Bowled Over - (Scott/Jean cuteness for spuffyduds)
Author: harmonyangel, a.k.a. destroythemeek
Title: Bowled Over
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,600
Disclaimer: Marvel owns the characters, Fox owns the movies, I own… basically nothing.
Summary: Teenage Scott and Jean go bowling. It may or may not be a date. Scott’s too scared to ask.
Written For: spuffyduds
Pairing/Scenario Requested: Scott/Jean; something giddy and happy for these doomed kids
Author's Notes: Many thanks to likeadeuce for betaing and general hand-holding. This fic wouldn't have been whipped into shape without her.
“You know,” Jean said, as her fingers moved over the laces of her bowling shoes, “this song was written about Tony Stark.”
“Huh?” Scott paused in his own shoe-tying to glance up reflexively at Jean. This, in retrospect, was possibly a mistake. Because Jean was sitting on the opposite chair, bending over her shoes, and the v-neck collar of her shirt gapped outward at least three inches from her chest, affording Scott a clear view of everything above the tiny purple bow at the center of her bra. Feeling his neck turn red, Scott averted his eyes. It wasn’t right to be looking at something like that on a first date.
If this was even a date at all. Possibly, it was just a night of two friends having fun at a bowling alley, taking some much-needed time out from lives that regularly included near-fatal battles and intensive training exercises. When Jean had suggested the idea, Scott had been too afraid of putting his social ignorance on display to ask what kind of night it would be. And now they were here, and, as far as Scott could tell, Jean still hadn’t given any clues one way or the other.
Scott turned his ear toward the speaker above them in an attempt to hear, over the clatter of falling pins, whatever song was allegedly about the infamous billionaire industrialist who sponsored the Avengers. And when you’re not, you’re with some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend, wife of a close friend, a female voice sang.
“’You’re So Vain’?” Scott raised an eyebrow over his glasses. “Jean, that song was released in the early seventies. Tony Stark was about ten.” Then he cringed. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to correct a girl on a first date. Or first… hanging-out-outside-the-mansion-night. Whatever it was.
Luckily, Jean took the correction it in stride. “Well,” she said, releasing her shoelace with a smile and sitting up, “maybe Carly Simon was a pre-cog.” And then she laughed, shaking her red hair back into her face and bending to tie her second shoe.
Scott liked hearing her laugh. It meant that the quiet, sullen girl he’d met when he’d first come to Xavier’s had finally grown comfortable in her own skin - something Scott himself had yet to do. And it also meant that Scott hadn’t yet entirely screwed up this (non)date.
“Where did you hear that, anyway?” he asked, as he stood up, kicked a discarded sneaker under his chair, and began testing balls for the proper weight. He hadn’t been bowling since he was about eight years old - a time when the lanes had had bumpers, his ball had weighed six pounds, and the pins had been white and gleaming without any hint of red - but he still remembered the basics.
“A tabloid.” Jean answered, her eyes still pointed downwards and (Scott noted, in the brief second he allowed himself a glance) her breasts still very much on display. How could it possibly take anyone this long tie their shoes? “Hank brings them home all the time,” Jean continued. “Ororo likes to act scandalized, but she still sits with us when we flip through and laugh at the articles. Hank’s convinced that the Bat Boy kid is a mutant, but the Professor keeps refusing to use Cerebro to find out.”
“And where am I when you guys are reading these magazines?” Scott lifted a green, fifteen-pound ball off of the console in the center of the seating area and fit his fingers into the holes, struggling to keep his stray gaze level with Jean’s face.
Jean shrugged and sat up again, shoes finally tied. “Doing important things,” she replied.
Scott frowned. He knew Jean meant those words with genuine respect. But part of him couldn’t help wishing that he was the kind of guy people would think of when they saw supermarket tabloids, instead of the kind of guy they thought of when there was important work to be done.
That kind of guy might not be much of a leader, but at least he’d know whether or not he was on a date.
“Well,” Scott said, changing the subject, “I’m just going to start bowling, if that’s ok with you." Breathing deeply, he picked up the green ball and walked toward the lane, blinking into the red-shaded multicolored lights as he lined up his shot. A second later he thrust his arm forward, and the ball flew from his fingers and thundered over the floorboards, hitting the center pin with precision. All ten pins fell to the floor.
“Wow,” Jean said, as she stood up to grab a ball of her own. “I forgot to factor in the power of beginner’s luck.”
Scott shrugged, confused and a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I have no idea how that happened.”
Jean grinned, leaning in toward Scott and leering devilishly. “What are you apologizing for? I’ve always liked a challenge.” Her fingers danced briefly across his shoulder, and then she stepped up to the lane, swinging her hips to the faint music as she walked, and took her shot. Six pins fell, leaving a wide gap between the ones that remained.
Jean turned back to Scott, waiting for the ball to return. “I guess I’m a little out of practice,” she admitted. “But I’m just warming up.” Her second roll knocked down two more pins, and then it was Scott’s turn again.
“Ok, Scott,” Jean said, running a finger down his arm as she returned to her seat. “Let’s see you do that again.”
Scott swallowed, trying not to read too much into Jean’s touch. Approaching the lane, he swung his arm back and released the ball, prepared for the inevitable gutter ball or two-pin roll. The first turn had to have been a lucky shot, after all. But once again the ball drove down the lane, knocking down all of the pins in a perfect strike.
As Scott turned around, surprise evident on his face, he found Jean staring at him. “Are you sure you don’t usually go bowling?”
Scott’s forehead crinkled worriedly. Oh, God. She thought he was some kind of bowling hustler. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Jean,” he said, making his voice as serious as possible.
“Mmmhmm. Well, we’ll see about that,” Jean replied, putting a hand on one cocked hip. Her voice sounded playful, but Scott couldn’t be sure. It was still possible that she really was mad that he was doing so well. Not that he had any idea how he was doing so well. He’d never been very good at bowling as a child - not even with bumpers. But now he was bowling like a champion, and he was beating Jean, who went bowling with her parents almost every single time she went home for a visit. She would have every right to be annoyed, and every right to never want to go on a date with Scott again. Or for the first time.
Jean bowled. She got nine points, just barely missing a spare. Scott took his turn again. He got a strike.
“Ok, this is getting ridic-“ Jean began, but at that moment the puzzle pieces fell together in Scott’s brain. He slapped his hand against his forehead, above his glasses, cutting her off.
“My eyes!”
“What?” Jean dropped her ball back into the console. “Is something wrong? Do we need to contact the Professor?”
“No, no, nothing’s wrong.” Scott cringed at his choice of words, feeling guilty for worrying her, and he lowered his voice. “It’s just - my powers, they’re not just the beams. My eyes focus differently. I size up angles and trajectories without thinking about them, and I use the geometry to aim. That’s how I can be so accurate with my optic blasts. I thought I could only use the focus when I was using the blasts, but…” Scott sat back against the hard plastic of his bowling chair, momentarily overwhelmed by the new combat possibilities.
But then he noticed Jean scowling, and he realized that, as good as this news might be for future X-Men battles, it was far from the best news for their bowling game.
“Oh, crap. I’m so sorry, Jean.” He looked at the floor. Newly discovered combat skills aside, the night was officially a disaster. “We should probably go back home. This isn’t a level playing field, and that’s not fair to either of us.”
But Jean shook her head, suddenly smiling in the same way she did when she’d thought of a new way to circumvent the Professor’s restrictive curfew. “Why would I want to leave? I’ll just have to make the game fair, that’s all.”
“How are you…?” Scott started to ask, but a second later his question was answered. Jean strode up to the lane, releasing her ball with purpose but very little aim. It veered to the left, and everything Scott had ever learned about physics said that it would fall into the gutter. But at the last second, the ball took a sharp, impossible turn to the right, knocking down all of the pins on its way to the opposite gutter.
“Jean!” Scott exclaimed. Had someone seen that? The Professor had always stressed how important it was to keep their abilities secret, and here Jean was, using them in plain sight.
“What?” Jean turned around, hands on her hips, trying to look indignant but mostly just looking like the cat that ate the canary. “You can use your powers to help you, but I can’t use mine?”
“I can’t control my powers!”
“And I don’t want to control mine.” Her eyes flashed on the words, in a way that made Scott’s chest feel inexplicably tight, and his panic rose.
“Jean…” This wasn’t the time or the place to out themselves as mutants - not when there were so many people around, many of whom had been drinking. The only thing that could possibly make this date more of a failure would be an angry, drunken, bowling ball-wielding mob.
Jean stepped down from the ledge of the lane and walked over to Scott, tilting his chin up with one finger. “Look, calm down, fearless leader. I won’t make it that obvious again, I promise. No one else will know.”
Scott let out a slow breath. If Jean was subtle about the telekinesis, the other bowlers probably wouldn’t notice that anything was amiss, even if they did, for some unlikely reason, choose to watch their game. “So, what, we just keep getting strikes for the rest of the night? That sounds a little boring.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Jean said, her smile ambiguous. She touched his shoulder, leaning in closer and nearly whispering in his ear. “Just take your turn.”
Her breath made him shiver inexplicably, and he did as he was told. But as the ball tore down the lane, headed, as usual, for a strike, it suddenly, but subtly, began to drift, until it was only in the position to knock down the two rightmost pins.
Scott stared. “Ok, that is not fair.”
“All’s fair in love and war.” Jean was dancing to the music again, giving a little twirl around the console, annoyingly enunciating every word in the cliché.
“Well, how am I supposed to have a chance at this?” Scott could feel himself getting angry. The lights of the bowling alley seemed brighter and more garish than ever, and the clatter of pins was deafening.
“You’ll just have to distract me.” Jean sounded perfectly calm.
“Distract you? How am I going to distract you?”
“Use your imagination, Scott.” Jean was right in front of him again, touching his arm and leaning too close, her mouth slightly parted, like maybe she was about to say something else. But Jean pulled away a moment later, an indescribable look on her face, and Scott, still angry, stalked over to the lane to take his second shot. Once again, Jean used her telekinesis to nudge his ball into the gutter.
Jean hated him. That had to be it. She’d dragged him here because he was the only one in the mansion who was enough of a loser to have nothing better to do on a Saturday night, and now she was screwing with his head for kicks.
Frustrated, Scott returned to his seat and slumped down into it. He wasn’t going to play Jean’s games. He was just going to watch her bowl, and wait for the night to end, and then he was going to go home and reevaluate the part of his brain that had ever thought this might be a date.
Jean stood up and walked over to take her turn. She sent the ball down the lane with a reasonably good throw, then, with an over-the-shoulder grin, mentally pushed it into a slightly better trajectory. As it reached the end of the lane, all but one of the pins collapsed instantly; the last wobbled back and forth before finally falling, a little too quickly, to the ground.
Scott stayed in his seat, sulking and immobile. Looking confused, Jean turned around and crossed the floor to place a finger against Scott’s cheek. “What? You’re giving up that easily?”
“Forgive me if I’m not in the mood to embarrass myself.” Scott crossed his arms over his chest.
Jean frowned. “Embarrass yourself? But I…” And then she started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s just… God, Scott!” She shook her head, looking incredulous. “You are the complete opposite of that song from before.”
“I… what?” Scott was officially lost.
Jean gave a dramatic sigh, plopped down on the chair next to him, and, without warning, grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss. Her nose bumped his glasses as her watermelon lip gloss smeared over his lips, and Scott could feel his heart racing with confusion. Luckily, even in his flabbergasted state, he still had the presence of mind to force his mouth to respond.
“What I meant,” Jean explained when she finally pulled back, her expression a combination of pleased and exasperated, “is that you’re so not vain that it didn’t for a moment occur to you that I’ve been spending this entire evening - not to mention the last few months - trying to get you to kiss me.”
Scott blinked, for once grateful for the glasses and their capacity to hide his dumbfounded expressions. “You have?”
“Do you really think it takes me that long to tie my shoes? Or that I touch everybody that much? And, honestly, what did you think I meant by ‘distract me’?”
Oh. Well, when she put it that way…
“I’m not sure, actually,” he replied. There was no point in giving Jean a window into his insecurities. Especially when they were now being replaced rapidly by the kind of warm, tingling, happy sensations that Scott could only remember feeling a handful of times before.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing that I decided to take some initiative,” Jean said, shaking her head in wonder.
“Well,” Scott said, his confidence rising. He could still smell the watermelon on his lips. “I know it’s a little late, but I wouldn’t mind taking the initiative now.” And, taking Jean’s smile as permission, he leaned in, touched her face with bowling oil-smeared fingers, and kissed her.
Ten minutes later, the game entirely forgotten, Scott took a second to pull away from Jean, twirling a piece of her hair between his fingers. “So, uh, this was a date, right?”
Below the chairs, Scott felt his own abandoned sneaker rise up and kick him in the shin.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Title: Bowled Over
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,600
Disclaimer: Marvel owns the characters, Fox owns the movies, I own… basically nothing.
Summary: Teenage Scott and Jean go bowling. It may or may not be a date. Scott’s too scared to ask.
Written For: spuffyduds
Pairing/Scenario Requested: Scott/Jean; something giddy and happy for these doomed kids
Author's Notes: Many thanks to likeadeuce for betaing and general hand-holding. This fic wouldn't have been whipped into shape without her.
“You know,” Jean said, as her fingers moved over the laces of her bowling shoes, “this song was written about Tony Stark.”
“Huh?” Scott paused in his own shoe-tying to glance up reflexively at Jean. This, in retrospect, was possibly a mistake. Because Jean was sitting on the opposite chair, bending over her shoes, and the v-neck collar of her shirt gapped outward at least three inches from her chest, affording Scott a clear view of everything above the tiny purple bow at the center of her bra. Feeling his neck turn red, Scott averted his eyes. It wasn’t right to be looking at something like that on a first date.
If this was even a date at all. Possibly, it was just a night of two friends having fun at a bowling alley, taking some much-needed time out from lives that regularly included near-fatal battles and intensive training exercises. When Jean had suggested the idea, Scott had been too afraid of putting his social ignorance on display to ask what kind of night it would be. And now they were here, and, as far as Scott could tell, Jean still hadn’t given any clues one way or the other.
Scott turned his ear toward the speaker above them in an attempt to hear, over the clatter of falling pins, whatever song was allegedly about the infamous billionaire industrialist who sponsored the Avengers. And when you’re not, you’re with some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend, wife of a close friend, a female voice sang.
“’You’re So Vain’?” Scott raised an eyebrow over his glasses. “Jean, that song was released in the early seventies. Tony Stark was about ten.” Then he cringed. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to correct a girl on a first date. Or first… hanging-out-outside-the-mansion-night. Whatever it was.
Luckily, Jean took the correction it in stride. “Well,” she said, releasing her shoelace with a smile and sitting up, “maybe Carly Simon was a pre-cog.” And then she laughed, shaking her red hair back into her face and bending to tie her second shoe.
Scott liked hearing her laugh. It meant that the quiet, sullen girl he’d met when he’d first come to Xavier’s had finally grown comfortable in her own skin - something Scott himself had yet to do. And it also meant that Scott hadn’t yet entirely screwed up this (non)date.
“Where did you hear that, anyway?” he asked, as he stood up, kicked a discarded sneaker under his chair, and began testing balls for the proper weight. He hadn’t been bowling since he was about eight years old - a time when the lanes had had bumpers, his ball had weighed six pounds, and the pins had been white and gleaming without any hint of red - but he still remembered the basics.
“A tabloid.” Jean answered, her eyes still pointed downwards and (Scott noted, in the brief second he allowed himself a glance) her breasts still very much on display. How could it possibly take anyone this long tie their shoes? “Hank brings them home all the time,” Jean continued. “Ororo likes to act scandalized, but she still sits with us when we flip through and laugh at the articles. Hank’s convinced that the Bat Boy kid is a mutant, but the Professor keeps refusing to use Cerebro to find out.”
“And where am I when you guys are reading these magazines?” Scott lifted a green, fifteen-pound ball off of the console in the center of the seating area and fit his fingers into the holes, struggling to keep his stray gaze level with Jean’s face.
Jean shrugged and sat up again, shoes finally tied. “Doing important things,” she replied.
Scott frowned. He knew Jean meant those words with genuine respect. But part of him couldn’t help wishing that he was the kind of guy people would think of when they saw supermarket tabloids, instead of the kind of guy they thought of when there was important work to be done.
That kind of guy might not be much of a leader, but at least he’d know whether or not he was on a date.
“Well,” Scott said, changing the subject, “I’m just going to start bowling, if that’s ok with you." Breathing deeply, he picked up the green ball and walked toward the lane, blinking into the red-shaded multicolored lights as he lined up his shot. A second later he thrust his arm forward, and the ball flew from his fingers and thundered over the floorboards, hitting the center pin with precision. All ten pins fell to the floor.
“Wow,” Jean said, as she stood up to grab a ball of her own. “I forgot to factor in the power of beginner’s luck.”
Scott shrugged, confused and a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I have no idea how that happened.”
Jean grinned, leaning in toward Scott and leering devilishly. “What are you apologizing for? I’ve always liked a challenge.” Her fingers danced briefly across his shoulder, and then she stepped up to the lane, swinging her hips to the faint music as she walked, and took her shot. Six pins fell, leaving a wide gap between the ones that remained.
Jean turned back to Scott, waiting for the ball to return. “I guess I’m a little out of practice,” she admitted. “But I’m just warming up.” Her second roll knocked down two more pins, and then it was Scott’s turn again.
“Ok, Scott,” Jean said, running a finger down his arm as she returned to her seat. “Let’s see you do that again.”
Scott swallowed, trying not to read too much into Jean’s touch. Approaching the lane, he swung his arm back and released the ball, prepared for the inevitable gutter ball or two-pin roll. The first turn had to have been a lucky shot, after all. But once again the ball drove down the lane, knocking down all of the pins in a perfect strike.
As Scott turned around, surprise evident on his face, he found Jean staring at him. “Are you sure you don’t usually go bowling?”
Scott’s forehead crinkled worriedly. Oh, God. She thought he was some kind of bowling hustler. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Jean,” he said, making his voice as serious as possible.
“Mmmhmm. Well, we’ll see about that,” Jean replied, putting a hand on one cocked hip. Her voice sounded playful, but Scott couldn’t be sure. It was still possible that she really was mad that he was doing so well. Not that he had any idea how he was doing so well. He’d never been very good at bowling as a child - not even with bumpers. But now he was bowling like a champion, and he was beating Jean, who went bowling with her parents almost every single time she went home for a visit. She would have every right to be annoyed, and every right to never want to go on a date with Scott again. Or for the first time.
Jean bowled. She got nine points, just barely missing a spare. Scott took his turn again. He got a strike.
“Ok, this is getting ridic-“ Jean began, but at that moment the puzzle pieces fell together in Scott’s brain. He slapped his hand against his forehead, above his glasses, cutting her off.
“My eyes!”
“What?” Jean dropped her ball back into the console. “Is something wrong? Do we need to contact the Professor?”
“No, no, nothing’s wrong.” Scott cringed at his choice of words, feeling guilty for worrying her, and he lowered his voice. “It’s just - my powers, they’re not just the beams. My eyes focus differently. I size up angles and trajectories without thinking about them, and I use the geometry to aim. That’s how I can be so accurate with my optic blasts. I thought I could only use the focus when I was using the blasts, but…” Scott sat back against the hard plastic of his bowling chair, momentarily overwhelmed by the new combat possibilities.
But then he noticed Jean scowling, and he realized that, as good as this news might be for future X-Men battles, it was far from the best news for their bowling game.
“Oh, crap. I’m so sorry, Jean.” He looked at the floor. Newly discovered combat skills aside, the night was officially a disaster. “We should probably go back home. This isn’t a level playing field, and that’s not fair to either of us.”
But Jean shook her head, suddenly smiling in the same way she did when she’d thought of a new way to circumvent the Professor’s restrictive curfew. “Why would I want to leave? I’ll just have to make the game fair, that’s all.”
“How are you…?” Scott started to ask, but a second later his question was answered. Jean strode up to the lane, releasing her ball with purpose but very little aim. It veered to the left, and everything Scott had ever learned about physics said that it would fall into the gutter. But at the last second, the ball took a sharp, impossible turn to the right, knocking down all of the pins on its way to the opposite gutter.
“Jean!” Scott exclaimed. Had someone seen that? The Professor had always stressed how important it was to keep their abilities secret, and here Jean was, using them in plain sight.
“What?” Jean turned around, hands on her hips, trying to look indignant but mostly just looking like the cat that ate the canary. “You can use your powers to help you, but I can’t use mine?”
“I can’t control my powers!”
“And I don’t want to control mine.” Her eyes flashed on the words, in a way that made Scott’s chest feel inexplicably tight, and his panic rose.
“Jean…” This wasn’t the time or the place to out themselves as mutants - not when there were so many people around, many of whom had been drinking. The only thing that could possibly make this date more of a failure would be an angry, drunken, bowling ball-wielding mob.
Jean stepped down from the ledge of the lane and walked over to Scott, tilting his chin up with one finger. “Look, calm down, fearless leader. I won’t make it that obvious again, I promise. No one else will know.”
Scott let out a slow breath. If Jean was subtle about the telekinesis, the other bowlers probably wouldn’t notice that anything was amiss, even if they did, for some unlikely reason, choose to watch their game. “So, what, we just keep getting strikes for the rest of the night? That sounds a little boring.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Jean said, her smile ambiguous. She touched his shoulder, leaning in closer and nearly whispering in his ear. “Just take your turn.”
Her breath made him shiver inexplicably, and he did as he was told. But as the ball tore down the lane, headed, as usual, for a strike, it suddenly, but subtly, began to drift, until it was only in the position to knock down the two rightmost pins.
Scott stared. “Ok, that is not fair.”
“All’s fair in love and war.” Jean was dancing to the music again, giving a little twirl around the console, annoyingly enunciating every word in the cliché.
“Well, how am I supposed to have a chance at this?” Scott could feel himself getting angry. The lights of the bowling alley seemed brighter and more garish than ever, and the clatter of pins was deafening.
“You’ll just have to distract me.” Jean sounded perfectly calm.
“Distract you? How am I going to distract you?”
“Use your imagination, Scott.” Jean was right in front of him again, touching his arm and leaning too close, her mouth slightly parted, like maybe she was about to say something else. But Jean pulled away a moment later, an indescribable look on her face, and Scott, still angry, stalked over to the lane to take his second shot. Once again, Jean used her telekinesis to nudge his ball into the gutter.
Jean hated him. That had to be it. She’d dragged him here because he was the only one in the mansion who was enough of a loser to have nothing better to do on a Saturday night, and now she was screwing with his head for kicks.
Frustrated, Scott returned to his seat and slumped down into it. He wasn’t going to play Jean’s games. He was just going to watch her bowl, and wait for the night to end, and then he was going to go home and reevaluate the part of his brain that had ever thought this might be a date.
Jean stood up and walked over to take her turn. She sent the ball down the lane with a reasonably good throw, then, with an over-the-shoulder grin, mentally pushed it into a slightly better trajectory. As it reached the end of the lane, all but one of the pins collapsed instantly; the last wobbled back and forth before finally falling, a little too quickly, to the ground.
Scott stayed in his seat, sulking and immobile. Looking confused, Jean turned around and crossed the floor to place a finger against Scott’s cheek. “What? You’re giving up that easily?”
“Forgive me if I’m not in the mood to embarrass myself.” Scott crossed his arms over his chest.
Jean frowned. “Embarrass yourself? But I…” And then she started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s just… God, Scott!” She shook her head, looking incredulous. “You are the complete opposite of that song from before.”
“I… what?” Scott was officially lost.
Jean gave a dramatic sigh, plopped down on the chair next to him, and, without warning, grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss. Her nose bumped his glasses as her watermelon lip gloss smeared over his lips, and Scott could feel his heart racing with confusion. Luckily, even in his flabbergasted state, he still had the presence of mind to force his mouth to respond.
“What I meant,” Jean explained when she finally pulled back, her expression a combination of pleased and exasperated, “is that you’re so not vain that it didn’t for a moment occur to you that I’ve been spending this entire evening - not to mention the last few months - trying to get you to kiss me.”
Scott blinked, for once grateful for the glasses and their capacity to hide his dumbfounded expressions. “You have?”
“Do you really think it takes me that long to tie my shoes? Or that I touch everybody that much? And, honestly, what did you think I meant by ‘distract me’?”
Oh. Well, when she put it that way…
“I’m not sure, actually,” he replied. There was no point in giving Jean a window into his insecurities. Especially when they were now being replaced rapidly by the kind of warm, tingling, happy sensations that Scott could only remember feeling a handful of times before.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing that I decided to take some initiative,” Jean said, shaking her head in wonder.
“Well,” Scott said, his confidence rising. He could still smell the watermelon on his lips. “I know it’s a little late, but I wouldn’t mind taking the initiative now.” And, taking Jean’s smile as permission, he leaned in, touched her face with bowling oil-smeared fingers, and kissed her.
Ten minutes later, the game entirely forgotten, Scott took a second to pull away from Jean, twirling a piece of her hair between his fingers. “So, uh, this was a date, right?”
Below the chairs, Scott felt his own abandoned sneaker rise up and kick him in the shin.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”