Lil and Nolan - Shinobi's party

[ax_herald]

Lil and Nolan bond over drinks, and then a coffee date is made, somehow. They're the first surprised.


A drink, that's what Lil needed. It was thirsty work walking around the party as if she knew what she doing. No two-fours of beer, no fights - this wasn't anything like the house parties she was used to. Of course, if it had been, she would have shown up in jeans and a t-shirt instead of whatever it was she was wearing.

Not that she didn't think she looked good in the halter top, but she didn't feel comfortable, not yet. She got to the drinks table and stopped. There was a lot of shit here, and none of looked like a bottle of root beer. Thankfully there a guy fixing himself a drink, dressed like he thought he was at a Christmas party. Worked for him though.

"Uh, is there just regular pop here somewhere?"

Nolan looked up with raised eyebrows - and then yet farther up, since that was definitely not the place he wanted his eyes to linger. It was a very nice place - a very nice halter top, too - but he wasn't the
sort to eye women like they were pieces of meat.

He was by no means short, but he had to look up at her. That was new.

He leaned back from fixing himself a virgin Millionaire Sour, ginger ale standing in for the whiskey, and gestured at the bottles of soda he had been obscuring from her view. "Sorry."

Lil reached for a bottle of root beer, then eyed the boy's drink. There were a few people wandering around who'd managed to get themselves tipsy or worse, and she wondered if this was another one on the way to getting drunk. "That's a fancy looking drink."

"Then it fits the party," Nolan replied with one of his usual, slightly tight half-smiles. Shinobi's parties always hit the mark for fancy, even when they were high school parties... and included karaoke. "I could fix you one, if you'd like? With or without alcohol."

She already had her drink, but his looked more interesting, and the offer was nice anyway. Might as well try it. "Without, I guess. I don't really drink alcohol."

"This'll put root beer to shame, just you wait," Nolan assured her with another smile. He hoped so, in any case. He poured the lemon syrup and ginger ale first, then added some ice, and the grenadine, for the sunset effect and a hint of sweet in the sour. Then came the garnish, a slice of lemon and a cherry. "Voilà."

Lil sipped it. It was nice, he was right about that. She drank a little more. Yes, she could get used to it. "Thanks. You're right too, much better than the root beer. But these... " Lil tapped the fruit, a bit of heat rising to her cheeks for what she knew was going to be a stupid question. "What are they for? Like, am I supposed to take them out of the drink or something?"

"Personally, I like to leave them in there until the end," Nolan told her, retrieving his own drink and raising it slightly in her direction before taking a sip. "So by the time I get around to them, they're
gorged with the taste of the drink."

"Gorged, got it." Pretentious, got it. Lil grinned. What the fuck, she could deal with pretentious for a bit, especially if it got her drinks like this. "So you like playing the bartender?"

"Not usually," Nolan assured her. "I'm Nolan, by the way."

Look at him. There he was, talking with a beautiful high school student and not, so far, making too much of a mess of it. She hadn't stomped off, thrown the drink into his face, or bullied him yet. This was going vastly better than most of his interactions with people his age at school - a few years ago now.

Lil briefly wondered if shaking hands was something that a guy who mixed fancy pop drinks did before deciding she didn't care. She stuck out her hand. "I'm Lil. Nice to meet you."

"And you," Nolan did, shaking her hand with a genuinely pleased smile - it remained tight around the edges only because that hint of awkwardness was nearly always with him. "Are you enjoying the party?"

Small talk, yet, and at the same time, very much not. It was Shinobi's birthday party; he really hoped that everyone was enjoying it.

"Not sure yet. This is... Sort of different from what I'm used to. Not that what I'm used to was much fun though." Lil grinned. Might as well let him know he was making drinks for a yokel. "No drunk guys racing snowmobiles here."

Nolan huffed out a surprised laugh. "Well, we might get the mutant version of that before the end of the evening." Shinobi had told him everything about the skateboarding-off-a-giant-ice-ramp incident, so it seemed quite probable.

Lil rolled her eyes. There was no way to make that sound like a good idea. "Please tell me you're not the kind of guy who thinks that sounds like fun."

"Do I look like that kind of guy?" Nolan asked with a wince. "I'm not." Still, he wouldn't put it past some of the students.

"Yeah, sorry." Lil cocked her head to one side and looked him up and down. Truth was, whatever he looked like, he looked good. Pretty damn cute in her opinion. "I think you look like the kind of guy who probably skips that whole mess. Maybe you'd be the guy staying back, finding a quiet corner and reading or something?" Which in Lil's opinion was the only reasonable sort at those kinds of parties.

"You're more likely to find me on my phone than with a book, but yes," Nolan confirmed. For a wide variety of reasons, including hoping not to attract any bullies his way.

"Then I'd be the girl sittin' beside you looking like she'd rather be anywhere else." Lil grinned. It would never last of course. Cherry's start shit eventually and Lil would have to step in to save her ass, but most parties included her ass being firmly planted on someone's sofa for hours.

"And I'd be way too socially awkward to suggest we get out of there," Nolan finished the tableau for them. "Wasted opportunities."

"Yeah, I don't think I believe that one. Nothing awkward about you right now." Lil finished her drink and was left staring at the fruit at the bottom, unsure of how to politely eat them.

Nolan let out a surprised huff of laughter at her pronouncement. "I must've become a good enough actor." It wasn't that surprising, given the environment he was now evolving in, but he had forgotten how out of place he felt at parties with people his age. He would approach a Hampton party daring anyone to tell him he didn't have his place there, but give him a high school bash and he felt like his old self all over again. Just give him some old jeans and a hoodie.

Lil gave him another searching look, and decided he wasn't so pretentious, just a bit of a dork. She fished out the cherry with one long finger and popped it into her mouth, set the glass down and hooked Nolan's free arm in her own. Maybe it was a bit of confidence from some of the attention she'd gotten tonight, or maybe she needed a distraction from the frustration of two impossible crushes, or just possibly she decided that it was ridiculous to give a shit about stuff like this when a stiff breeze could reveal her tits to the world, but she leaned over. "Okay, say the friend I came with disappears into a bedroom with her stupid ex and I KNOW I'm gonna be walking home now so I ask you if you want to leave... What happens then?"

Nolan was surprised at the sudden arm hooked with his, and his gaze wandered again when she leaned in, but for the briefest moment possible, and he looked back up into her face. "I..." Women - and men - had started hitting on him, since he had become 'the' Nolan Ross, and he had started taking it with a grain of salt, and was still stung by what had happened with Talia. But she was beautiful, and he wasn't certain that she even knew who he was, which would certainly work in her favor. "...suppose I'd jump on the chance."

'Jump on the chance'? Lil was suddenly aware that conspiratorial chumminess took on a different flavour when you were in a halter top and tight pants. "Oh shit. Um, I meant like go for burgers, or maybe coffee." Her face was heating up, but she didn't let go of Nolan. "I mean, maybe that's what you meant too, but just in case you didn't and you meant something else... " What was she doing? Rambling herself into some corner probably, so she stopped and took a breath. "Really? Like, with me?"

Well, this was certainly Nolan's sort of awkward. How had they gotten there so fast? He'd been about to explain, however well he could, that he did not have any expectations, and that coffee or burgers would be welcome, but then she'd added that last question and that derailed his entire trail of thoughts.

The thing was, it was not his style to be up for something with anyone this quickly. He liked to know people at least a little - although, admittedly, girls more than boys, oddly enough. But he had been stuck in this place for weeks, his entire life felt as if it were on hold, and Lil, drop dead gorgeous Lil, had just been flirting with him, or so he had thought. Like an idiot, because why would she be flirting with him. He would have been up for anything she wanted - even if it was just coffee, but up to and including a whole lot more. And to think that she could not see it?

"Anyone would be lucky to have coffee with you," he answered honestly. "Let alone anything more."

What Lil wanted to do was deny it, maybe get angry and list all the reasons he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. She was a small town hick from the middle of nowhere and a good looking guy dressed as well as he was, at a party as fancy as this, had no business saying nice things like that. But apparently her mouth wasn't taking order from her brain, because what came out was, "Thank you. And, um, we could have coffee sometime. That might be fun."

And the awkward had suddenly veered back to something a lot more surprising. Nolan took it in stride, drawing from his experience with journalists and Hamptonites alike to try and avoid seeming too surprised by this turn of events. "Of course. Next weekend?"

Lil nodded. "Yeah, that sounds good." And it did. Except for the part where it didn't, because she wasn't sure exactly what had just happened. Was this a date? Or just coffee? And had she really been the one that asked? He sounded so calm and smooth but she'd been lost the entire conversation and it had ended here with coffee happening and Lil couldn't even begin to trace the dots back to where this had begun. Maybe it was a mistake. It probably was. But she was still standing there with her arm in his and coffee together a real thing that was happening in the near future. Holy fuck.

Nolan only just refrained from answering with, 'It's a date,' and instead went with a simple, "Good." Awkwardness was making a powerful comeback, however, and he decided to poke fun at himself to try and counteract it. "It feels like the right moment to invite you to dance, but I'm hopeless at anything that requires more than shifting from one foot to the other. And that's on my good days."

Bless him. If Lil spent much more time thinking about what had just happened she'd probably have to go crawl under a table somewhere. Instead she laughed, "Same with me. I mean, someone has to hold up the walls at the shook dances, right?" She let go of Nolan's arm to grab her abandoned bottle of root beer.

Nolan felt a twinge of regret as their contact ceased, but he did not let it show, and took another drink from his cocktail, instead, finishing it neatly. "The metaphorical walls, in this case," he agreed with a half-smile, and grabbed the slice of lemon to bite into it, nothing fancy about his way of getting to the fruits either. The cherry would be next; sour first, sweet second.

"We're socializing! We're officially doing real party stuff right now, aren't we? No walls around here."

"I'd toast to partying, but..." Nolan lifted his empty glass slightly, and moved back towards the drinks table as he ate the cherry. "Would you like another?"

"Yes please." Of course, another drink meant more talk, and Lil wasn't sure where to go with that. Good thing that in this school there was always one bit of information to trade. "So making drinks, that must be your super power, right?"

"It's not one of the big flashy ones, but I like it." Nolan played along with the idea as he went about making them both a new round, rather than answer her unvoiced question.

If he didn't want to answer, fair enough. Some of the powers were a little weird and maybe not the kind of thing people liked to talk about at parties. Lil certainly couldn't imagine Dana going on about summoning dead spirits at a birthday bash. "Me too. But... mixing pop? When did you start doin' that?" It was a tad odd.

"There's no reason why the alcohol drinkers should be the only ones with elaborate drinks," Nolan replied, giving her a small smile before finishing the new round. He cut off a new pair of lemon slices, then added the cherries, and handed her her glass.

Lil took the glass and smiled. He was pretty good at giving answers that weren't answers. "Yeah, that's why, not when."

Nolan gave her an apologetic, amused smile at being caught at it. "It's been a few weeks."

"Just a regular part of getting ready for school." Lil took a drink, marveling at the difference Nolan's effort made. "But I can't tease you 'bout that. You don't know what I brought down from home."

Nolan had been about to tell her he wasn't actually attending school, but then her next words intrigued him too much. "Well, now I want to."

"Yarn. And a shitload of knitting needles. So if I ever do tease you about the drinks, you can fire back with that." Lil decided not to tell him about the country music. Best to wait for the coffee meetup before completely spoiling the halter-top illusion.

"Don't think that I won't," Nolan warned her, amused.

"I'll deserve it if you do. Oh!" Lil stuck a hand in her pocket and struggled to wriggle out her phone. She held out up. "I have a phone. Like, they just give them out here if you don't have one. Crazy, but maybe I should give you my number? For the... The coffee thing?"

"It wouldn't hurt," Nolan confirmed, setting his glass down to pull his own phone out of his pocket. It was not one of the school's issues, and it looked as sleek and expensive as they came. A thumbprint and a drawn pattern later and it was unlocked, and he was pulling up a new contact sheet, then saved her number as she gave it to him. He immediately fired off a text that simply read, 'This is Nolan.' so she would have his own number. "Here, all set."

"Thanks," Lil said, as she stared down at her phone. This made the whole thing real, so that tomorrow morning when she was wondering if she'd really managed to make a coffee date with a boy, she could check out that text and know that yup, it had happened. "You can just let me know what works for you. I'm free anytime." Said like she did this all the time.

"How about next weekend?" Nolan offered. "We could go into town, or into the city, whatever you prefer." He'd prefer the town, where he was less likely to be recognized, and where things would be a lot less fancy, but he would take her somewhere fancy if that was her preference.

"I, uh, town is fine. I don't really know the area, but they must have a McDonald's or something, right? They have decent coffee." Talking it about it again was making her nervous, but Nolan seemed cool about the whole thing. He'd probably done this sort of thing before.

A McDonald's? "I was hoping for a coffee shop," Nolan admitted. The coffee at McDonald's was horrible. Like everything else at McDonald's.

Maybe they weren't like the Fat Fox around here, with a menu full of unpronounceable drinks that cost triple what you could get at Mickey D's. After her shopping trip with Tamara, there wasn't a whole lot left of what was supposed to last her until November. Ah well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Wasn't that what her dad used to say? "Sure I guess. I got nothing against that."

"Some time in the afternoon?" Nolan suggested. She might have said that she was free any time, but that was never quite true, was it?

Lil nodded. "Yeah, that works. Just, um, text me when and I'll be ready." Jesus. Did that sounds desperate?

"I will," Nolan confirmed, still a little disbelieving that this was happening at all. To him.

Part of him was wary, but part of him really wanted to trust it.

Part of him was still getting over Talia, too.

"I'm looking forward to it."

Comments

[ax_iceman]

Woohoo!! It's a date!

[ax_sage]

Tessa approves of this entire log.

Shinobi flutters and flails like a caffeinated hummingbird and tosses glitter and cutout hearts in all directions. I guess that means he also approves? He's not really coherent, right now.

[ax_kai]

I love this so much!