Leap of Faith

23:38

Theo stays silent and it unnerves me. He still has my hand in his grasp and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to let go anytime soon. A part of me knows that I should pull away, but the other part tells me that this is ok. Better than ok. It’s actually nice. If a little weird.

“Do you like horror movies?” He asks, finally.

The question throws me and I’m a little lost for a moment. When I laugh, it comes out strained, but I answer him nonetheless. “No,” I shake my head vehemently. “I hate horror movies. I freaked out watching the first ‘Saw’ movie and ever since then I have avoided them like the plague. I’m more of an action-adventure kind of girl. Give me a movie full of guns and cars and I’ll happily sit there in silence for two hours.”

“Hmm,” the pensive noise of someone who doesn’t know what else to say. “Guns and cars. Sounds like my kind of movie.”

“You don’t think it’s weird?” I ask. When he doesn’t answer me- I presume he shook his head, though- I move the conversation along. “I also like indie music. Actually, I like all kinds of music, but indie is my mainstay.”

“Interesting,” Theo whistles as he interlinks our fingers. “Are you sure you’re not really a dude?”

I’m insulted. Or I feel like I should be insulted. I’m not really, but that type of comment could have stung. I know what my likes and dislikes say about me, and they say that I’m not like the rest. There’s a reason I’m known as the school freak. Having Theo confirm this is nothing new to me because people have drawn the same conclusions about me all my life.

“I swear I am a girl,” I nudge him in the darkness. “Promise. What about you?”

“Well, I’m a boy,” he nudges me back, but makes sure not to put as much force behind it as he did earlier. “I like indie music, but if I had to choose, I’d go for some seventies punk. The Clash, especially. You know them?”

I start to sing the first verse of Bankrobber much to Theo’s amusement. He joins in for the last few lines and laughs along with me at how awful we must sound. His laugh is infectious, I notice, and just hearing it makes me want to smile. And I do. I smile like a demented tween at a Twilight convention. It’s totally pathetic.

“So, you’re a fan?” Theo wonders once we’ve both composed ourselves.

“My dad is,” I confess. “When we were little, he used to get up early every Sunday, put on his music and crank it up. That was our alarm clock. He doesn’t do it so much nowadays. I kind of miss it.”

“Are you close to your family?”

“Yeah,” I shrug my shoulders. “We’re not super close, but we get along. What about you?”

Theo stills next to me. I feel his hand tense in mine and everything goes quiet, the only sound being the music that flows in from the party. I try to work out what I’ve said wrong, but it was a harmless question. Unless it wasn’t.