Robin, Boy Virgin: Original Series

Among many of my rather mediocre qualities, I’m a procrastinator. I didn’t go to the mall after school on Wednesday to shop for my mother’s birthday gift. The task just sounds really boring and stressful, so I just went home. And plus, I’d kind of had a knockdown, drag out day at school. I’d almost gotten into a fight and then Cora had sidled up into my lap, so that was cause for relaxation.

On Thursday morning, I woke up and was glad that the school week was nearly over. I was lying in bed, staring up at Pink Floyd’s prism and trying not to think about the three minutes I had before my alarm went off and I’d have to get up.

1.) I was dreading a potential fight with Brandon and his douche bag friends. Even if you know that you can win a fight, just the thought of fighting makes anyone nervous.

2.) After school, I had to shop for my mother’s birthday present. She would be picking me up Friday evening, so the gift purchasing would have to take place today. And yuck, that sounded yucky and annoying. I mean, yeah I love my mom and all. But ugh, still.

3.) On the potential upside, Brandon had proven himself to be a douche puppy (just as I’d suspected all along, go me) and Cora had seemed none too pleased with what he’d done to me. Admittedly, physically, he hadn’t done anything, but he had acted like a total asshole. Because he is actually an asshole, so.

I got up and went downstairs. Glenn wasn’t there. I called for him and there was no response. We’d had dinner last night and watched American Idol together. I don’t remember him going to bed before me, so he’d either gone to work early this morning or he’d snuck out last night to go to his girlfriend’s house. I honestly didn’t know which thing he’d done.

I drank a quick gulp of juice and headed to school. The day was refreshingly sunny- cold as frick since it was November and all, but the sun was bright and pretty much had the blue sky all to its self. Sunny days cheer you up, whether you want to be cheered up or not.

I walked through the school parking lot and noticed the Charger was sitting in its spot, cool and glinting a little in the sun. Awesome. Either Cora had driven douche puppy to school (yeah, right… I hope) or she’d come to school solo.

I went to the band room and made a beeline for our practice room. I went in and Cora wasn’t there, surprisingly. Damnit, my expectations are pretty much always wrong. I sat down in my chair and picked up the guitar. I started playing that song I’ve been working on for ages. It’s really long now, rambling, with different sections in it. It’s kind of not cohesive at all, but I don’t really mind.

“That sounds so pretty,” Cora said, scaring me. I hadn’t heard her open the door. She went and sat down at the piano, putting her purse on top of the piano and drinking her peppermint tea.

“Thanks,” I said, giving her a quick smile. She smiled back, her cheeks full of tea and making me giggle involuntarily. Fuck, not cool, man. Oh well. Cora swallowed her tea and smiled at me properly. God, she looked beautiful.

“Can I go on the computer super quick?” She asked. She asked because my chair is the closest to the computer and she wanted to sit in it. I stood and sat down again on the rickety piano bench while she sat in my chair and went on the Internet, bringing up her email.

“Oh, can you pass me my cell?” She asked. I reached behind me and poked in her purse. I found her cell, but I also spied a piece of sheet music, folded in half with the music facing out. I handed Cora her cell and then whipped the music out of her purse, totally invading her privacy.

“Cora?” I began slyly, a smile on my face.

“Boy Wonder?” Cora copied my tone, still focusing on the computer.

“Why do you have The Twilight Saga: New Moon score in your purse?” I asked condescendingly. Cora turned around in the chair.

“You dink! Don’t go through my stuff,” Cora said, reaching for the sheet music. I held it out of her reach and just looked at her.

“Care to explain, tweenie bopper clone?” I asked, slightly disgusted. I understand the obsession with vampires. Immortality, strength, and neck sucking is sexy. But I don’t understand this particular Twilight obsession. The vampires in that story don’t even drink human blood. They’re like… Christian vampires, full of moral fiber, promising some kinda blood chastity. That’s not sexy. That’s just, like, fucked. Vampires suck human blood. It’s what they do.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Cora said simply, sounding confident and bewitching me into thinking that maybe my opinion of Twilight was wrong. But I kept the cooler-than-thou attitude on my face. Even though ordinarily I am not even a little bit cooler than she is, at this small moment I was.

“… have you ever actually heard the music?” Cora demanded defensively. Ha! I knew Twilight was embarrassing.

“No. I haven’t heard the new Metro Station album either. And I don’t wear eyeliner or consider being gay to piss off my parents,” I said. Cora glared at me, her blue eyes narrowing into slits and sending shivers down my spine. She stood up and snatched the music out of my hands and sat down next to me on the piano. I put my guitar down and crossed my arms, cocky and being a douche. Cora set the music on the piano and then started playing.

Aww fuck. It was a beautiful, simple piece of music. I breathed carefully; Cora’s piano playing, even on the shitty piano, sounding so nice and was dancing around in my brain. When she was finished she lifted her hands off the keys and then raised an eyebrow at me.

“… I’m still not going to watch the movie,” I muttered finally. Cora grinned and was beautiful. With her lips parted like that, I could smell the peppermint tea on her breath, just a little.

“Good. You shouldn’t,” Cora chuckled. She blinked, looked at the music, and then back at me. “Can you read sheet music?” She checked.

“A little, yeah,” I said. I’m trying to learn and get better at sight-reading music. Right now, I just goof around with guitar tabs.

“K, you play the right hand and I’ll play the left. Can you handle that?” Cora asked.

“Uh, yeah, I think so,” I said, a little excited to be playing the song, I’ll admit.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Mhm,” Cora said. She easily kept up most of the harmony while I picked the single noted melody.

At first, I was focusing really hard on the sight-reading and then after awhile I wasn’t. Not that I suddenly got much better at sight-reading music, I just didn’t try so hard because my attention was distracted. I can’t explain it, but one second Cora and I were just playing our own parts and then our separate playing was, like, one unified, connected thing.

Occasionally, Cora’s hand would touch mine when she had to play keys over top of me or close to my hand. She’d just brush my hand on her way to continue playing the pretty song. The part I really can’t explain was my heart was both pounding like crazy and so calm I almost felt sleepy.

When the song was finished, I was looking down at Cora’s hand on the piano while she was looking at the sheet music. Then I looked up at her and she looked over at me. I was still feeling that heart pounding/calming thing and even the connectedness from playing the piano was still lingering. Cora just looked at me, her blue eyes just as confused and intrigued as how I felt. What, um, was going on? This felt really nice. Well actually it felt really amazing, but I didn’t understand it at all.

“What are you doing after school? Are you hanging out with douche puppy?” I asked. She knew who I meant now.

“No. I’m pissed at him. Why?” Cora replied. We were still looking right at each other. I don’t know why. I mean, I knew why I was staring at her, cuz she’s beautiful and I didn’t want the connected spell to end. I don’t know why she was looking at me.

“I have to go the mall and buy my mother a birthday present,” I said. “I need help,” I stated simply. Oh, God, do I ever. And not just with birthday gift shopping either. Cora chuckled.

“Sure. I’ll help you. Sounds like fun,” Cora said. I smiled, pleased. Core looked at the music finally, breaking the staring. I looked forward too. Hmmmmmmmm. Hm. Hm. Mhm. Hm.

After school, Cora drove me to the mall. We rolled down the windows and invited in as much of the sunny day as we could, despite how freaking cold it was outside.

We went in the mall through a huge sporting goods store entrance. The first thing Cora and I did, naturally, was play with the sports equipment a little more than the store wants you to. Cora did a girly lay up with a practically flat basketball into a display basketball net. She made the shot.

Then we rode around on the bikes for twelve-year-olds. Those were the only ones that were on the floor, and their tires weren’t pumped up properly, like the basketball. Probably to discourage people from riding the bikes around the store. But we did it anyway, slowly beetling around, our long legs too big for the bikes. That ended though, when Cora crashed into me in super slow motion and my bike teetered over and I fell on the ground anti-climatically. Cora giggled and pulled the bike off me and we left the store before we got kicked out.

Cora linked her arm through mine and we’d only gone past one store when she pulled me into this tween jewellery store. It was called like Diva or SexyGlamGirl or something really contradictory like that. I followed Cora as she perused over the plastic jewellery really quick. When we got to the back of the store, though, there was, like, an entire wall of hats.

Perking up, I selected a green felt fedora and put it on my head. Cora selected a silver fedora and did a not half bad moon walk. I just tipped the hat in front of my face, pretending I was Indiana Jones. Then I took the hat off my head and put on top of Cora’s silver fedora, pulling both the hats down over her face to bug her. She giggled and threw both the hats at me. That kind of got out of hand cuz I pretty much started pelting her with all the hats I could grab off the wall and she managed to chuck a few back, giggling and trying to be rational and tell me to quit it.

Then one of the sales ladies was like “Excuse me?” all stern and disciplinary.

“Sorry,” Cora kept giggling. I grabbed Cora’s hand and towed her out of the shop before we could get kicked out. Getting kicked out sucks and takes the fun out of being stupid and juvenile. So you just gotta run away before you get kicked out.

Cora took her hand out from mine, and only when she did that did I realize I’d been freaking holding her hand. Then she linked her arm through mine. You know, like how she always does to make me crazy, even though it’s a nice, casual thing she to do.

We went into the mall’s HMV, initially just to do a quick look around. Since I [ii]was[/ii] supposed to be looking for a birthday gift for my mom. But then, again, I got carried away and Cora easily got carried away right along with me. We listened to CDs in the samplers at the back of the store with the big ass headphones. Then we kind of built up a collection of CDs between us and we sat on the floor and mulled the CDs over, discussing the artists and listening to the samples in the CD player. I’m not sure how long we sat there. It was probably a long time, but it went by really fast since I was doing two things I love: music and hanging out with Cora.

As we were sitting there, I noticed that Cora had a tattoo. Oh yes, of course. How could she not, really? It was a very small, black, cursive ‘C’. It was on her lower back, but on the left side, almost on the side of her hip, but not quite. The only reason I could see was because she was sitting on the ground her jeans had slid down a little to make up for the sitting on the ground position.

“You have a ‘C’ on your hip?” I sort of asked, sort of stated. I suddenly worried she’d think I was a creep for looking over her exposed skin. Cora just chuckled a little though, surprised that I had noticed, and turned her head to look down at it.

“Oh… yeah,” She said.

“Just in case you forget your name?” I kind of teased awkwardly. I was actually trying to fight down the strong attraction I was feeling, since Cora had a tattoo and that was really, really sexy. I might be too big a wimp to get a tattoo, but on other people I think its pretty damn cool.

“No,” Cora mocked me right back. “It’s, um, well it kind of stands for California. Kind of,” She said, only partially explaining.

“Why?” I asked simply, sounding like a child.

“Um… well when my mom said that she was moving out here because of a job, she sounded scared and a lonely, you know? So I decided that instead of staying in Pasadena with my dad, I’d go with her,” Cora confessed. “But before I left, I got a little too drunk and got this tattoo to stand for Cora and California … and other nice ‘C’ words, really,” She explained. “It’s kind of silly, I guess,” She chuckled.

“No, it’s cool,” I said, trying to sound casual. But it was really cool. “What kind of ‘C’ words?” I asked. All I could think of was bad ‘C’ words.

“Like courage,” Cora suggested. Oh.

“Cuddly,” I said before stopping to think. Cora started laughing.

“Corny,” She said to me. That’s not really a nice ‘C’ word, but she was making her point.

“Classic,” I went on, trying to regain some dignity. Cora smiled at the word suggestion and at me and then blinked and looked down at the CD in her hands. I cleared my throat quietly and looked down at the CD in my hands too. Well… Cora is classic.

“…so. Your mom’s birthday,” Cora said, finally getting us on track. I stood up and helped Cora to her feet. She asked me some questions about Katrina and what she was like. I told her she was kind of a formal workaholic. Cuz she is. So, Cora suggested that we get my mom some at-home spa type stuff to help her relax. See, I never would have thought of that. I picked out and bought this ‘Sounds of the Ocean’ CD that sounded relaxing and then we went to The Body Shop.

I felt incredibly out of my wheel house, never having really thought about bubble bath versus bubble foam, or what smells were relaxing versus invigorating. I let Cora take the reins on that one. After some careful consideration, she put together a small basket of lotion-y stuff. I don’t actually know what the different products were, but it looked and smelled pretty good.

The task done, Cora and I went and got Orange Julius drinks in the food court. We wandered around the mall a little more, drinking our smoothies. I didn’t whine when Cora wanted to take pictures. Cora would suddenly, at random, but frequent intervals, throw her arm around my shoulders, put her cheek near mine and grin at the camera. After a bit, I taught myself how to grin on the fly. In the first couple of pictures, I looked awkward and caught off guard. But after that, it was smooth sailing and I can grin all photogenic at the drop of a hat.

When we were done wandering the mall, Cora drove me home.

“Thanks for the help. I think my mom is gonna be blown away by my gift. I’ve never been this thoughtful,” I said. Cora giggled at me.

“Well, tell her Cora says Happy Birthday. And then tell her who Cora is ok?” Cora told me.

“I will. Cora is cute and caring and classic,” The list just came out of me before I could stop it. I didn’t dare look at Cora, in case she detected the feelings I had for her behind the words.

“… and Robin is rambling, rockin’, and remarkable,” She said. I looked at her, but she was looking out her windshield, her face thoughtful. She looked at me, though, when she felt me looking at her. Uh oh, I had that urge that I get in her car where I want to tell her that I like her and that I want to kiss her. Thank God I was sober this time and could fight it down.

Cora paused and then smiled at me. I smiled back and then made myself climb out of the car.

“See you tomorrow, BW,” Cora said.

“Yeah, see ya,” I said and waved.