Barging through his bedroom door with half of her wardrobe draped over her arms, Ava turned to her brother.
"You're a boy."
Ryan glanced up at her from his laptop screen, a bored expression on his face. "If not, this thing dangling between my legs has been very misleading."
"Okay, do boys prefer girls in skirts or shorts?" She asked, dropping the multiple garments of clothing at the foot of his bed. "Because Ashton's going to be here in ten minutes and I think I'm going into cardiac arrest so-"
"Oh, my God," Ryan groaned, silencing her as he rolled his eyes. "Boys don't care about whether your shoes match your nail polish or whatever."
"Not quite what I asked," Ava muttered, although then silently wondered if her shoes did match her nail polish - they didn't, but it was too late to change now.
Ryan went back to his laptop, just as Ava picked up a black skater skirt.
"Which looks better? The shorts or skirt?"
"Shorts."
"You didn't even look!" Ava called, groaning in frustration. Hanna would have been a much better person to have this discussion with, but her parents had dragged her away to visit her grandparents for the weekend, which meant Ava was relying solely on her brother's opinion - a bad move, but it was a desperate last resort.
She turned to the mirror that was hung on Ryan's wall - he might not be interested in her clothes, but Ava knew Ryan spent at least half an hour every morning making sure every hair on his head was perfectly styled and in place.
She was wearing a pair of denim cut off shorts and a singlet with the Chili's logo on, because she remembered Ashton telling her he liked the band and she hoped to score a few brownie points because of it.
"Where are you going, anyway?" Ryan asked, still not looking up from his laptop. He'd been laid on his bed with it resting on his stomach for the past six hours, only moving twice to get food - he also had three hours worth of homework to be getting on with, but when his Mum reminded him of it he mumbled something about "priorities" and returned to Tumblr.
"I don't even know," Ava sighed. It was all a mystery, apparently, and every time she'd asked Ashton for even a clue as to where he was taking her, he just told her to "wait for the surprise."
(The truth was that Ashton had been up until 1am googling first date ideas, and only settled on one half an hour before he had to pick her up.)
"Don't do anything stupid," Ryan said, actually taking his eyes away from the screen in front of him for a brief moment.
"I never do stupid things."
"You always do stupid things!"
"I'll try my best not to fall or anything. Oh, God. What if I fall?!"
"That's not what I meant," Ryan rolled his eyes at his sisters panicking. "Just... Don't have sex with him or anything."
"I'm not going to have sex with him!" Ava spluttered, her face heating up.
"Good. I know what he's like, Ava. I don't want you to regret anything."
"I'm not having this conversation with you," Ava shook her head, embarrassed that he even wanted to talk about this with her.
The phrase 'saved by the bell' quite literally worked in Ava's favour, the doorbell interrupting their conversation from continuing any further.
Before she could even move, Ryan had jumped up off of the bed; this was the fastest Ava had seen her brother move in the past 24 hours, so she traipsed after him in a mixture of astonishment and confusion.
