Alex Gaskarth Must Die

For the rest of the week, Alex and I avoid each other. Better put, I avoid Alex and everyone else just kind of goes along with it. It’s pretty great, as I seem to have mastered the expression that shouts, No, I do not want to talk about it and if you keep going on, I will shoot you in the knees.

I’m very proud of myself.

- - -

‘Hey!’ Robin shouts at me at the end of the school day on Friday. I slam my locker shut and start walking briskly out of school, pretending not to have heard her. ‘Hey! Rebecca!’ she yells again. I’m only about two feet away from my car when she sprints up, panting like the unathletic moron that she is, and practically collapses on me.

‘Hi, Robin,’ I say in my best unamused voice.

‘Hi,’ she exhales, and pants some more. ‘Wait - one - second-’

‘Am doing,’ I say, and laugh despite myself. ‘You know, you’re welcome to come along on my early-morning runs,’ I say. We roll our eyes together because whereas I actually like running and start every day with a mile, Robin, well, she doesn’t get any physical activity past her family’s tri-annual skiiing/hiking trip. (And even then she and her brother just sit around watching Buffy and pretending to have gotten too sick for any exercise.)

‘Yeah, no,’ she laughs, returning to her normal breathing patterns and standing up straight. ‘But dude. Dude.’

‘Dude,’ I mock.

‘Dude,’ she insists. ‘This is, you know, a big thing!’

‘It is,’ I admit, allowing myself one brief moment of worry. ‘You know what else is a big thing?’

‘What?’

‘My homework, which I must do for fear of failing all my classes and becoming homeless,’ I reply, sidestepping her quickly and sliding into my car. Robin laughs and flips me the bird as I back out, so I roll down the window and yell, ‘That’s not very nice!’ She laughs even louder and adds the other hand.

- - -

When I go home, I decide that I can’t put it off any longer and tell my dad that I’m going out with a friend tonight. I decide on my dad because he isn’t as invested in my general well-being as much as my mom- and I don’t mean that in a bad way or anything, it’s just that my mom, being a teacher, gets about a million pamphlets a year about drug use in kids and is probably half-expecting me to live in New York City and die of a heroin overdose or something equally as movie-star-dramatic.

‘A friend?’ he asks. I nod. ‘A friend?’ he repeats. And then: ‘Joni! Could you come here for a second?’ I cringe inwardly as my mom comes over. Well. That plan backfired. ‘Rebecca’s going out with a friend tonight.’ He tips his glasses down and raises his eyebrows as he says the word ‘friend’, and my mom immediately cottons on.

‘Who?’ she asks.

‘Um. A guy,’ I say, and hurriedly add, ‘a friend!’ at their expressions.

‘Okay,’ Mom says, barely containing her excitement. ‘A friend. Go on.’

‘His name’s Alex.’

‘Alex Gaskarth? The one that moved from England?’

I nod hesitantly.

‘Ah.’ A pinched look appears on my mom’s face; for all that she loves his parents, she’s not the biggest fan of his band… or his jeans… or his grades… or mostly anything about him, in fact. But, this is pretty much the only action her eldest daughter has gotten since kindergarten, so the fact that her daughter’s date is practically a delinquent doesn’t put a damper on her mood too much. ‘Well! That sounds - lovely.’ My dad grins and rolls his eyes at me. ‘And what’ll you be doing?’

‘Uh- I’m not sure. I think just a movie. Maybe dinner.’

Mom nods and says, ‘Dean?’

My dad shrugs. ‘Sounds alright to me. Just don’t get pregnant, don’t have sex, don’t do drugs, don’t drink alcohol. Alright?’

‘Yes!’ I say, happy that my questioning is over. ‘Alright! That sounds - fantastic. Great. Alright. Well, I have homework to do, so I’ll just be -’

The squeals my mom makes after I leave only enforce my decision to never have sex or get married or have kids; God only knows what sounds she’ll make when those things happen.

After escaping from the frankly quite terrifying encounter with my mom and dad, I burrow myself into my homework in an effort to forget about my upcoming, um, date. Unfortunately, I forget that a date apparently requires roughly six hours of preparation, because almost as soon as I pick up my pencil, the doorbell rings and before I know it, Brittany, Lauren, Zoe, and Robin come skipping in.

‘Rebecca! What are you doing?’ Brittany shrieks when she sees me at my desk.

‘My homework,’ I say, motioning towards it. When I see the ten million bags each of them are carrying, probably filled with every torture instrument (ie. makeup) known to man, I make a face and whine, ‘You guys! I don’t want to look like a drag queen-’ Brittany scoffs indignantly ‘-so your hands are not coming anywhere near this.’

My protests get brushed aside like a cobweb and Brittany and Lauren throw themselves into my closet with a scary sense of excitement. I open my mouth to protest before I realize that they’re just going to ignore me, and turn back to my math homework. Zoe and Robin come over to help me and we stay like that until, thirty minutes later, Brittany and Lauren emerge triumphant with my clothes.

‘Ta-da!’ Lauren announces, laying the clothes down with a flourish on my bed. After a few minutes of badgering and switching, we end up with a floral Abercrombie & Fitch tank top, one that I bought a year ago and probably doesn’t even fit anymore; skinny ripped jeans from Hollister, which were somehow more expensive than the ones, you know, with all the fabric still attached; a black blazer that used to be my mom’s but shrunk in the wash; the slouchy grey boots I have that look good but really don’t do much in the way of warmth; a Juicy Couture purse that Brittany got me for Christmas, because it was apparently a crime that the only bags I owned were a free tote I got at Warped Tour three summers ago and my camera bag; a metallic beanie; and, at my insistence, my camera. (‘Rebecca, you can’t carry your camera on a date.’ ‘Yeah, like, I know you take it practically everywhere you go, but this is a date. Like, romance and stuff.’ ‘It’d be kind of weird if you were making out and then you just went, “Wait, stop, I need to capture those trees before the light changes!” Not everyone is into obsessive photographers.’ ‘Becca, people will stare. This is weird.’ ‘But don’t you want to see what goes on during the date?’ ‘...Fine. Take the goddamn camera.’)

After I’m pushed in the shower and made to do thousands of torture (I mean, beauty) routines on myself, we start in on the makeup. Zoe flips through magazines for ‘inspiration’, Robin idly blasts music and reads while making snarky commentary, and Lauren directs Brittany, who sits me down in front of the mirror in my bathroom with a scary expression on her face. I’m not facing it, though, so I can’t tell what’s going on at all. It’s just, Close your eyes, Open your eyes, Blink twice, Stop doing that weird thing with your nose, and so on. The makeup and hair takes a good forty-five minutes but the result of it is honestly, not that big of a difference.

I swivel around in my chair while Brittany and Lauren wait with bated breath for the verdict.

‘Well?’ they say.

‘Um.’ I blink at myself in the mirror. My lips are faintly tinged red, my eyelashes are obscenely long and thick, I look a bit tanner than usual, my hair is bouncy and just faintly curled, and there’s a certain glow to my cheeks that isn’t there normally. I look, for lack of a better word, natural. Almost normal. Me, just on a good (who are we kidding here: amazingly great and perfect) day. ‘Guys. You’ve been working on me for almost an hour and all I look is normal.’

‘Kind of the point, idiot,’ Lauren says with an eye-roll.

‘Natural makeup is supposed to do that,’ Brittany says like I’m a child. ‘What, would you prefer to look like Sephora had exploded on you?’

‘No, no! It’s just- I just- Um.’

‘Aww, she’s starstruck by her own face,’ Robin coos. I glare at her but honestly, I kind of am. Seriously, I look good.

‘Narcissism 101,’ Zoe says theatrically. ‘Lessons from Rebecca Hall every single day.’

I roll my eyes and glare as they laugh and flick a glance over at myself in the mirror again. I can’t help but think that even if this whole Break Alex’s Heart Until He Begs For Mercy And Then Spit In It Too thing doesn’t work out, I’ll have at least gained three new friends and a better fashion sense. Really a win-win-win situation.

For the next half hour or so, we frantically review notes for how I’m going to act. The plan is to be sort of distant and unimpressed, but somehow charming and engrossing at the same time. I really don’t know how that works at all, but I smile and nod because it looks like Brittany’s head might explode if I don’t. I eat some food because apparently it’d be bad manners to actually eat on the date (assuming that he’s taking me out to a restaurant, which Brittany says he probably will because that’s what he does with everyone). And then we wait and wait and I try desperately not to smudge my makeup while Robin makes increasingly stupid faces at me and Zoe tells horrible jokes and Brittany and Lauren both pace frantically until we’re put out of our misery.

- - -

The doorbell rings at 6:02, and I go down to answer it by myself with the knowledge that they’ve actually set up a camera in the room and are recording everything that goes down.

‘Hey, Alex,’ I say, smiling as I open the door.

‘Hi,’ he says. His eyes are a bit wide and he looks sort of nervous, although I can’t fathom why. He’s dressed in skinny jeans, a white v-neck, and a bright red hoodie with Converse. Like what he wears normally, only a bit, um, cleaner. ‘You look -- great,’ he says.

‘Thanks.’ I smile again and manage to say (hopefully without betraying every inch of me that just wants to run away), ‘Just let me grab my coat and I’ll be right out.’ I come back with my blazer, hat, and shoes on, and step out quickly. ‘So, where to?’ I ask.

Alex, who’s seemingly reverted back to the confident guy we all know and love, smirks and says, ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’ He offers me his arm and I take it as he leads me down to his car and starts driving.

‘Are you sure you can’t tell me where we’re going?’ I ask.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Pleeeease?’ I whine.

‘Still not telling you.’

‘What if I’m allergic to wherever we’re going and I die as soon as we get there?’

He laughs and shakes his head. ‘Then I guess it’ll just be dinner for one.’

‘So we’re going to dinner then?’

He goes silent and bashes his head against the steering wheel.

‘Hey!’ I say, reaching out a hand to pull him back upright. They end up flailing awkwardly around. ‘Don’t- Don’t do that, we could die ‘cause you suck at driving.’

Alex laughs, and then swerves to the right and then the left when I shriek in protest. ‘This is not funny! We could die! We will die! And you’re probably breaking a million laws right now, Jesus, thank God there’s no one else here that can see you.’ Just as the sentence leaves my mouth, a car goes whizzing in front of us and Alex’s grin drops from his face completely as he returns obediently to a ten-and-two position. I laugh and he pouts, and we make small talk for the rest of the way.

- - -

We end up at a Greek restaurant on the pier, after he directs me towards the Italian one next door and I whine a lot after seeing the sign for Healthy & Homemade Greek Eating! I smile happily as the waiter offers us a menu and he makes a face, but it’s alright, I think. We’re seated at the outdoor patio, where ivy creeps up the side of the robin’s-blue wall and you can just hear the sounds of an acoustic guitar drifting up the side. The chairs are wicker, with a cushion, and the tables are heavy and ceramic, a candle and a yellow rose in a slim glass vase placed in the center of each one. There are two families and a fair few couples scattered around us but for the most part everyone’s inside, probably because it’s kind of cold outside.

‘So, do you like Greek food or something?’ Alex asks as we flip open our menus.

I shrug. ‘It’s alright. Prettier than Italian food, though.’ I grin and point at the camera that’s sitting on our table and he rolls his eyes long-sufferingly.

‘I hope you know this is the most bizarre date I’ve ever been on. Who makes their date stop, like, twenty times just to take a picture of some old guy with a beard playing a guitar?’

‘You know what, that guy’s beard has more man in it than you could ever hope to have yourself! And the lighting was good,’ I add in a smaller voice.

He opens his mouth to respond but the waiter cuts in and we order: him, spaghetti, and me, salad. As soon as she disappears he launches right back in. ‘And then you made me stop so you could take a picture of a kid wearing rain boots with mustaches on them. That’s so creepy!’

‘They were rain boots with mustaches on them and he was adorable! Rain boots with mustaches on an adorable little kid. What is wrong with that combination? Nothing! Add in dreamy fairy lights in the back and it’s, like, heaven. And there were dreamy fairy lights!’

Alex coughs and mutters, ‘Like I said, most bizarre date I’ve ever been on.’

I decide to take my chances and go for it, because I do kind of like him (As a friend! the voice inside my head shouts automatically towards the Brittany, Lauren, Zoe, and Robin’s inside my head.), and say, ‘As if. Alex Gaskarth, this is the best date you’ve ever been on, don’t even try to lie.’

He rolls his eyes and protests heavily but there’s a smile tugging up the corner of his mouth so I smile too.

- - -

Dinner goes, for the most part, pretty well. Our food arrives and he proceeds to dump about a kilogram of extra cheese on his spaghetti (‘There’s just not enough! It has to be drowning. Do you hear me? Drowning!’ ‘Haven’t you ever heard of “less is more”? And shut up, people are staring.’). I give him the olives on my salad because I hate them and he loves them, and we talk. It’s -- well -- it’s nice. I’m surprised by this, although I’m not quite sure why. All signs point to us getting along pretty well, from the choice in music to best friends and, you know, there is the thing where we were kind of friends and maybe kissed a bit too. There’s that. I guess I had expected it to be awkward, though, to have us fumbling for topics to talk about but it’s not. We just get to know each other, plain and simple. It’s kind of one step up from small talk but it’s nice, to talk about these things somewhat seriously with someone and not have someone else pop up with a dick joke or a question about question thirty-two from the math homework for tonight.

When we finish eating, I make him split the bill with me, which takes a lot of arguing but I can’t just let him pay for dinner. That’s just unfair. He grumbles about chivalry and masculinity (‘Hey, Alex?’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘Before you complain about feeling emasculated, check the jeans you’re wearing. Seriously dude, they’re, like, tighter than mine.’) and we sit down on the ground, dangling our feet off to the water below while I snap shots of the sky and the lights and our feet and him. I start shivering to the point where we can’t ignore it anymore (he is too, if I’m to be perfectly honest) so we go inside the little mall they’ve got and wander around inside where I, well, take more pictures and we continue talking.

It doesn’t really feel like a date, is the thing. There’s no gazing into each other’s eyes under romantic lights or flirting shamelessly or fumbling in changing rooms and bathroom stalls. There’s not even any accidental brushing which totally doesn’t make my heart speed up. (That last one might have been a lie. Might.) It feels like a day with a friend, and if I smile a little too much or hear my heart in my ears and there’s no dick jokes, then, well, that’s that.

The point is, it’s nice. It’s really, really nice.

- - -

I have to get home by 11, so at 10:45 we walk out and start towards the car. We’ve ended up by the aquarium, even though it’s closed, so we peer through the windows a little until I start freaking out about getting mugged or something since it’s so dark.

‘Relax,’ Alex says, ‘nothing’s gonna happen.’

‘See, that’s the thing! Something could happen and we wouldn’t even be able to see it coming because it’s so dark.’ I finish on an ominous tone, managing to scare myself, and cast an anxious glance around. He shakes his head and right on cue, a few extra strands of holiday lights switch on around us, making the pier, well, pretty damn bright.

‘See,’ he smirks.

‘That was,’ I say intelligently, ‘not.’

‘Not?’

‘Not cool! What was that, rigged?’

Alex laughs. ‘Call it a sign from the heavens that we were meant to be.’ He winks at me and I groan.

‘And this date was going so well, too!’ I shake my head in mock sadness, bashing the palm of my hand against my forehead for good measure.

‘This date’s going well?’ Alex says quickly. He’s looking at me too seriously.

‘Uh - Well - I think - I-’ I stammer nervously, panicking, and fish around for the first topic that pops into my head. ‘What’s your middle name?’ I ask, and promptly kick myself mentally for it.

‘William,’ he answers smoothly. ‘Like William Shakespeare.’

I smile a little at that, considering they both, well, write, and say so to Alex. ‘The similarities kind of end after that, though,’ I admit.

‘Yeah,’ he laughs. ‘My mom’s a really big Shakespeare person, we have, like, his complete works and everything. What’s yours?’

‘My what?’

‘Your middle name, moron.’

‘So romantic!’ I gasp, placing a hand on my heart. He pushes me lightly and we laugh. ‘Jasey Rae,’ I say, wincing slightly because it sounds ridiculous.

‘Jasey Rae.’

‘Yeah,’ I nod. ‘My dad picked Jasey, it comes from, um, a bible thing from the name Jesse. Something about wealth and I think it has to do with David, the one who killed the giant with slingshot. I’m not sure,’ I say apologetically.

He nods. ‘What about Rae?’

‘I think that means grace, as in graceful, in Scottish. My mom picked that one.’

‘I like it.’

I laugh as we stop in front of his car and he fumbles for his keys, and say, ‘God, no. They’re terrible. I sound like something out of a fairy tale.’

‘But Rebecca!’ Alex cries, flinging open my door dramatically. ‘You came right out of my fairy tale.’

‘Oh, Alex! I just can’t handle it anymore! Take me! Take me now, in the back of the car!’ I say, just as dramatically, and collapse in the seat with a hand flung across my forehead. He laughs and shuts the door before walking over to his side and poking my arm.

‘C’mon, Sleeping Beauty. I gotta get you home and you gotta get off my shifting thingy.’

- - -

He drops me off outside my house and walks me up to the front porch. The lights are on so my family (maybe even my friends) are probably waiting with bated breath to see the first sign of mutual interest between me and a guy since kindergarten.

‘Well,’ Alex says.

‘Well,’ I mock.

‘This was - nice.’

‘It was,’ I agree, smiling. ‘The lighting-’

‘Jesus Christ, if you say one more word about lighting I swear to God I will cut you,’ he laughs.

‘Okay, okay! But yeah. That was really fun, actually.’

‘We should do it again sometime.’

‘You know what?’

‘What?’

‘We should.’

He smiles, a slow one, and tugs on my wrists until I’m pressed up against him, wrapping his own arms around me from the back and leaning in slowly, ever so slowly. I hope he can’t hear my heart beating because I can, and God, is it loud.

‘Alex,’ I say quietly, ‘I really don’t want to have our first kiss on my front porch.’

‘Rebecca,’ he says back, just as quietly, ‘I hate to break it to you, but we’ve already had our first kiss.’

‘Oh,’ I say, and at this point our noses are almost touching. ‘Good point.’

‘Yeah,’ he says, and now we’re just sharing breath. His eyes are too intense so I stop looking and close my own as he closes the distance -- or maybe I close it. I don’t know. That isn’t the point. We just end up kissing, a slow, sweet one, and maybe it makes butterflies rise in my chest and beat against my rib cage like there’s no tomorrow and maybe I never want to move and maybe I’m actually starting to like Alex --

I stop, pull back, flash him a smile, and open the door.

‘I’ll see you on Monday.’

- - -

From Jack B. to Alex G. on 01/06/06
well? how’d it go?

Alex G. to Jack B.
i just dropped her off

Jack B. to Alex G.
and?????

Alex G. to Jack B.
it was amazing