For When You're A Man (under reconstruction)

Just Like The Movies

I decided to give Seb a ring so we could hang out since the last time we were intercepted.

He insisted on coming over to mine. Instead of being rational and using one of my excuses, like I normally do, I agreed without properly listening. It was only until I got the text "Be over in 20" that I started to panic. Once again, stupid pheromones, who invented them? And so I ended up furiously scrubbing the floors like a madman as Biola watched in awe and I jumped into the shower straight afterwards. He keeps insisting on wanting to know the real me: seeing my area, calling me Ayo, wanting to see my place. No one else outside of my family has ever been interested in those things before. I don't know whether to be touched or freaked out. The home phone rang, I answered and he came up.

He had seen the pissheads in the betting shop and the people who spit on the ground near here. If he didn't take one look at the constant car accidents, blaring sirens and the addicts that sometimes hung out around the estate across the street then maybe he's someone that it's okay to like. Maybe.

"This is it," I said, watching his eyes dart around. The best way I can describe how I felt was naked. I usually keep school and home very separate and I have infinite excuses for why my friends can't come over or meet my family. I didn't want them to see the leaking roof or the plastered up holes.

Then he said three of the most comforting words ever "I like it," without a trace of a sneer on his lips.

***

"What did you think of my friends?" I asked him, as I dangled my feet off of the bed.

"I think Lottie is really cool if that's what you meant," He chuckled.

Now I look like an idiot, how wonderful. I suppose this is where we break off whatever is happening between us for the sake of Lottie. I hate this part.

"She's great," he continued.

I know that, you prick. Can you quickly get to the part that I want to hear? I can handle it, I swear.

"And there was definitely a time where I found her really cute,"

That is definitely not what I wanted to hear.

"But...that time is over. I'm trying to be into someone else now. If he'll let me," he concluded

"Well that was convoluted and cheesy as fuck, you could have gotten to the point way quicker than that. But, I'm glad you feel that way because, I'm getting there too," I admitted.

Then there was the movie moment.

The part where the music fades up from being soft until it's a pounding reminder in your eardrums of how perpetually single you are and the two annoyingly attractive 'misfit' protagonists lock lips. The lighting is soft, the moment lasts just the right amount of time for you to feel that ache of the lack of romance in your life deep inside you. And then you replay it as a guilty pleasure to torment yourself. And then you imagine it being you when you go to sleep. And then you search up the soundtrack and yearn for it more and more. Night after night after night.

That part. Only it was real this time. It wasn't my pillow, elbow or the back of my hand. Feeling another pair of human lips on your own is the oddest sensation, seriously. But it was warm and comforting and I probably needed to sleep after it to process everything. And then we rinsed and repeated, a little longer than how the classy protagonists do it and the angle was a bit odd because I had to twist my torso and also bend down slightly to meet his face but I wasn't really thinking of the slight shoulder pain.

"Tell me about your first ever crush," I said, after we spent a little too much time looking at each other.

"Why?"