Everything in Between

Chapter 10: A Leap of Faith

Pause real quick. The author's saying sorry, can you believe that? Apparently that "professional" hasn't been updating, what nerve on that guy. I better get more pay from all this. Overtime is a pain. But I digress. Here's the other part.

Unpause. Back to your daily (ha. I wish) cheeseball broadcast.

"You ready for this?" Priestly asks.

"Definitely. Just the three of us," I answer, just as we twist and turn on the roads en route to our hangout with Elise.

Okay, let me explain why we're having a hangout with Elise two weeks before prom. No, it's nothing dirty, or nothing romantic.

Well, not yet.

But before I get to that, it's time to hop on our DeLorean cause we're going back in time.

To 7th Grade.

To a much simpler time, before serenades and flowers. When Nick was but a mere child who couldn't wait to go to the real world.

During that time, Angie wasn't even there yet (neither was Claire), her existence was hidden from my searching eyes and instead they found Elise's. And damn I was smitten.

Hard. Like concrete. The attraction was solid. From quick glances to late night conversations, we were checking all the guidelines on the "possible item" checklist. However, dear reader, if you think I'm dense now, then I must be the densest guy you'll ever meet in 7th Grade.

"She likes you man," says one.

"She's so into you dude," cried another.

"You guys looked so cute yesterday," agreed a group.

And so on, the comments continued but I refused to listen. A part of me said that's too good to be true, the other part said that she likes someone else. Both agreed that she didn't like me. It was as if I was in a race that I was purposely losing because she was raising the wrong flags.

I wasn't even alone.

I probably had a few other guys in the lane, one of them Priestly. It wasn't surprising considering we liked the same girls before, but Elise was different. Little did I know that she'd end up in a series of events that would later bite my ass.

But I digress.

I probably should've noticed that she was displaying signs of attraction, cause you know, she was displaying the signs described on WikiHow.

Looking back, that was just stupid. But desperate times call for desperate measures. To be fair, I was new to this newfound game of figuring out, so I needed a few pointers from WikiHow.

However, I still didn't believe it, because half those signs were so general you could give it its own army.

I could've sworn though, that it's not normal to stay up till 2 AM, talking about anything that comes to mind, just to keep the conversation alive and burning. I could've sworn, that there was something in the eyes which just gave off that "feels" vibe. But I was unsure. I was confused.

I'd spend days thinking about it, because I've been so worried and scared about what would happen if she did like me. What would happen to us, to her or to me remained a mystery. One that was constantly eating me up from the inside.