Dylan

∥Sydney∥

Dylan started his sophomore year like the year before, by hanging out in front of his locker with his friends. Jake did most of the talking, as usual, since he was always on some sort of sexual quest and was eager to share. This morning he was complaining about his date with one of girls in their class, Flora Morgan.

"It's like we were both waiting for the other person to shut up so we could start talking, you know?" Jake said. "I'm just sitting there watching her mouth move and wondering when I can tell my story, which is tons funnier than hers, by the way, and she keeps cutting me off. Does that ever happen to you guys? Like you have to compete for an invisible microphone?"

"No," Sean said. "I'd just let her talk, to be honest. Flora is super hot."

"She's way too chatty. She's like a boombox with large eyes. Anyway at one point I said, hey, my parents aren't home, and she's like, oh my God that sucks, right? My parents are never home, either, and I'm like, so do you want to come over to my house, and she's like, but what's the point? No one's there for me to meet." Jake threw up his hands. "What's wrong with this girl? I don't think she wants to bang."

Dylan laughed. Jake didn't even like dating that much; he thought of it as a necessary evil to get to what he was really interested in.

Jake turned to Sean. "Then she starts asking about you. She wants to know if we're close and I said, yeah, Sean's awesome, he actually knows how to disable parental controls on my computer and now I can roam free in the internet world, for research purposes, of course—"

"Jesus, you told her that? Of all the things you could've said about me..." Sean sighed. "Now she must think I'm some kind of pervert."

"No she doesn't. She's so impressed. She thinks you're a genius. Anyway, I feel like a gatekeeper...she's using me because I'm more approachable and you're intimidating to talk to."

"Well, do you know Lauren Reed?" Sean asked, and Jake nodded. "She sits behind me in physics and yesterday she passed me a note, and she stared right at me and said, Sean, this is my phone number, and just when I thought, cool, I like straightforward girls, she said, can you please make sure Jake Lancaster gets it?" He shook his head. "That is brutal."

Jake laughed and with a hint of careless nonchalance, the two of them relished in their popularity with the girls. It was something they were well aware of but never acknowledged, just like how a true hipster would never call themselves a hipster.

Dylan was fine with having friends like them and it did nothing to his self-esteem. If anything, he even felt kind of proud. Besides, it was never about being voted Most Gorgeous to him but about having that particular person like him back.

That particular person was stepping into the hallway right now. All three of them stopped talking for a second, as if this moment was something sacred to be left uninterrupted.

"Twelve out of ten would bang," Jake said under his breath.

"You can't keep giving people a score above ten because that kinda defeats the purpose of having a scale," Sean said.

"I feel like it's unfair to only give her a ten," Jake said. "She looks like Rihanna."

Sean gave her an eight with an unconvincing explanation that she was too sexy, like sexiness was something with a limit. He claimed he liked the typical girl-next-door type, of which Jake snickered and asked if he meant Janet, and Sean scoffed and explained, not literally.

Dylan tuned them out. Whenever he saw her, his brain stopped and all he could think was, wow.

She was obviously not the first girl he felt attracted to. There was Janet and her guitar, Emily with her blonde hair and killer smile, especially after she taught him how to drive, his first kiss, Olivia Burton, and his second kiss, started with a simple game of truth or dare and ended in a two-week "relationship", during which he was convinced that love tasted like cherry lip gloss and smelled like peach shampoo.