The Fountain Girl

Chapter 16

Might as well ask Jess out, right?

And so I did.

It was after a boring Astronomy class about the Milky Way that I finally gathered my guts and decided to make myself proud, taking deep breaths and drumming my fingers rapidly on the table before I approached her.

"Jess, do you wanna hang out this afternoon?" I asked her, suddenly realizing how easy asking Jess out actually was. I started sweating as I waited for her reply. She turned around to the rest of her clique, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. She turned back around and I closed my eyes tightly, bracing the emotional pain-

"Yes! Yes! Of course yes!" She told me loudly, either in fear that I had suddenly turned deaf or very, very excitedly. I opened one eye. Wait, what?

I was out of the school gates, Jess next to me, when Katie ran up to me from behind, "Hey, you said that you would come to my house to study, didn't you?" She asked me, raising an eyebrow, a sad and forced smile on her lips.

"Could we do that tomorrow? I kind of have something on with Jess already..." I told her with Jess out of earshot.

"Yeah, sure, okay," Katie murmurred, her eyebrows drooping slightly, her sad face obvious. She brushed her hair to one side and turned around, strolling slowly back to her house.

I pretended to pay no attention to Katie and turned towards Jess. I put a hand out front. "Shall we?"

It was funny seeing Jess without her usual clique of five girls, which I found disturbing yet interesting at the same time. She wasn't as quiet or shy, her red hair glowed, and her eyes glimmered brighter than ever before.

We chatted up a storm at Starbucks, and I made her laugh until she cried. I never knew that I could make someone other than Katie laugh, and I relished the three hours that I spent with Jess.

"Thanks for letting me have such a great time," she told me as she opened the gate to her house.

"For real? You had fun today?" I asked her, surprised that my crush was entertained by me.

"Definitely."

I skipped back home, humming the tune of "Beautiful Day" as I went round the same old bend around the moor. I was greeted by a friendly and charmingly childish smile as I entered my bedroom.

"You happy?" Anna asked me as I scooped her up in my arms and tossed her high into the air, catching her as she fell back down.

"Yup. Very, very happy," I replied, Anna giggling uncontrollably when I tickled her belly.

"Look, look!" Anna told me as she held up a mess of colors on a piece of paper. I didn't know what it was at first, but when she turned it upside down, it resembled one of my sunset sketches of the park, except with colors. Some of the colors were weird, but for a two-and-a-half year old girl, it was remarkable. "That's beautiful, Anna. You're a good artist."

"Art-Arti-Artist," she mumbled softly to herself as she chewed on her hair.

"Oh-oh..." I mumbled softly to myself as I remembered abandoning Katie cold-heartedly for Jess earlier that day. I shrugged it off and made it a point to say sorry to Katie first thing in the morning.