Intuition.

Part 1.

I was so nervous. Have you ever been so nervous that you can’t sit still? That you go to the bathroom about a billion times? That you can’t even eat? Not even a leaf of lettuce?

I have. I am.

Pottering around the house, I was making sure everything was right and perfect. Straightening up this, straightening up that. I kept glancing at the clock, keeping track of time. It’d been about two hours since Gerard and I had parted.

I was slightly wary of the fact that I was still the ‘new kid’. I wasn’t completely in yet. Hanging around Gerard was certainly helping though. But…in a way, it didn’t matter too much to me anymore. He was becoming someone more than just the guy who was my leverage to popularity.

He was becoming a friend, I guess. Someone like Charlie.

When the door bell ran I shot down the stairs two at a time and opened the door as fast as I could without ripping it from its hinges.

“Hey,” I said, breathlessly.

“Hey yourself. Why are you so out of breath?” he laughed, pulling his bag up his shoulder a little more.

“Ran down the stairs,” I answered as I moved aside to let him in.

“Are you sure?”

I didn’t get it for a moment but when I caught sight of the cheeky look on his face, I gasped. “No, seriously. I ran down the stairs, I swear.”

“No way, spill it! Who is it?” he teased.

“No one!” I assured him, laughing. Because there was no one. There wasn’t anyone in that school that I liked any more than an acquaintance.

“Okay, okay. I believe you, this once. Um, where should I stick my bag?”

The mood went from playful to companionable. I think that’s the right word anyway.

“This way,” I said, leading him up the staircase. He dramatically pretended to huff and puff as we climbed them, making sure I definitely heard each and every intake of breath. It took all I had to not burst out laughing and roll around on the ground in fits. I was nervous and giddy, so that’s probably why I felt like I could do exactly that.

“Well…this is my room,” I said as we walked into it. Gerard looked around and the look of confusion on his face was unmistakeable. I blushed slightly, realising how un-roomy my room was. It was hardly considered a teenager’s room at all.

“It’s, uh…it’s…” he searched for words, his eyes darting around the room.

“Don’t worry about it. I know it looks like a jail cell,” I laughed nervously. “You can, uh, put your stuff over there beside my bed if you want.”

Gerard nodded and moved over to the bed. “Your room is…”

“It sucks,” I cut him off.

“No, no. It’s got character. It’s mature I guess, efficient almost,” he continued, looking at everything. There wasn’t much to look at though. I was growing even more nervous with him trying to make up for his lack of words before.

“Uh, let’s go downstairs,” I said quickly, grabbing hold of his wrist and tugging him towards the door.

“Okay.” He smiled at me as I led him down the stairs. When we reached the bottom we just stood there for a moment as I tried to decide what I should show him. Or what we could do.

“Frank,” Gerard said, a sloppy smile pasted onto his face.

“Yeah,” I whispered, looking up at him.

“Is there any reason why you’re still holding onto my wrist?”

I looked down at my hand, and sure enough it was still holding onto his wrist. I let go of it like it was on fire and blushed a deep red. I could feel the heat from my cheeks and I felt like an idiot.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, looking anywhere but him.

“Frank…”

“Yeah?”

“Look at me, dude,” he laughed.

Him laughing just made me feel even more embarrassed; he thought this was funny. It so wasn’t.

“Let’s, uh, go into the lounge room. We can pick out some movies or something,” I mumbled and started to head into the lounge room.

Gerard caught my hand and spun me around until I was facing him. “Frank, look at me,” he said, his voice serious.

I looked up at him shyly; sure my cheeks were still bright red. I don’t think he understood just how embarrassed I was. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

“It’s okay,” he said slowly and firmly. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I didn’t mean to–”

“Seriously, chill. It’s fine. There’s no need to blush as if you’ve just been dacked in from of the whole school,” he laughed, smiling that sloppy grin of his again. I swear he had about a thousand different smiles.

“I just…sorry,” I mumbled, then in a louder voice, “so, what type of movies do you want to watch tonight?”

“A bit of everything?” he said, catching on to the change of subject, “like, something scary, then something funny, then something cheesy?”

I nodded, sitting down in front of the bookshelf filled with DVD’s when I reached it. Gerard sat beside me and ran his fingers along the bottom shelf that had books in it. They were Dad’s, the ones he got for when Mum was sick.

Gerard looked at me, I knew he was, but I pretended I didn’t notice his raised eyebrow and pointed look. He hardly knows anything about me and it was going to stay that way.

“Is…is this for your Dad’s work?” he finally asked, quietly.

“Yeah,” I quickly answered. “Hey, what about this one for the funny movie?” I showed him the cover of a movie called Austin Powers. I personally had never seen it but I think Gerard might have from the grin on his face.

“Sure. We should watch that one first and then choose another one after we’re finished it. I have some lollies and chips upstairs in my bag, do you mind if I go get them?” Gerard’s eyes looked innocent but I could see the slight hardness behind that.

“No,” I said slowly, “I don’t mind at all. I’ll be in the kitchen, looking for pizza vouchers.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a moment.”

I watched as he got up and walked out of the room. The light thumping of his feet continued up the staircase and I kept sitting where I was, confused and anxious.

Finally, I got up and went into the kitchen, searching the voucher drawer for the ones I wanted. The frown that had twisted itself on my face as soon as Gerard went upstairs stayed in place. I was fine, I would be fine. It’s just one night, right?

I can do this. Of course I can.

I found the vouchers and set them down on the bench. I could hear Gerard’s light footsteps coming down the stairs, so I turned towards the kitchen doorway. He appeared in the doorway just moments later, walking straight into the room, his arms filled with assorted bags of confectionary and nibblies.

I could see bags of buttered popcorn, skittles, starburst lollies, Hershey’s, chocolate, crisps of pretty much every flavour. It looked like he had bought the whole candy store. I gulped.

“Look’s good. We’ll definitely be set for tonight,” I said, speaking as evenly as I could manage. “Are you sure we’ll need pizza too?”

Gerard looked at me and his eyes still had that uncharacteristic hardness behind the innocence. “Of course we do,” he said, as if it were obvious. There was a smile – no, a grin plastered on his face.

“I can only have vegetarian,” I replied, making my voice match his cheery one.

“That’s cool. I’ll have vegetarian with you. Do you want to call now or later?” Gerard shuffled on his feet a little before setting all the bags in his arms down on the bench.

I shrugged. “Now, I guess. I can go and set up our movie while you call?”

Gerard nodded. “Sounds good. Err, where’s the phone?”

I told him where the phone was and gave him the vouchers before watching him talk to the pizza shop. A soft smile wormed its way to my lips and stayed there while I set up the movie for us. Dad insisted on getting surround sound a couple of moves back, I don’t know why though. It’s not as if he ever uses it.

But I guess it’s good for when I have an occasional friend over.

“The pizza’s organised.”

I jumped and let out a little squeak.

“Sorry,” he laughed, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me; you just took me by surprise…”

Gerard raised his eyebrow at me. “So, in others words, I scared you.”

He and I stared at each other for a moment before I gave in. “Yeah, you did. But only a little bit!”

He chuckled and went to sit down beside me.

“Don’t sit, I’m about to get up. The movie is in; I just have to find the remote.”

Finally, after endless searching around the drawers of the coffee table, we found the remote. We both flopped onto the couch and got comfortable.

“Wait! I need to go and get food,” Gerard said, quickly getting up and disappearing into the kitchen. While I waited for him I chanted in my head. One night. Just one night.

He came back with bowls of lollies and crisps, he’d obviously found the Tupperware cupboard.

“Here we go,” he said, setting the bowls down on the coffee table and pulling it toward the couch so we could both reach it. “We should have a competition.”

“Of what?” I asked, glancing away from the screen. The movie had started but was only in the first ten minutes so I guess it didn’t matter.

“We need to finish all the lollies, pizza, crisps and chocolate equally. The first one to say no to anything has to take a dare and tell the complete truth to five questions, no matter what the questions are,” he explained with a smirk.

I didn’t want to agree. From the moment he started speaking I knew I didn’t want to take part.

“You’re on,” I laughed. “And you’re gonna lose.”

“We’ll see about that,” Gerard laughed in return.

We watched the movie, the bowls of food somehow ending up on the couch between Gerard and I, until the doorbell rang signalling that the pizza had arrived. Not to mention that I was already beginning to feel full from everything I had already eaten. At least two packets of crisps and three bags of starburst lollies were gone.

“I’ll get it,” I said, already getting up and heading to the door. Gerard just continued laughing at something on the movie. It made me smile.

I paid the pizza man and took the boxes into the kitchen so I could get some plates.

“Frank! Hurry up; this is the best part of the movie! Quick!”

“Coming,” I called, chuckling at Gerard’s laughter that was echoing through the house. When I got back into the lounge room Gerard was clutching his stomach with tears running down his face.

“Moley moley mole!” he shouted at me.

I had no idea what he was going on about but I had to laugh at the way he said it. When he saw the pizza in my hands he darted forward and helped me set it all out on the table, still laughing to himself.

“We have to rewind it so you can see the mole bit. Seriously, it’s the best part of the movie,” he enthused, already looking around the couch for the remote.