fool (lester averman)

chapter seventeen

•─────────•❋•─────────•

chapter seventeen: the date

•─────────•❋•─────────•

She meets him in the lobby of the hotel an hour later.

He's standing over by the door and picking at his cuticles when she steps out of the elevator, and he doesn't look up until she's halfway across the room. As soon as he lays eyes on her, he's staring at her like she's a goddess, like she stepped right off that clam shell in that Birth of Venus painting, and it makes her blush slightly.

"Are you alright?" Rory teases, waving a hand in front of his eyes.

Grinning, Averman nods. "Yeah. Billy Joel's Uptown Girl just started playing in my head."

"Oh, haha."

"She's been living in her uptown world." He croons in a dreadful Billy Joel voice. "I bet she's never had a backstreet guy, I bet her momma never told her why--"

Rory rolls her eyes, a smile gracing her lips.

"Oh, yeah. 'Cause you're a real backstreet guy, Lester."

"Mhm. The baddest, most backstreet guy you'll ever know."

He finishes his sentence and pushes his glasses up with his pinky finger. She stares at him, amused, for a moment before she shakes her head and starts walking, him happily following her.

"Is that why you were gonna shit your pants over Russ and his friends?"

"Hey, hey-- you don't even know how to take public transportation, princess. You can't get on my case."

"I know." She hums. "But I'm not claiming to be a backstreet girl, am I?"

Averman pauses for a moment. "No, you're not, but I'm no uptown boy, so you've gotta work with me here."

Rory snorts a laugh through her nose. He takes her hand, continuing to obnoxiously hum the song as they walk down the street to a bus that will take them to a theater.

•─────────•❋•─────────•

"That was... that was a good movie."

He waits for her to throw their empty popcorn carton away, rocking back and forth with his hands in his pockets. The movie wasn't bad, it was actually quite interesting to watch as a girl (because God forbid anybody make a feel-good movie about girls), but Rory thinks she's a little too attached to Daniel LaRusso to enjoy any Karate Kid movie without him.

She's been trying to goad Averman into talking about it for a solid few minutes now.

"Yeah." He nods. "It was."

She smiles knowing that her goading worked.

Rory listens to him as he rambles on about how he feels about this movie compared to the others. Silently, she starts to wonder just how many times he's watched the movies, and if they are to him what the Hobbit is to her.

"And that suspension thing was so stupid-- it wasn't like she was even doing anything, she was just feeding some overrated chicken."

"It was a hawk, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. Overrated chicken."

She blinks at him for a moment "You-- I-- do you ever think about your words before you say them?"