Written in the Stars *EDITING*

Chapter 8: First Kisses are Awkward

The next few days passed by without anything interesting happening. Mia ate lunch with Hazel and Nathan, did her homework, and hung out with her parents. Nathan and her hadn't conquered any more of her fears or gone on any "dates", they would hold hands in the hallways though. By now, Mia was used to the feel of Nathan's hand wrapping around her own. They never interlocked their fingers though, it was just their hands holding each other. For some reason, his hands were usually cold and it made Mia want to buy him thick woolen gloves.

It was Thursday and Nathan was lounging on Mia's couch while she was sitting in the black armchair. Both her parents were at work and Nathan had asked to come over, knowing Mia would be able to help him with the hefty math packet they had been assigned for homework. Nathan was trying to get the packet done, his pencil scratching the paper while his calculator was open. Math didn't usually stump him but he couldn't grasp this unit. He grunted in frustration when the answer didn't make sense. Mia got up from the armchair where she had been reading a book. She sat next to him on the couch and looked over his problems. She lifted her hand and pushed some of the hair that had fallen into her face behind her ear.

"Carry this number and don't forget to divide this one," she said while pointing on the page. He redid the problem and this time his outcome made more sense. He said thanks and glanced at the next difficult problem. He then put the packet into his folder and shoved it into his backpack, giving up on math for now. Mia let out a small laugh at his distaste of the subject and opened her book again.

"What are you reading?" Nathan asked while looking at how captivated by the book she was.

"Oh," she said without looking up, "I'm rereading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief for the fiftieth time. It just makes me so happy, ya know?" she said, finally looking up at him.

Nathan gently grabbed the book and put his pencil in the book before closing it, so she wouldn't lose her page. "Oh come on, I'm bored."

Mia rolled her eyes, "What am I supposed to do about that? I have a bunch of books you can borrow if you want to read."

"But I don't want to read right now," he whined slightly. "Can we talk?"

"About what?"

He shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know. I'm just bored and therefore you have to entertain me," he grinned. He sat up straighter all of a sudden. "I just remembered that Jake is throwing a party on Saturday. We're going."

"So are we just going to go for like an hour, drink, and then leave?"

Nathan scratched the back of his neck and averted his eyes from Mia's. "Um, actually I was thinking we could go there and," he gulped, "kiss?"

"Oh," she said softly.

"It's just, so many people have come up to me shocked we don't show intense PDA in the hallways. Kind of ridiculous that they care so much. I also heard some guys saying they didn't think we were actually dating and it was some elaborate prank. As if I would put my energy into pranking the school with something like this."

His explanation seemed to satisfy her. "So we go to this party and kiss in front of everyone? Ok."

His brown eyes caught her green ones when he turned to look at her. "We want them to think we've actually been dating, so I was thinking we could kiss before the party, just so that it's not awkward. If you're uncomfortable with that, we obviously don't have to." He quickly added.

She contemplated it for a second. "Let's just kiss right now, so we don't have to worry about it later."

Nathan's eyes widened just a smidge, "Oh right now? Um yeah of course."