhook his arms and remove myself from his grasp.

“Oh, my God, am I suddenly dating a three year old?” I asked, standing up.

“Okay, wow. That’s just being rude. And you’re not being a particularly good boyfriend, Adrian,” he said matter-of-factly.

I put my face in my hands and sighed. “No, you can’t say that,” I said, beginning to laugh. “When you take me out on our first date, then you can say that.”

He smiled, and kissed me gently on the forehead. He backed up, pulled his head down, and let out a breathy sigh. “We have a date.”

I realized exactly what he was saying. “Oh my God. We have a date.” I began squirming, my breath being caught in my throat from the excitement. “Oh my God, we have a date! When is it? What are we doing? Do I need to do something?”

“How about tomorrow? After school?” Ryan asked, with the same level of delight.

In my sleep-depraved mind, and with the sudden rise of glee that had emerged within me, it seemed like a brilliant idea. “Yes! Tomorrow!” Then we just stared at each other being excited idiots, still holding hands and laughing and semi-dancing around the guest room. Then somewhere after three in the morning, we finally decided to go to sleep.

“We have a date tomorrow,” I whispered as I hugged him, half asleep and half giddy.

“I know,” he said back. He pushed back and smiled broadly, the corners of his mouth so turned up so much that it looked like he was hurting from smiling. “I can’t wait.”

I let out a breathy chuckle. “Me neither.” So finally, after, you guessed it, more staring and giggling at each other in disbelief, I said, “I should go to sleep now.”

Ryan’s smile slowly melted into exhaustion. He let out another breathy sigh and said, “Yeah. Wow. I should, go upstairs. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?” I nodded, and we parted ways. Ryan closed the door, leaving me still standing, out of breath from our stupid, excited jumping. Admittedly, I didn’t sleep much that night.

He was hurt when I didn’t go over first thing in the morning to hug and/or kiss him. I acted like nothing was wrong. I acted like he was being weird or something. But when he sat down next to me for breakfast, I took his hand under the table and squeezed it. I apologized later on for my lack of public affection, even in front of his family. I was still in uncharted territory.

Ryan made too many excited innuendos to our date that breakfast; I made him apologize for that later. Meanwhile, Will made too many blatant comments about how he didn’t care about what Ryan was planning for after school.

The school day went by normally. We were given finals prep work and little assignments that finished units or sections of the classes.

But then I began to worry that everything on our first date would go wrong. Which it did. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We hung out during school, like we normally did. Ryan asked, specifically, what I wanted to do, but I was fine with whatever he wanted to do. We went in a circle like that for almost fifteen minutes before we finally agreed to dinner at an Italian place right down the street.

By the time we met up after school, I was a nervous wreck. I couldn’t look at him when Ryan met up with me by the flagpole.

“Hi,” he said, beaming. “Ready?” He reached out to grab my hand, but I pulled away. “Are you okay? You nervous?”

“H-hi,” was the only thing that I was able to say. I could see it out from the corner of my eye – wandering, curious gazes that stung me like arrows.

Ryan watched my eyes, noting the groups of students that were still on the school grounds. “Oh.” Ryan glanced around for a few more moments, letting out a slowly realized, “Jeez.” He sat down at the base of the flagpole and gently pulled me next to him. “Wanna people watch for a little?” I nodded furiously, and we did just that.

I saw Davis pass by. He subtly gave me a weird look of, like, acceptance, and walked away. Kendall walked passed and flapped her arms excitedly and silently. It was funny, because she looked like she was trying to fly with T-Rex arms.

But it didn’t help my nerves.

Almost twenty minutes later, when the majority of the student body had vacated, or prepared to vacate, the premises, I turned to him and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I would be this nervous.”

“But, are you still excited?” he asked tentatively.

“What? Of course, yes!”

“So, are you ready to go home?” he asked, standing up.

I looked up at him. “What? I thought we were going to dinner?”

It then occurred to us, in that moment, that our date would consist of us spending close to three hours at Ryan’s house, under the supervision of his parents and the constant threat of his two little sisters and his older brother popping in. “Well, where do you want to go?” I asked.

“Wanna go back inside?” Ryan asked, pointing towards the front door of the school. The thought didn’t entice me. “We’ll be inside, and there won’t be a lot of people there.” I agreed.

The front doors were locked.

The side doors that led to the fields weren’t, but we didn’t know that. So we sat in Ryan’s car for half an hour before we saw the track and field people leaving to run their laps.

So then we got inside. At first, it was really fun to be alone in the building that caused us so much grief, stress and joy. It was cool seeing the halls and classrooms bare of life. It was fun riding up and down in the building’s only elevator, and dancing in the first and second floor rotundas.

Then the cleaning staff found us, and they shooed us out of the building. But we just moved somewhere else within it.

And by about six in the afternoon, we were locked out of the building. And our stuff was still inside. Don’t ask how it happened, it just did. The school wouldn’t open until Monday. So, there we were, beginning to panic because everything that we needed for school and the weekend was inside, and Ryan was pounding on the doors to get one of the cleaning staff to open it.

Ten minutes later, we had our things. God bless Sammy and Carla for being there.

The restaurant was closed; they’re didn’t open on Sundays, but apparently, the owners were called away on important business. So, after about another ten minutes of us being disappointed and frustrated with how the date was going, we went back to Ryan’s house and made a pizza.

By seven at night, the pizza had disappeared from the oven. Will thought it was for him, so he took it to his room on the second floor. We ended up eating cereal in the guest room, which I spilled all over the floor. Now it smells forever like cinnamon.

“What a rotten first date,” I said, lying down and holding a book over my head.

“No kidding,” Ryan replied, working at his computer on something.

I rolled over and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to me. “Could it have gone worse?”

He nodded. “Yeah. We could’ve ran out of gas, the car battery could’ve died, you could’ve gotten food poisoning, we could’ve been mugged, we could’ve died.”

I sighed, and draped my arms off the side of the bed next to him. He had turned back to his work. “You know when you put it like that…”

Ryan sighed and closed his computer. “Adrian, this was a disaster.” He turned to me. “Maybe we should, have a redo, like, next week?”

I raised my eyebrows. “You wanna go a week without being affectionate with me?”

“Wait, what? I kissed you, like, twice yesterday.”

“Ah, but that was when we were dating,” I told him, speaking logically. “You’re suggesting we either place our relationship on hold or we put it in limbo.” Ryan wasn’t listening to me anymore, eyes away and either forging ahead with his own ideas or feeling sorry for us. I thought for a second. “Well, I thought it was nice.” Ryan looked at me, surprised. “I mean, we didn’t get dinner the way we had planned. But I still got to spend time with you.”

Ryan smiled, which dissipated quickly. “But we didn’t get dinner.”

“Yeah we did,” I said, lifting up my cereal bowl that now sat on the nightstand. I put it back, got up, and closed the door softly. I sat down in front of him and smiled. “Ryan, we didn’t do what we wanted to, but we had fun, right? We hung out with each other, right? …well, I had fun.”

He reached out and hugged me. “I’m still so sorry that we didn’t get dinner.”

I pulled back from the hug. “You should’ve checked ahead of time.”

He released me from the hug, a frown still on his face. “It had to of been, like, a sudden thing. I-I’ve never seen them close on a Friday.”

I sat back. “Well, I had a good time, even though the plans fell through.”