hey jealousy // michael clifford

nine

THREE YEARS EARLIER

Michael and Avery had been 'seeing each other' for almost three months before he finally grew some balls and asked her to be his girlfriend. The whole story was fairly boring to be completely honest. They'd been hanging out at his apartment one afternoon after he'd picked her up from school and it kind of just slipped out.

He was bored but Avery was adamant that she get her biology homework done before they started doing anything else. So they were both lying on his bed and Michael was kind of just being a creeper and watching her as she answered some questions about DNA that frankly confused Michael, so he was really hoping that she didn't ask him for help. She must have gotten to a particularly difficult question because Michael noticed that she hadn't written anything down for a little while and she was just staring blankly at the page in front of her and chewing on the end of her pen.

As much as Michael didn't want to admit it, he was kind of turned on by the sight of her in her school uniform with her glasses on while she was lying on his bed, looking a little confused as she tried to work out whatever problem was bothering her.

Without any warning she threw her pen down, took off her glasses, and started rubbing at her eyes. Michael didn't know what to do for a few minutes because the change in her demeanour was so sudden. He had to quickly change from 'holy shit Avery's really hot and she's in my bed' to 'holy shit something's wrong and I need to help' and the whole thing was a lot for him to process.

"I don't get it." She said after a few moments.

Her voice broke though and then Michael felt so bad that he couldn't get his shit together, because she was obviously more upset about this than he thought. He shuffled over so he was closer to her and tried to pull her hands away from her face, but she wouldn't budge.

"Baby, c'mon, please just look at me." Avery shook her head, turning her face into Michael's chest. He wrapped his arms around her, but he still wanted to help. "At least tell me what's wrong then."

"I don't get it." She repeated, her voice muffled by Michael's shirt.

"Don't get what?"

"All this shit about DNA and its replication and fucking polypeptides. I just don't understand any of it." She pulled away and sat up.

When her eyes met Michael's he could see that even though she wasn't crying yet she was almost at that point. In that moment he decided that he hated biology; to be honest he'd probably hate anything that made Avery look as upset as she did right then.

He picked up her biology book and threw it onto the floor, her text book following shortly after. When he looked over to Avery again her eyebrows were drawn together in confusion and Michael just stood up from his bed and held out his hand.

"C'mon, I'm not going to let my girlfriend be upset because of some stupid school work. Let's go get some ice cream and we can watch a movie, sound good?"

Michael hadn't even registered what he'd said which was probably why he didn't understand why Avery looked so shocked.

"Michael, you just called me your girlfriend." She told him slowly, as if she wasn't sure how he was going to react.

"Oh," Michael started, sitting back down on the bed next to her. "Was it - did you mind?"

She shook her head, her eyes never leaving his face.

"Would you mind if I, I don't know, maybe called you that all the time?" Michael let out a groan and ran a hand through his hair. "What I mean is will you be my girlfriend?"