Chapter 12 - The Awkwardness of Talking

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*Chapter Twelve – The Awkwardness of Talking*

I stared at the screen, waiting for a gaping hole to appear in the centre of it from the weight of my gaze. I didn’t know how to reply, so I wrote and sent the first thing that popped into my mind and flew to fingers on the keyboard.

Sorry I can’t, I already text back a smiley face to Peter.

I felt a little bit like a bitch saying that, but it got him off my back. Now I just needed to get Peter to go out with me so I don’t look pathetic, I could only just hope that Carla wasn’t right and he wasn’t messing with me.

The lack of reply from Jack was duly noted, it was ten or fifteen minutes until the little green circle beside his name went out. So he was ignoring me now, interesting.

I went looking for my phone and so I could text Peter back a yes, but again I just felt that was slightly mean, even if I was accepting his offer of a relationship. Anyways, I could always suss out if he was lying or messing more easily if we met face –to – face. As I grabbed my phone and jacket while I ran downstairs, I told my mam I was going to call for Danielle, she just smiled and said to go ahead. The reason I lied was because of an old history our mams had as well as us, let’s just say it was easier to lie.

I typed out a quick message to Peter telling him to meet me as I hastily walked around the back of the estate, I didn’t want to be seen by anybody meeting up with Peter and not Danielle. It just wouldn’t look good, one thing that I can be certain about my neighbours is, they are possibly the worst gossips in the world…

I was only left waiting around for less than five minutes when I saw Peter swinging his head around, looking for me. I waved him over and he jogged to where I stood, not a sight I want to see again anytime soon, and that was being polite.

“Hey Sarah” he said, almost breathlessly, and not in a good way…

“Hey, so um… you know that text you sent me, what was that all about?” I blurted without thinking.

 “So… you don’t want to go out with me?” his face fell a little before a composed mask went up and I felt immediate ­regret at my rude tone.

“Well, I was asking you out, but of course don’t feel you have to.” his reply had a sarcastic feel to it.

“Well, I was going to say yes, but of course don’t feel you have to.” I mimicked him, nearly taunting. Great… we haven’t even started going out and we were having our first fight.

“Awesome! I’ll pick you up at seven tomorrow.” He smiled devilishly and I wondered what I had gotten myself into, why I couldn’t have just come up with a better excuse to give Jack, I swear I shoot myself in the foot regular… why? Is anyone’s best guess...?

“Okay, I had better be getting back now, I told my mam I was only going to be out for a couple of minutes…” I just wanted out of there, quickly.

“Alright, see you tomorrow,” he stepped closer to me, entering my personal space and my knee was headed for the ‘no go area’ but he simply pecked me on the check and I froze in my place. I didn’t know how to react when he stood back, so I simply smiled and raced off.

I felt slightly bad lying to my Mam again, I told her Danielle wasn’t free to come out and I took so long because we were having a chat before she had to go in again.

I lounged in front of the T.V for a while before retreating to bed, almost scared about where Peter was going to bring me on our ‘first date’.

***

6:37 and I was already ready, I was slightly nervous, I mean this is my first proper date apart from those crazy little flings you have when you are like thirteen. I hadn’t really dressed up for the occasion as I presumed it was only a casual thing; a floral t-shirt with a pink boyfriend cardigan over that, sky blue denim jeans and my trusty pink converse.

It was a good thing I had gotten early as Peter arrived at ten to seven, looking awesome in a light blue shirt that clashed in a good way with his brown eyes, dark jeans and another pair of converse.

To say answering the door was awkward would be the understatement of the century….

It was one of those situations where you’re stuck for anything to say so you expect the other person to say something, only they are waiting for you to speak too… Sort of like this;

“Hi…”

“Hey…”

“So… where are we going?”

“I don’t mind, where do you want to go?” Wait a minute! He hadn’t actually chosen somewhere to go? I may not exactly be experienced in the art of dating but wasn’t being totally unprepared a no-go area?

I went with a cryptic answer as I knew I would just say somewhere stupid like McDonald’s if I trusted myself to reply. “Surprise me?” I waited to see what Peter’s reaction would be to that.

He screwed up his face for a minute for seeming to come to a decision and let out a deep breath, before telling me to get my coat and come with him.

When we walked out my drive way I presumed we would be turning right, towards his house and getting into his car, which was sitting right outside his house, just watching me!

But no, of course we had to turn left and start to walk towards the exit of the estate: I wracked my mind for possible places he could be bringing me that were in walking distance… the best I could come up with was the tiny little park that is only used as a secluded place for dogs doing their business.

Along the way to the mystery destination we made light conversation, he was in my school but is a year older than me so we didn’t meet in any classes or the like. I wasn’t paying great to attention to where we were walking more making sure I didn’t mess up and say something stupid that could come back and bite me in the ass later, so I didn’t have a clue where we were until Peter told me we had arrived. It hadn’t been a long walk, twenty minutes at most… then I looked up.

Oh my God…. he didn’t!

You may think he had remember somewhere from our childhood friendship, like that park we would beg our parents to bring us to, and be all cute like that… but no, Peter had brought me,

to McDonalds.

It wasn’t bad evening overall, he did pay for me. The thought ‘He’s finally found his gentleman inside’ crossed my mind. We talked about everything and soon enough it was just like old times. We chattered and bantered like we were kids again and caught up on everything that had happened since our fatal argument. He even apologized for calling me stinky when we were small, which I found adorable. Then he went as far as to lean over and sniff me, telling me I in fact smelled like lemons.

I apologized for calling him fat but I didn’t reach over, pinch his (far from muscly) stomach and tell him he was toned. I never prided myself on being a hypocrite.

My evening with Peter wasn’t going bad and I was having a good time for once without it being contaminated by Jack or some other dark force. But as I really needed to learn, I spoke to soon.

I hear the door of the eerily quiet fast-food restaurant open and someone walk in, being the crazy stalker I am looked around, and had definite deja vú, someone had just arrived. That someone being Jack.

I chose to ignore him completely and looked away, paying way too much attention to my fries.. However Peter didn’t seem to want to follow suit. Once he saw me look away from the door, he looked over and obviously recognised Jack.

“Heyo! Jack, come sit with us!” I wanted to run away at that point, of course Peter had no knowledge of my conflicting offers of relationships…

Jack glanced over his shoulder, before sauntering over to our table without a care in the world, he got himself a chair and sat across from me before saying to me,

“Well Sarah, someone gets around mighty fast don’t they!” After hearing that crude statement, I grabbed my coat and walked out, jogging home on my own.

So much for a perfect first date.

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