The First Move
BF prompt: Wild, Beguile
Word Count: 667 words
Author's Note: Part of a larger work
The First Move
“You like him,” Jo stated as her feet rested on the desk. “Just admit it already.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked. My mind was already debating whether or not to admit the truth. Somewhere deep down, I knew what I was feeling, but I was still hesitant to share it.
“The fact that you spend half your evenings in the library.” Her toes danced as she twisted her upper half to look me in the eye. “No college student has that much studying to do - not even the nerdy ones.”
“I like doing my homework there,” I argued weakly. Jo and I both knew it was a lie. In the short month that we had lived together, she had learned how to read through my lies. It still amazed and scared me that I could gel so easily with her.
“You have the most homework of anyone I’ve met this year then,” she said. Her voice suggested that she had met a lot of people this year and discussed homework with all of them.
“Maybe I just do all of my homework, unlike some of the other people I’ve met,” I argued, feebly trying to avoid an admittance of feelings for Johnny. I knew deep down that I wasn’t ready to admit that I might actually have feelings for the boy that seemed to routinely hang out in the library.
“Maybe.” She smiled. “Or maybe you like him.” She swung her feet to the floor and looked me in the eyes. “I have a solution for that, though.”
“Solution?” I asked, curious. Jo’s solutions never seemed to end well and yet she seemed to have a way of luring me into her adventures every time.
“It would require a bit of your daredevil side though,” she said, sweeping the air as she spoke. “That is, if you have a wild side.”
“What part of your plan calls for my wild side?” I asked, neither admitting nor denying that my wild side existed.
“The part where you ask him out.” She said it as though she knew it would work, as though she knew he would say yes.
“I don’t think I would have the guts for that,” I admitted, looking towards the window. “He’s not exactly the easiest person to approach.” I thought about the past week. “We haven’t even managed to say two words to one another yet.”
“Sometimes it’s not about the words.” Jo was the one staring out the window now. “Sometimes it’s about the body language and the things that aren’t said out loud.”
“He never even looks my way.”
“He never looks your way when you’re looking,” she replied, looking me straight in the eye. There was no way she was lying to me. “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t look at you. That just means you never see him looking at you.”
“And what am I supposed to do? Just sashay up to him and ask him out?” I asked with my knees quivering at the thought. I took a seat on the bed to steady myself.
“Why do you find that so weird?”
“It’s not the way I do things.” I had never asked a guy out. They had always been the ones to instigate dates in high school. I was not adverse to dating - just to initiating things.
“It’s the way you’re going to have to do things if he’s the one you desire. From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t seem like the type that’s going to ask you.”
“What makes you so sure he’s going to say yes?”
“I’m not sure he will,” she replied. I had been expecting her to confirm my hopes, not dispel them. “But you’ll never know until you try.”
“I’ll never know until I try?” I repeated the phrase out loud, weighing it for a moment.
“Exactly.” She smiled again. “So try. After all, what do you have to lose?”
“My pride.”
“That’s a small price to pay in my opinion.”