Today was their last night of their mini vacation. No more arcade games, loud music and flashy light, late nights doing nothing. And all too soon, they would be back to the monotony of high school and the stress of college applications. So they decided to have a relaxing, low-key night, complete with ice cream and junk food.
So here they were; lounging on the floor of the boys’ small room. Kelly and Natalie sprawled on the only bed in the room, too small for the two of them. While Jace is half asleep and half dead on the couch, his long limbs uncomfortably hanging off the couch. Of course, too polite to take the bed despite their insistence, content to torture himself for no good reason, Natalie thought.
And lastly, the newly formed couple or so Natalie calls them in her head, were sat on the floor against the bed. Blankets and pillows around them.
Levi’s arm was snaked around her, having grown brave enough to do so again. Min for the last hour was still browsing the TV channels while Levi seemed to have fallen asleep.
Nothing could be heard except gentle snores and the TV occasionally playing when Min found something to watch before moving on.
Natalie finally felt the persistent feeling of sleep taking over. So she walked to the bathroom to brush her teeth. On her way back to bed, she saved Jace from waking up with the sensation of pins and needles by adjusting his arms. She’d also covered him with the fallen blanket. She musters all her will and somehow resists the temptation to stare at the way he resembled a puppy sleeping. He was in a sort of stretched fetal position. His back was hunched and arms curled by his chest, his feet were just poking out of the blanket.
Natalie didn’t think snoring could ever be cute, but Jace managed to both look and sound cute.
And…..before Min could get suspicious of her deviant staring, she walks back to the bed. After an hour or so of scrolling on her phone, she falls asleep.
She wakes up to the sound of Kelly’s obnoxiously loud alarm.
Kelly, the Type A she is, is already awake and dressed ready to go.
“Morning, guys!” her preppy, too-upbeat voice is the second thing she hears. “Actually, it’s almost afternoon!”
Everyone else collectively groans. But this did nothing to deter the cheery hurriance that was Kelly. Zipping around to clean up the room before anyone even got up. When everyone finishes getting ready, they head and begin driving.
The awkwardness from the day of the game seemed to melt away from last night and it stayed that way. Soft music and humming floated around the car.
~~
After several hours and multiple stops, they finally reach their town. Jace is the first to be dropped off since he lived the furthest from everyone.
Natalie gets out of the car to let him out. She walks to the back of the car to help him get his bags. Before she could open her mouth to say her goodbyes, he beats her to it.
He clears his throat first and starts confidently, “so…my friends are throwing a party for the game and…” He loses his bravado briefly and stumbles.
She stares at him blankly, certain whether this conversation was heading, but didn’t want to assume wrongly. She goes for a confused, “Uh, okay?”
Jace loosens his grip on the duffel bag, one hand holding a duffel and the other moves to rub his neck. A cute display of worry and agitation if she had anything to say about it. His cheeks even blushed a delightful shade of pink.
He gathers his courage and continues.
“Umm. I was wondering if you wanted to come?” he says as quickly as he could, eager to get over the embarrassing hurdle of asking her out. “You can bring your other friends, too,” he says as if he were a salesman trying to sweeten the pot. “It’s gonna be very low-key, not alot of people.”
She smiles, trying to cut the tension.
As casually as she could, she tells him to text her the details to which he nods happily to.
He looks at his house briefly before saying, “um, I’ll see you then.” He, them, waves to the others, who apparently were watching them. Even Levi couldn’t resist being nosy and intrusive, who was probably affected by Min’s bad influence.
Jace starts walking to his door before Natalie yells, “bye!”
She gets inside the car, smiling and blushing like she’d just had her first kiss. Not surprising her friends staring at her, eyebrows raised in question.
“I’ll tell you guys later.”
She wished she could gush to her friends about Jace’s adorable, flustered face while he was inviting her. But she didn’t want to subject Levi to their girlish, intense chatter that would inevitably lead to some embarassing revelations he didn’t need to know.
Finally, Natalie is back home. In the nice quietness of her room, she lays on her bed, just about to call her friends. The loud sounds of her brother playing on his computer was a surprisingly welcome sound to her ears. Somehow, she’d missed her brother raging and yelling his head off to unknown people. It helped that it would mask her conversation with her friends. Something she desperately hoped to keep private from her parents.
“Hey.”
She had to strain her ears to hear Kelly’s voice over the ruckus, but that was fine. As long as Kelly could hear her too.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yup.”
Then Min joined the call with her usual brashness.
“What’s up, bitches!!”
Again, Natalie was glad her parents couldn’t eavesdrop on their conversation.
“What was so important that you had to interrupt my beauty sleep?”
Natalie huffs and rolls her eye’s at her friend’s penchant for being dramatic. She tells them about Jace’s invitation to the party causing Kelly to screech like a banshee.
She gets straight to the point, asking “did he ask you out?!”
Natalie isn’t sure how to answer properly. While she wished she could say Jace asked her out on a date, he didn’t really. He’d just extended them an invite to a party.
“Ehh, kind of. He just said we were welcome to come to the party.”
The girls then start talking simultaneously about the party, what to where, what time they should go, and all the random, trivial details young girls concerned themselves with.
Comments (0)
See all