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twenty

I was pretty sure I was going to throw up. Was that an overreaction to going on your first ever date?

“The most important thing is to be yourself,” Ainsley said. I was sitting on my desk chair while she knelt on the floor in front of me, doing my makeup. “And to have fun.”

“And don’t worry about making a fool of yourself,” Clementine added from behind me.

She was yanking my hair into some intricate style that she insisted was going to look good, but I was worried it would make me look like I was going to prom instead of on some casual date.

I never should have agreed to this. It wasn’t even like he pushed me toward it—I was the one who brought it up yesterday.

I could have just deleted the text and pretend it never came through if he tried to ask me about it, but no, I had to go and ask him about it.

I hated that I was so influenced by Sebastian’s mere presence yesterday that it influenced me to say yes to this date and now I was paying the price for it.

Mom and Dad were nowhere to be found when I finally walked downstairs and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Both because I knew Mom would have a million comments about my dress— sleeveless, really?

And would it kill you to wear something longer?

—and because this was the first time I’d ever had Clementine and Ainsley over and I didn’t want to expose them to the insanity of my parents.

They’d met them briefly at swim meets, where my parents came only to look good and critique everything I could have done better, but never at home where their perfect masks weren’t always in place.

Clementine and Ainsley both stepped onto the porch with me but hung back as I walked down the steps to where Thomas was already parked in the driveway.

He’d texted me that he was here instead of ringing the doorbell, which I guess was for the best in case my parents were home, but made the beginning of the date start off on a weird, unromantic foot.

It was only made worse by how he was leaning against his car door and scrolling on his phone, not even hearing me as I walked up.

I glanced over my shoulder at the girls.

Ainsley shot me an encouraging thumbs up.

Clementine made a shooing motion with her hands like she was pushing me forward.

I grimaced and turned back to the car, resisting the urge to run my hands up and down my bare arms. Clementine insisted on me wearing this dress because if I looked cold, he would give me his jacket, but I thought that was more an end-of-date thing than at the beginning, so I didn’t want him to see how I was covered in goosebumps yet.

I stopped a couple feet away from the car, waiting for him to look up, but he seemed totally engrossed in whatever he was looking at.

I might have thought it was important, except that it was obvious from how fast he was scrolling that he was just on social media.

I cleared my throat, hoping it would be loud enough for him to notice me, but he still didn’t react.

“Hi,” I said. He finally looked up. I expected him to greet me back or to apologize for not noticing me walk up but instead, he just raked his eyes up and down my body.

It probably should have made me happy to know that he was so interested, but all it made me want to do was cover myself up even more.

I didn’t want him to be looking at me like that. “Um… Should we go?”

“Huh?” He finally looked at my face. “Oh, yeah, of course.”

He slipped his phone into his pants pocket then got into the car.

I hesitated for a second as I realized he wasn’t going to open my car door, then shook my head for thinking that he should have done that in the first place.

Sure, it would have been chivalrous, but it certainly wasn’t necessary.

And maybe he thought I would take offense to it, like he was implying that I wasn’t capable of doing it myself.

Still, I chose not to look over at Ainsley and Clementine for their reactions, because I was worried I knew what they would be doing and I was trying to go into this date with the best of intentions.

I was pretty much certain that Thomas wasn’t my soulmate, but I could still have fun on this date without him being the one.

And maybe I was just being too quick to judge.

He and I barely knew each other, after all.

Maybe I just needed some time one-on-one with him to see how perfect he actually was for me.

By the time I climbed in, Thomas had the car running and blasting some rap music I didn’t recognize.

He wasn’t playing it too loudly like Sebastian always did, and though I should have been grateful for it, I found myself missing the feeling of my eardrums being destroyed.

Almost subconsciously, my eyes drifted to the house next door.

It was starting to get dark now and the house looked just like it had last night, with only the porch and the front window lit up.

I could see the Novaks inside from here, not in great detail but enough that I could tell they all seemed to be sitting around the table laughing.

Ainsley and Clementine were probably going to head over there as soon as I was out of sight.

They would go in and join Ainsley’s siblings, laughing about how they had just sent me on my first ever date.

I felt a pang in my heart as I realized how much I desperately wanted to be in there instead of here.

Thomas started backing out of the driveway while I was still stuck in my head and as he began to speed up down the street, the car started beeping at him.

He frowned and glanced at me with a raised eyebrow.

I stared back, not sure what he was trying to say with his mind.

Finally, he sighed deeply and said, “Your seatbelt.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I’d been so caught up in staring at the Novak’s house that I didn’t even realize I hadn’t put it on. But he hadn’t noticed either. I tugged at the seatbelt and buckled it in, making the insistent chimes stop.

As Thomas turned off my street, I expected him to speed up, since we were currently going at less than twenty kilometres an hour, but he didn’t.

And though I complained to Sebastian about how fast he drove all the time, I much preferred it to the snail speed Thomas was driving at now.

Even I drove faster than this and I was the most nervous driver in the world .

“So, what do you have planned?” I asked.

I forced myself to smile and speak in a happy tone, hoping that it might trick my brain into thinking I was happy about this.

I should have been happy about this, really.

Even though I’d never planned on going on an actual date with Thomas, there was no reason for me to hate the idea.

This was my first date ever. Shouldn’t it have felt exciting, no matter who it was with?

“I figured we’d go out to dinner.” He dropped one hand from the steering wheel, but not like how Sebastian always did when he rested his arm out the window.

Instead, he dropped his right hand, leaning it on the center, looking like he was waiting for me to slip my hand into it.

My lip curled as I looked at it, imagining what it would feel like to hold his hand.

It would probably be warm and clammy. My hand instinctively flexed as I thought of it, like I was already trying to let go of it before we even started holding hands.

I decided to pretend I hadn’t noticed and kept my hands firmly in my lap.

“So, I’m really glad we found the time to do this,” I said as an awkward silence fell between us.

His music was still playing in the background, but it felt more like an awful soundtrack to the date than something I wanted to be listening to.

“We both have pretty crazy schedules with our teams, huh?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and glanced out the window. “It’s been hard to catch you alone.”

He sounded a little annoyed by the words as he said them and I wasn’t sure why. Sure, I was always around my friends at school, but he and I had only seen each other a couple of times, and we were alone now, weren’t we ?

“Yeah, I’m usually with Clementine and Ainsley,” I said, laughing awkwardly. “I think Clem’s kind of adopted me, you know. Never wants to leave me alone.”

It was meant to be a joke, but he didn’t smile. So I awkwardly chewed on my lip and stared straight ahead, not trying to break the silence again for the rest of the ride to the restaurant.

He didn’t open my door to get out of the car, but that was probably for the best since I was busy tugging the hem of my dress down to make sure it hadn’t ridden up too much during the car ride.

Clementine had made sure to give me the shortest and tightest dress she owned, and while I was sure it looked great on her, I’d never felt more uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” I mumbled to Thomas once I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be flashing anybody as I walked through the parking lot.

Thomas didn’t answer, because his eyes were too focused on my legs, right where the dress ended, and I realized I’d probably brought more attention to the length of the dress by doing that instead of just leaving it.

Just like outside the house, I felt uncomfortable with the heat of his gaze on me, and I started walking toward the restaurant, hoping he would take the hint.

He only half-did, as he followed behind me but put his hand on my lower back and whispered in my ear, “Those heels make your legs look really good.”