Midnight Run

TONYS POV

“Let me get this straight,” Mike cut in, shaking his head. “She slept with you? She actually… A girl actually let you undress her?”

Jaime shrugged; “I mean, she took off her own pants, but yeah.”

Mike grinned proudly, reaching off the bed to slap Jaime on the back of the head. “There’s my boy.”

Jaime rolled his eyes and threw the slap right back. I readjusted my guitar in my lap and continued to tune it, listening intently to its hum. I plucked; it responded. It was the best conversation I’d had.

Rolling off the bed, Mike sauntered over to my window and cracked it open, sitting himself down on the edge. He lit a cigarette and took a long, deep drag before blowing the smoke respectfully out the window. He licked his lips once it had vanished into the air.

“Hey Tone,” Jaime began, an odd tone in his voice. I turned my head to find him up at my desk, eyes peering closely at something. “Why have you got a gum wrapper with a number on it in your pick box?”

Shit. I pushed aside my guitar, carefully but hurriedly, and rose to my feet, stumbling over my words as I tried to brush it off. “Just- It’s a tutor thing, like math or- Just a thing.”

He didn’t buy it – not that I would have either, to be honest. Amusement clear in his expression, he picked the wrapper out of the small metal box and examined it further. “Is this tutor… Female?”

The mention of the opposite sex quickly drew Mike in. He took the gum wrapper from Jaime and smirked, his eyebrows raising to meet the top of his beanie. “On the back of one of my gum wrappers, which I leave in your car…”

“Interesting,” Jaime chimed in.

Before the investigation could go any further, I snatched it away and shoved it in my pocket, trying to play it off by further pushing my tutor excuse. Obviously, it was a lot of bullshit, and they both knew it. They both loved it.

“So you're looking for a tutor now, a nice lady. You meet, whatever, but her number- Oh god, she forgot her notepad! And oh god, you don’t have any paper either?”

“No jotter, no workpad.”

“Hmm,” he continued.

This continued: the inquiring, the teasing, the pretend game of Sherlock. Scenarios bounced between the two of them, hilarity clear in their voices, but I tried not to break. If I admitted it was a girl’s number, they’d make me call then and there – or worse, they’d do it themselves. Considering it had been weeks since that party, and I still hadn’t worked up the courage to call that girl, that didn’t mean I wanted someone else to do it.

“Maybe if we call? Huh, Tone? Just to see if we too can be considered-“

“Alright! Fuck, okay – yes, it’s a girl’s number, and no you are not fucking calling. Get off my back.”

Jaime straightened up noticeably, gesturing at me to Mike. He went back to his cigarette, which had now went out, and relit it, taking another drag before stopping. It was then that he requested the details in exchange for the end of the joking around.

“Look, it was just some girl I met at Vic’s party a few weeks back, okay? We talked a bit, I gave her a ride home, that’s all.”

“She hot?”

I opened my mouth to reply, to give the normal “I guess, sort of” reply, but my throat refused to cooperate. It almost felt wrong to say it. My mind fell back to her appearance, to her lack of height and abundance of dark hair. I thought about how her fingers weren’t slender but cute and short, and about how her cheeks were filled and rosy. She was beautiful, not hot – not I guess, sort of.

“So have you called her?” Mike asked.

I shook my head and sat back down against my wardrobe door, legs stretched out on front of me. I’ve left it too long now anyway, I thought. Calling now would be weird. Mike, as if he could read my mind, quickly set about countering my defeatist thoughts, telling me to go for it, asking me what was the worst that could happen.

“Nothing, really,” I reasoned, “I mean she doesn’t go to her school or anything.”

It took a little more coaxing, and a lot of deliberation, but eventually I found myself down the end of the hall by the house phone, Jaime and Mike watching with interest from the door of my bedroom. I was thankful my parents weren’t in: if the teasing from the guys was bad, they’d be a whole other level.

The ringing began.

Alarmed, I glanced back at the guys for reassurance, taking a moment to wish that one of them was really good at voice impressions. The line connected with a slight crackle.

“Hello?”

Instantly, my palms began to sweat, and I must have stood there, motionless, for a while, as I soon felt a shoe hit my leg, and focused my vision to see Jaime mouthing something at me. I turned away and cleared my throat.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” the voice repeated cautiously.

“Uh, it’s Tony. This is Ava, right?”

A rustling came across the line, followed by the sound of a door shutting. “Oh, yeah… Hi?”

“Hi. I was, uh, I was wondering if you’d want to hang out sometime? Sorry it took so long for me to call.” I, fearing the loss of my words, turned to the guys and flailed my arm, silently asking for help. Mike came closer and lowly whispered a suggestion.

“If you’re not busy, like, Friday night, we could go out for food or something? You like pizza?”

“I, uh, I’m a vegan,” she confessed, a slightly embarrassed tone in her voice. “Eating out is kind of…”
“Right, yeah.” I took a deep breathe before speaking once again, praying that I wasn’t about to be shot down on front of my two best friends. “Ho-“

“What about we just, um, we just like go for a walk. I like walks.”

Mike’s mouth fell agape in shock, in horror, as he listened in. He rolled his eyes and relayed her words to Jaime, who made an equally unimpressed face. As much as a walk could go dreadfully wrong – dead conversation being the biggest issue – it also had the potential to go pretty great. With a track record as unexciting as mine, I figured it’d try something new.

I arranged the details with her before hanging up. The boys instantly quizzed me on the fine-print, asking what she said exactly, what I was going to do exactly, but I didn’t really know the answers yet.

All I knew was that I was going a walk.

Notes

NOTE: I changed the fact she ate a burger a few chapters back so she could be veggie. I''ve spent days deliberating over whether or not she would be, but I decided to go for it haha. Sorry for the alteration!!

Anyway, any fellow vegans on here? :')

Hope you guys liked this chapter. Thank you for reading, as always x