This is a short piece in a few parts that I wanted to write about Summer and Seth. Nothing too ambitious, just a little piece about Summer and Seth, hanging out on a Friday night. Hope you enjoy!
The Date
Part 1
Click, snap.
Seth laid on his bed, opening and closing his phone as his courage warred with his honed sense of self-preservation. Whenever his courage gained a toe-hold, Seth flipped open the phone and began to dial Summer's number, but the tide of the battle would inevitably turn before he hit send.
Click, snap.
The soothing blue glow of his phone's display, and the hypnotic feel of the phone opening and closing on its hinges had put Seth into a lull. His body was uncharacteristically still while his mind whirled, weighing whether a potential date with Summer was worth that awful burny feeling he got in his sternum whenever she remembered how detrimental Seth was to her social status.
Long fingers dialed the number again from memory. His traitorous synapses fired, bringing up the memory of her apologetic look during registration week, when Mitsy and Bitsy or whatever their names were from the cheerleading team, had come over to their table. The look that said that maybe she would have said yes if it weren't for, you know, the witnesses. Click, snap.
Seth yelped like a girl when the small silver phone in his hands simultaneously began to vibrate and chortle the Super Metroid theme he had painstakingly transposed into a ringtone. It was Summer. Of course.
"Summer," he answered in grand tones that he hoped disguise the shakiness in his own voice. "Just can't get enough of my quirky verbal stylings?"
"Whatev, Cohen. What are you doing?"
"Why, I was lying in bed. Care to join me?" It was easy enough to fall back into the banter despite his nerves.
"You wish. What's the significance of Marbury v. Madison?"
"I love the way you talk dirty to me, baby," he said mildly, rolling his eyes though she couldn't see him.
"Seriously, Cohen. I didn't bring my history book home with me, and it's the last question on my homework, I just need to know the answer." Her tone was, not surprisingly, impatient. Seth had an idea that she had been impatient in the womb.
"Don't you have, you know, internet? An encyclopedia? Or is this all an elaborate ruse so you could talk to me while I'm sitting on my bed? Shirtless?"
Seth knew what was coming next, mouthed it along with her. "Ew!"
"Kidding, I'm fully clothed.." There was an impatient silence at the other end. He could feel her drumming her nails on whatever surface was nearby. "Right, Marbury v. Madison, that pivotal courtroom battle of two great men dressed like pirates with really bad wigs... It established the Supreme Court as the authority on what's Constitutional and what's, you know, un. Judicial Review. Gives the Supreme Court power over Congress and the Executive Branch. Checks and Balances."
There was a silence during which Seth could hear Summer's pencil scratching on paper. He decided to use this as his opening. He mentally locked down his tendency towards verbal epilepsy and, enunciating carefully, asked, "Do you want to hang out with me Friday night?"
"Seth...," and she might have even sounded remorseful. "I'm going to a party at Charisma's."
"Got it," he replied. The burny feeling sparked in his sternum. "See you in French tomorrow." He clicked off the phone without waiting to hear her goodbye. "Dammit."
*** ***
"You okay?" Ryan asked quietly as Seth grimly executed a particularly deadly set of moves in Soul Calibur without even the slightest bit of self-congratulation. Ryan flicked his eyes over to Seth while his character was incapacitated from Seth's strike. Seth was sitting bolt upright, a completely unatural position for the boy who generally managed to drape hismelf over furniture as if he were made of liquid.
"I'm fine." The curt answer implied that Seth was so not fine, but Ryan was not about to press him, since he knew what it was like to not want to talk about something. And god knew that Seth had no problems expressing himself when he wanted to talk about his feelings.
Ryan shrugged. His Soul Calibur character fell off the edge of the arena, awarding the win to Seth, who was distressingly silent on the matter. "Whatever, man. I'm going to bed." He stood up, glanced back at Seth, who was studying the TV screen intently. "Night, man."
"Night."
*** ***
Seth was an extremely deep sleeper, and so he was not entirely sure what planet he was on when his phone rang again in the middle of the night, startling him out of an alarming dream involving viruses. He didn't open his eyes as he fumbled for the phone.
"Hello?" he croaked, burrowing himself back under his blankets.
"Seth?"
"Summer?" It would have been said in disbelief if he could figure out was going on. This felt like one of those dreams where he thought he got up and got ready for school and then woke up to discover he was still in bed.
"I don't want to go to Charisma's party. Yes, I would like to hang out with you on Friday, which is now tomorrow, since it's 2 in the morning. You know, if you haven't made plans."
"It's 2? Summer, we have to get up in six and a half hours and I just realized that you said you wanted to spend Friday night with me so I'm going to stop talking any moment now."
"See you tomorrow, Cohen."
*** ***
Seth overslept the next morning and had to rush through his normal routine. There was no morning cereal over comic books with Ryan, or really much of any contact with his brother from another mother until he handed the keys over as they were departing for school.
"Here, man. You drive. I'm way too tired."
Ryan's sky blue eyes searched him carefully. "You look like hell. Didn't you sleep last night?"
"For a man of so little words, you seem to know just what to say to make a guy-,"
"Seriously, Seth."
"I know. I'm just really tired today. Don't know why."
Ryan accepted this. "We'll swing by Starbucks and get you a coffee."
The familiar grin finally made a reappearance. "Good idea. My classmates and teachers so love me when I'm over-caffienated. Coffee takes my kinetic stylings to a whole new level.
"Then I'm glad I don't see you till lunch. Coffee it is."
*** ***
"Tu es malheurex, mon ami?" Summer asked in French class, scrunching her nose up. "Your face looks all funny."
"Funny? Thanks."
"No dimples today. You look like a bad botox job." Summer's dark eyes were dancing as she pointed vaguely to her face, and Seth felt the whole chest, burn thing going on. She was being nice to him, in full view of actual other teenagers who weren't Ryan or Marissa. "I hope you're back to yourself tomorrow. This whole Seth Cohen, strong and silent thing is creepy."
"Tomorrow?"
"Hello? Cohen?" Her voice had that impatient tone in it again, and Seth wished he didn't know her vocal tones so well because he knew that all her other so called "friends" didn't and yet she still would rather spend time with them instead of him and… "You do remember that we're hanging out tomorrow, right?"
"I seem to recall you saying you were going to Charisma's, and also, I might add, you didn't invite me along."
Summer gave him a long look, which Seth returned, somewhat befuddled. He did yelp, however, when she shoved her hand into his open bookbag and all he could think of was that she was going to come up with some comic books or maybe an action figure that would be potentially embarrassing even though he learned his lesson long ago and kept all of that at home now.
What she did come out with, however was his cell phone.
"Summer!" he hissed in surprise. Taking a cell phone out during class was a serious infraction of Dr. Kim's Byzantine codex of rules and regulations. She ignored him, as ever, and flipped the phone open. A couple of beeps and boops from the keypad, and she turned the display towards him. Interestingly, the display informed Seth that he had apparently spoken with Summer for 37 seconds last night at 2:19 this morning.
"You have absolutely no recollection of this, do you," she said in a flat voice. He could see the corner of her mouth twitching, though, so he couldn't be in too much trouble. "You confessed your undying love for me and told me you wanted to make me Princess of your pillow fort."
"Did not." He sure hoped not, anyway.
"I called to tell you that I reconsidered and wanted to hang out with you tomorrow." Mitsy, or whatever, turned around to give Summer a look of astonishment. It was a fair rendition of Summer's "Ew" face.
"Merry," Summer said genially to the girl. "You really shouldn't be wearing that color." The girl turned the same coral as her shirt and turned back to the front.
Seth did his best impersonation of those really big fish from Super Mario 3 that eat Mario whole while Summer idly checked her manicure. "I'm coming over your house at eight."
*** ***
Stay tuned for part 2, in which Seth and Summer will actually, you know, hang out.