Everything I Never Say ✓

[ fourteen ]

Fourteen

× × ×

I was eighteen when I caught the eye of this cute guy at that burger joint thirty-five minutes away from home.

I remember thinking the first eye contact I made across the noisy room with a boy three tables away was an accident.

And it happened again and I shrugged it off as a coincidence.

But then it happened once more, then another one more time. And I definitely knew he had his gazed unashamedly fixed on me.

"Hey, Debbie," Kylie nudged me, her elbow digging into my ribs.

"Ouch," I hissed, rubbing the sore spot with a halfhearted glare towards her.

"That guy keep staring at you every two minutes," she mumbled under her breath, ignoring my annoyed remark.

"What? What?" Jules asked, leaning across the table from where she sat on the opposite side. Her eyes were wide with curiosity, and she kept wriggling her eyebrows.

"That dude," Kylie subtly nodded in the direction of the boy, "he's checking out our best-friend."

"Yeah, well," I shrugged, scrolling through my Snapchat notifications. "You can't blame those eyes of his."

Jules groaned while Kylie just snickered under her breath. "As if her ego couldn't get any more inflated," Jules grumbled.

"It's not me be self-conceited, it's me being self-aware," I said pointedly, as I turned off the screen of my phone and set it on the table by the mustard and ketchup dispenser.

"What's the difference?" Kylie snorted.

"Self-conceited is me saying oh wow I've got such an aesthetically pleasing face, and self-awareness is me going oh wow I look so bomb tonight but also oh wow I can be such an arse sometimes."

Jules just shook her head with a fond smile, and Kylie laughed.

I was done with my meal first — Jules had ordered a second time around, and Kylie was the slowest eater in the planet. So I walked up to the counter, ready to get some ice-cream.

As I waited in line with three other people in front of me, I felt someone approach from the back. For a few seconds, my instincts lit up, telling me just who it was behind me. But I, of course, shook the thought off. I wasn't that conceited to think the boy would actually walk up to me while I was waiting in the queue.

"You from around here?" An unfamiliar voice floated to my ears from the back.

I turned my head to the side, looking over my shoulder at the cute boy who'd been catching my eye all night.

"Nearby," I replied vaguely, not wanting to tell a stranger where I lived.

"You looked sort of familiar," he said then. I remember wondering if that was some sort of pickup line, or a way to initiate conversation with me.

"Oh?"

"Do you by any chance know someone called Noelle? She has an older sister named Hadley?"

I was obviously surprised, and a smile had automatically wormed its way on my face. "Yeah, they're cousins of mine!" I nodded enthusiastically. "Do you know them?"