Hearts On Fire

It’s not that I was nervous, it’s just that I kind of felt like I would explode in a rush of nervous pee and puke at any second. Take how gross that sounds and multiply it by five and you may have some idea of how much I was freaking out over my looming date.

To be honest, I didn’t really know quite why I was freaking out. I saw Alex every day at school and we’d been friends for ages. It’s just that I’d been thinking about what it would be like to go out with him for so long that I still couldn’t believe it was happening and I was terrified I’d do something to mess it up. If I thought my nerves were bad when I finally got the courage to ask him out they were nothing compared to what I felt now.

It had taken weeks of beating myself up emotionally every time I tried to ask him and ended up saying something lame about English homework; weeks of Mike smirking at me every time I froze up because Alex had just sat down next to me. When I’d finally asked him I’d squeaked it out so quietly he’d had to ask me to repeat myself. We were in the library during our free period, supposedly studying but really just making paper planes to throw at each other. “Do you maybe want to go see The World’s End with me on Friday night?” those words had become my undoing.

Alex had offered to pick me up since I didn’t have a car and he was always a gentleman. He was due to arrive in five minutes and I was sitting on my bed with my leg jiggling like crazy while Mike stood in the door, a look of amusement on his face. I’d put on a button down for the occasion and even run a brush through my hair multiple times, desperate to impress.

I really didn’t have any idea what kind of guys Alex went for. He was always talking about celebrity women but he was a little more subtle with his guy talk most of the time. I had no idea what he thought about me, but it had to be a good sign that he’d agreed to the date, right?

“What if he doesn’t even realise it’s a date what if it’s just hanging out as friends to him? What if he just thinks of me as a friend?” I asked Mike for the tenth time in an hour, and for the tenth time that hour he sighed at me and shook his head. “Vic, he’d be stupid not to like you, shut the fuck up and play Candy Crush or some shit.” And with that he walked out of the room, finally.

With his usual perfect timing, I heard a car pull up outside. I practically fucking skipped downstairs, shoving my phone and wallet into my pocket on my way out of my room. Dad wasn’t home yet but Mom was in the living room so I just called a quick goodbye to her and Mike as I ran to the door, opening it a few seconds after Alex knocked.

I was blown away the second he came into view. His hair was a more styled version of its usual ridiculous scruffiness and his giant smile as I opened the door was so endearing I wanted to kiss him. He even looked like he’d dressed up, in black skinnies without a single rip and a dark grey v-neck and he just looked so ridiculously hot I wasn’t sure how he was real.

“M’lady,” he smirked, holding out his hand for me to take. I took it, playing along, and fluttered my eyelashes up at him. It was mostly just goofing around but I couldn’t help notice the jolt of my heart when he squeezed my hand or the way it felt like my insides softened when he opened the passenger door of his car for me to climb in.

On the drive to the nearest mall with a movie theatre we mostly just chatted like we did at school, about our friends and teachers and how ridiculous math was. It felt different somehow though, and I couldn’t tell if I was imagining it or if he could feel it too; if he noticed the way I kept sneaking glances at him.

It was a bit of a relief when we pulled into the parking lot and headed into the movie theatre. “How about I get tickets and you get snacks?” I asked as we got inside. He nodded and headed off to the snack counter while I got into the tickets line. Thankfully the movie’d already been out for a couple of weeks so there were still seats in the back row even though it was due to start in ten minutes. I paid for them and headed towards the snack counter.

“Popcooooooorn!” Alex all but growled, walking towards me with a large coke clasped in either hand, a bucket of popcorn squished between his arms and a bag of m&m’s clenched between his chin and neck. It was pretty mind blowing that he hadn’t dropped anything yet and I rushed to grab the drinks from him before he spilt them everywhere.

The theatre was pretty empty for a Friday night, though it was only about 6pm. We headed up to our seats and started an elbow fight for the armrest, both of us giggling like children as we elbowed each other, only stopping when the ads started to play and people started to glare at us, like we were a disgrace for making noise during the fucking ads that no one ever pays attention to anyway?
Alex ended up with the armrest, then seemed to think better of it and moved his arm, nudging me to take it instead. When I did he smiled over at me, so sweetly it felt like my heart would melt. All I could do was smile back at him and hope there weren’t hearts showing in my eyes from how ridiculously into him I was.

The movie was hilarious. I mean, it was no Hot Fuzz, but from the first five minutes we were laughing louder than anyone else in the theatre, Alex loud and obnoxious and so fucking endearing. I could almost forget how anxious I was and just lose myself in the ridiculous plotline and how nice it was to be there with Alex. Almost.

It wasn’t until about half way through that we reached for popcorn at the same time and our hands froze. I glanced at Alex, trying fiercely not to blush, and saw his cheeks looking pinker than usual. I quickly withdrew my hand, forgetting about the popcorn momentarily in the wake of my embarrassment.

The thing was, it happened again about ten minutes later, except this time we stayed frozen with our hands brushing for a few seconds until he eventually turned his hand, linking our fingers together and placing our joined hands down on the armrest we’d fought over less than an hour ago.

The soft sincerity he did this with filled me with so much affection for him I leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek, finally sure that I couldn’t be misreading things, finally sure that he must like me back.

In response Alex turned his head quickly to face me, leaning forward to catch my mouth with his as I started to lean back. It felt like my heart was on fire, the only thing going through my head was a string of Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex. His lips were chapped and warm and better than anything I’d ever felt. We turned in our seats to get a better angle, the hand that wasn’t still holding mine came up to cup my face and I leaned into it, leaned into him.

We jolted apart only when a loud noise came from the speakers around us and on screen Simon Pegg kicked a robots head off. After that the mood was kind of ruined anyway, and we remembered that we were there to see the movie. Our hands stayed linked though, his thumb rubbing circles on the back of my hand.

When the lights went back up and the credits started rolling we walked out of the theatre hand in hand. Our height difference was more noticeable now that we were standing up, and I leaned into his shoulder slightly as we walked. It was weird how much a kiss could change things.

“So we’ve still got a couple of hours before I need to get you home...” Alex trailed off and I hummed in response. “Want to go make out in my car?”

I honestly couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.