Feet First

Philadelphia.

Alex and I were going on our first date in Philly.

I had no clue what to wear; I hadn’t packed enough clothing for fancy nights out.

I hadn’t planned on going on dates.

As soon as Alex asked me, I went to run around the merch tents, trying to find Kelsey. Kelsey was
the singer for another band on Warped; they were similar to us in the sense they were just starting out.

I found her sitting talking to a tall boy with a cute smile at their merch tent.

“I hate to interrupt but I need to borrow Kelsey.” I said.

“That’s alright.” The boy smiled.

“Later Austin.” She said, walking away with me. “What is it I’m needed for?”

“Alex and I are going on a date. I have nothing to wear. I need your help.” I said.

Her brown eyes grew huge and excited, “LIV! I’m so happy for you! And of course, we’re done for the day and the guys aren’t in the van.” She led the way.

I told her we had 3 hours to get this done and she said she’d use every minute of it. She asked one of her good friends on one of the roadie buses to use their shower; thankfully it was a female filled bus.

She proceeded to tug at my hair.

As she was doing all this, I thought about how nice it was to have a girl friend on this tour. Most of the time I didn’t get that because my band was all guys. I really liked having someone to talk to like this.

“Can you teach me how to use make up sometime?” I asked as she was layering different things on my eyelids.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re really pretty naturally so you shouldn’t use make up often, and if I teach you, you
will.”

I blushed; I wasn’t called pretty very often. Not with Annie next to me, her being obviously more
beautiful than I would ever be.

“Annnnnnnnnnnnd, done.” She said.

She handed me a mirror and let me look at her masterpiece.

“Wow.” Was all I could say.

My hair fell in perfect waves around my face, accenting what she’d done to it.

I hardly recognized myself because she’d accented my features so perfectly.

“You’re beautiful. He’s going to be drooling.” She said. “Now we just have to dress you.”

She led me back to her van and rummaged through the clothes she’d brought. She pulled out a
rather short skirt and a button up blue shirt.

She ordered me to put them on, and I did.

The skirt was shorter than anything I was used to, and she wouldn’t let me button up the shirt so it
exposed a lot of cleavage. Well as much cleavage as I could have.

“I feel slutty.” I said.

“Please, that’s nothing compared to what sluts wear. You have nice legs I don’t know why you don’t wear shorter things more often.” She said.

I wasn’t prepared for all these compliments, so I continued to blush.

“Kels, I’m nervous.” I said.

“Aw, it’s cute your nervous. That means you like him.” She smiled, and hugged me.

It was 6:37 so I walked myself to my van, and sat down and listened to my iPod. Trying to calm myself down.

When I looked at my phone again, it was 6:43.

I decided to walk to Alex’s bus because my nerves were not going to subside.

I knocked on the door to find Jack staring at me.

“Holy fuck! Olivia is that you?” He joked. “Damn I didn’t know you had a butt. You look good.”

At this point my flush could be compared to a tomato.

“May I come aboard?” I asked.

“You may.” He said.

When I walked on the bus, everyone did a double take.

“Olivia, Jesus, I almost didn’t recognize you.” Zack said.

“Thanks?” I said, laughing.

“No you look very nice.”

A smile broke on my face when I heard Alex’s voice come from the back of the bus.

“God damnit! Jack have you seen my wallet I can’t find it anywh- whoa.” He said, stopping mid
sentence when he saw me.

My smiled only grew bigger and my flush deeper.

“Olivia Margaret. You look wonderful.” He said.

I surveyed him as well; he was wearing a pair of nice black pants and a button up shirt. I’d never seen him look this nice.

“You clean up nice yourself Alexander William.”

“Okay, hate to ruin the moment, but remember you have to be back by 10:30 or else the buses will leave without you, we have a long drive.” Matt said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep track of time.” I said.

This seemed to put Matt at ease; I knew he didn’t trust Alex with a clock.

“You ready?” He asked me.

I nodded.

As soon as we de-boarded the bus Alex took out his phone.

I smiled, “What are you doing?”

He quickly turned it toward me and took a picture.

“I wanted a picture of you. You look beautiful tonight. Come here.” He took a picture of the both of us, and tweeted it captioned “date night.”

This made me smile even bigger. It was cute he wasn’t afraid to say that, and that he was even excited to.

He grabbed my hand, and we began walking.

“So where are you taking me?” I asked.

“Well, since this is a real date, I figured we’d go to dinner.”

“Alright.”

I assumed we were walking because our venue was only a five-ish minute walking distance from a small town, but as we approached the entrance on the venue, I saw a cab waiting for us.

“You got a cab?”

“Yeah, you need to see the city of Philadelphia.”

I smiled.

In the car we just talked.

I loved how even though you’d think we’d exhausted all possible topics to talk about, there was always something. I felt comfortable to talk about things with him, anything really.

When we got into the city, it reminded me a lot of Baltimore.

We got out of the car in front of a very nice looking restaurant.

We walked inside and were quickly seated.

“So we have a day off in Baltimore next week. Are you excited?” He asked.

“Well, I don’t know. Not anymore than any other day off.”

“You’re not going to go see your family or anything?”

“I don’t think I want to. I think I’m going to hang out with Andrew and his family.”

“Would you like to come hang out with us for the night?” He asked.

I assumed us meant his band and their old friends.

“Yeah, I’d like that actually.”

“Maybe you could come eat with my family sometime.”

Provided I’d met his family on more than one occasion, he didn’t really need to do the whole ‘meet the parents thing’, but they probably didn’t remember me.

“Yeah. I’d be surprised if they remembered me.”

“They will. I’ve talked about you with my mom.” He said.

“You do? What do you say?”

“Well she knows I met a girl out here I really like, and when I told her it was you she was happy. She didn’t like Annie very much.”

It made me happy that he’d told his mom about me, and said ‘really like’ but he knew I didn’t like it when he brought up Annie.

The rest of dinner flowed smoothly, we talked about the tour and sets and fans and home and books and other music.

I knew we had a lot in common, but I learned even more about him that night than I had before.

After a very nice dinner, we held hands and walked around the city, and he showed me different things.

When I looked down at my watch and it was already 10:10 I told Alex we had to go soon or else we’d be late.

He signaled a cab and we both climbed in.

When we got back to my van, I didn’t want him to leave, I wanted the night to keep going.

“I had fun tonight. Thank you.” I said.

“Good. I did too.”

“At least I don’t have to worry about you not calling.” I joked, and he laughed.

I looked down at my shoes, wanting to kiss him, but not wanting to seem like it.

As if he read my mind, he put his finger under my chin and tilted my head up and kissed me.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and leaned into his body and kissed him back, and he put his hands on my waist pressing me closer to him.

The kiss deepened and I found myself with my back against my van, pushed tightly against his body.

He was the first to pull away, our noses almost touching.

“I really like you, Liv.” He whispered.

“I know. I really like you too.” We both smiled at each other and he kissed me quickly one more time before wishing me a goodnight and heading off to his bus.

I melted down, back against my van and sat on the ground.

I hadn’t been this happy in a long time. I crawled into the van, still wearing my skirt and shirt, and climbed into my bed, and fell asleep smiling.