Feet First

“Our fans are very avid tweeters.” Jack said, both of us scrolling through our twitter feeds.

“Some of them are quite clever.” I said.

We’d just finished our set and hadn’t been told to do anything yet. We knew our fans loved it when we tweeted, so we tried to everyday.

We replied to a few people, which we knew would, hopefully, make their day.

“Hey did you know we’ve both tweeted Sam and Matt back a few times?” He said.

“No, that’s awesome. Do you follow them?”

“Yeah, go follow them, they’re all funny. And they don’t tweet every two seconds.”

I quickly followed them, and scrolled through who Andrew was following, hoping to find Olivia’s twitter.

Not finding it, I went to their bands twitter.

There it was.

I followed her.

“Hey I found Liv’s twitter too.”

I saw him scrolling down her page.

“She’s not a very interesting tweeter. And she doesn’t follow us that’s too funny. Oh pictures!”

Jack the most distractible human being I knew.

“Dude, she’s actually like, so hot. Like she wasn’t this hot in high school.” He said, handing me his phone.

He was on Andrew’s twitter, but on screen was a picture of Liv laughing.

She looked gorgeous, and really, really happy. I hadn’t seen her smile like that yet, but I planned
to.

“First day of Warped.” The caption read.

“This family obviously just had hot genetics.” Jack said, taking his phone back.

I picked my phone back up and saw I had a direct message.

It was from Sam.

“Hey, glad to see you followed all of us. We’re going to get drunk. Liv wants to know if you’d join
us.”

My face broke into a smile.

Olivia wanted to hang out.

So, everything was probably good again.

“Hey Jack, wanna go drink?” I asked.

He smiled. “When do I not?”

I replied to Sam quickly, and we headed out toward their van.



Jack and I quickly found out that this band was very fun to drink with.

A few more random members of other bands joined us as well, to get the party going.

But we really hung out with Matt, Liv and Sam.

Andrew didn’t come, he was tried or something.

But Sam and Matt were fun drunks.

They went to hit on girls with Jack, and I ventured over to talk to Olivia.

She was sitting at a table, reading something on her phone.

“Hey, why aren’t you drinkin?” I asked, sitting down next to her at the table.

She looked up and smiled.

“Well, we’re only 20.”

“Shit I forget you guys aren’t the same age as me. But you could drink anyway, I mean, nobody
will card you.”

“Yeah, but I just don’t like to.” She said.

“Be right back.” I said.

She just looked completely confused.

I returned with four shots.

“We’re taking these.” I told her.

She laughed. “Alex, no.”

“You’re acting like you’ve never taken a shot before.”

She blushed a little and but her lip.

“Shit, you never have.”

She shook her head.

“Well fuck it.” I said, handing her the tiny glass.

“What are we drinking to?” She asked.

“To unlikely reunions.” I said.

She smiled, and we both tilted our heads back and drank.

She made a face.

“Haha, you’re adorable. How was that?”

“Not too terrible.” She said, and to my surprise, picked up the next one. “To new friends.”

I smiled, and we drank.

The alcohol helped her loosen up and talk more.

And I found out that she was a lightweight.

We found ourselves talking about high school.

“Did you ever have the really old American history teacher?” She asked.

“Mr. Davis?”

“Yeah he was so fucking weird, and he always talked about his one son that was in the army and
he always smelled like-“

“Tomato soup.” I said.

“Oh my god! Exactly!” She laughed.

It was then I saw that smile. The genuinely really, really happy smile.

“Liv, can I ask you something?”

She put down the beer she was drinking. “Yeah, sure.”

“Can you tell me what happened to you in high school? I mean, like, my junior and senior year
you were kind of-“

“Weird?” She said.

“No not weird, you just seemed, sad.” I looked up, trying to gauge her reaction.

“Well,” She began, the happiness draining from her eyes. “I just had a lot of issues. And it was
just a hard few years.”

I knew she didn’t trust me enough to tell me more, but I couldn’t help wonder.

“Did Annie know?”

Her eyes flashed back to something.

“Somewhat. But Annie never really paid attention to me.” She said, looking down.

“I’m sorry Liv.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“But it kind of is, I mean, what you said he other night, that she was caught up with me, and her
life. Like, I’m sorry. I did hurt her. I played stupid games with her because I was an ass hole. And

I shouldn’t have. And I didn’t know how badly it was effecting you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You couldn’t have known.” She said.

I sighed.

It felt good that she wasn’t upset anymore.

But then, I saw the tear roll down her cheek.

I scooted my chair so I was sitting right next to her.

“Hey.” I said, wiping the tear from her face. “It’s okay.”

She got up suddenly and walked away.

And this time.

I followed her.

“Liv! Hold up. What’s wrong?” I asked, catching up to her right after she walked out the door.

She turned around, and I saw the stream of tears down her face.

“I’m fine.”

I grabbed her hand, and pulled her toward me, and wiped her face with my sleeve.

“No, you’re not fine. And it’s okay to not be fine. You don’t have to run away from it. What’s
wrong?”

“It’s just,” She paused, trying to figure out what to say. “You remind me of who I used to be, and
I really didn’t like that person.”

I looked down at her, not really knowing what to say.

She started to cry again, and I pulled her into a hug, and let her cry into my shirt.

“We’re all have things about ourselves we don’t like. But being who you were, lead to you being
who you are now. And you became someone quite incredible, okay? The past doesn’t matter as
much as right now.”

She smiled, and dried her eyes.

“Thank you.” She said. “And I don’t normally cry this much, or talk this much. It must be the
alcohol.”

I laughed. “No need for apologies.”

She smiled at me, and this smile was different than the one before.

It wasn’t a happy smile, it was more of an excited smile.

Like she was excited of what was to come.

I was starting to really like her smile.

And her.