Than to Have Never Loved at All

The Trouble with Phone Calls

I was spending a lot of my free time with Clinton. It was getting ridiculous. We hung out in class, between class, at lunch, I would even catch rides home from school with him and Keegan so we could hang out in the car. My house was kinda on the way to Clinton's, so that made it easy. A few times a week we would do our homework together.

I made sure to note important things about our relationship for the One-Acts. So far my phone had this list:

Three things I very much like about Clinton Carter

1) He know my favorite snacks and finds any excuse to bring me more.

2) We like the same dumb movies and old sitcoms.

3) He smells like boy.

- Side note. Consider buying Old Spice for yourself. Then you can smell boy anytime you want.

4) He's warm

The list of things Clinton liked about me was endless and embarrassing. I didn't think about his list often, but that didn't matter because he told me small things from it all the time.

"I love your hair." He twisted a lock through his fingers as he drove us to the theater Thursday afternoon. I liked it when he touched my hair. I needed to add that to the list. Nat used to do my hair and it felt the same delicious way.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked. His tone was sweet. He always like to know what I was thinking about, like eventually I would just be thinking about us.

"Australian marsupials?" I said, because I was.

Clint gave me the half smile he always did when I made a nonseuqiter while he was trying to be sweet.

"And why's that?"

I hadn't really thought of them since Finn got very into opossums a few years ago. To this day I'm glad that he doesn't have an overgrown night-rat living under his bed, but it was what I was thinking about.

"There are so many marsupials in Australia," I said. "Finn said it's because Australia was cut off from the rest of the world, and marsupials just kept evolving while everywhere else mammals took over."

"I like Finn. Full of useless information," Clinton said.

I hummed in agreement. Finn was full of information, and when I brought him up Clinton usually stopped saying sweet romantic things.

I wondered what he was thinking about. Most of the people around me were predictable. I always knew what Finn was thinking, and what he was about to say. I knew everything about Nat because it came out of her mouth. Lei was an open book, and I always knew what my parents were about to say. Clinton was a mystery. He wasn't any more mysterious than anyone else on the planet, but he was suddenly my mystery.

He didn't say anything more about Finn or marsupials, just turned on a deep-cut S Club 7 song and bopped his head. My phone buzzed in my pocket, but when I looked at the screen I saw Finn's name. Butt dial. Finn didn't call, and when he did it wasn't on date night.

We stopped by the Dollar Store in town to get peanut M&M's so Clinton could pour them on his popcorn then walked to the theater. We made it just in time to catch the last trailer before the movie started. It was a Marvel classic today. Age of Ultron or Iron Man, I couldn't really remember, and it didn't really matter.

There weren't many seats left, so Clinton and I wiggled into seats near the back in the middle of a row, apologizing all the way. When we landed safely in our dusty red seats and he held out a hand. A hand I was becoming increasingly accustomed to holding.