A/N: It's been quite some time since I've published, and I apologize for that. I figured the best way to come back would be for ZenNoMai's Rade contest. I originally started this story a few weeks ago, then I forgot about it, and now here we are with a finished product. I hope you enjoy. :)
It was mid-February when the letter came in.
Robbie's younger sister, Kelsey, had run in with the mail while he was folding her laundry, yelling, "Robbie! Robbie! You got an invitation to a party and there's a pink envelope so it's a girl's party!"
He snatched the envelope from her, his brow furrowed sternly. "Fold your own laundry, Kels," he ordered before leaving her in the laundry room to pout. He scampered up the steps and into his bedroom, anxiously opening the envelope, because while he didn't show his excitement to his little sister, he was incredibly ecstatic. Robbie was never invited to parties, let alone a girl's party, and he could tell from the loopy hand writing that it was not just any girl's party. It was Cat Valentine's party.
Robbie could tell you a lot about Cat Valentine, but Cat Valentine could not tell you a single thing about Robbie, except that he was her best friend's neighbor, and that he once fell off his bike in front of his house and he'd screamed about aneurisms.
Cat Valentine was the prettiest, cutest, happiest, nicest, funniest, bubbliest, most-exciting-est girl in the entire school district, which was saying something, because Robbie found a lot of girls to be pretty/cute/happy/nice/funny/bubbly/exciting. Cat Valentine, though…Cat Valentine was different. Her hair was fluffy and curly and a very dark shade of brown and she had just one dimple that seemed to never fade because she was always smiling or giggling. She could sing and dance and twirl and make clothes and while Robbie admits she isn't the sharpest colored pencil in the box, he loved her more than he'd ever care to say.
Another thing about Cat Valentine was that she was always at Jade West's house.
Now Jade West could tell you about as much about Robbie as Robbie could tell you about Jade West. The two had lived next to one another since the beginning of time—or the beginning of 1995, which was pretty much the same—and their parents had assumed that since their kids were the same age that obviously they would be the best of friends. Their kids respectfully disagreed.
They spent a lot of time at one another's houses anyways. Jade insisted on making arts and crafts at his house because she wasn't allowed to use the glue or scissors at her house and for reasons still unknown to him she loved her scissors and glue. He insisted on drinking grape flavored Kool-Aid, which she found to be repulsive but she always made sure her family had a plentiful amount of.
It wasn't like the two hated each other, they got along quite well, it's just that the two didn't have much in common. She preferred playing war with Robbie's G.I. Joes, while he liked to give them steady office jobs in the suburbs. Robbie liked Dexter's Laboratory, she liked Courage the Cowardly Dog. Jade didn't like it when his sister came into the living room while they played, but Robbie would welcome her into the fun, even though she had no idea what Jade meant when she said "Pew, pew, pew—You're dead!" and that frustrated the older girl to no end, and she usually ended up commanding Robbie to make his sister pretend to die. Robbie would glare at her and tell her to be quiet, because Kelsey was only a baby, how was she supposed to die?
But anyways, they weren't the perfect friends or anything, but they did tell each other pretty much everything they didn't tell their other friends. Or, the things Jade didn't tell Cat and the things Robbie didn't tell his mom. Meaning Jade knew of his undying love for her best friend, and Robbie was well aware of the fact that Jade kind of had a thing for Cat's brother. They spent a lot of time planning how they would woo their respective crushes, and the invitation Robbie was clutching anxiously was just Part 1 of their epic plan to get Cat to fall in love with Robbie.
It was really a simple plan, carefully written out on one of those jumbo pieces of paper they'd borrowed from Robbie's dad's office. Jade would inform Cat that having a boy-girl party was a good idea for her thirteenth birthday and that they absolutely had to play spin the bottle. She was certain that Cat, always up for Jade's ideas, would go along with it. Jade would then convince the girl that she should invite Robbie. (She also told Robbie that she would tell Cat a very sad story about how he wasn't invited to parties because he smelled like diapers but it wasn't really his fault that his sister still wore diapers, she just wet the bed a lot, and that Cat should send him an invite to prove to everyone that it was okay that he sometimes came to school smelling like girl urine. Robbie wasn't overly fond of this lie, but it wasn't like he had a better idea.) The two would then go to the party, and Jade would somehow—using her magic Jade powers—get Cat's bottle to land on him. A lot. And then they would kiss. A lot. And Robbie would be beyond happy.
Robbie finally removed the cardstock invitation from the fluorescent pink envelope, examining the details. The party was in two weeks, leaving him precisely fourteen days to talk himself into going, RSVP, talk himself out of going, but end up going anyways, for the sake of love. This also left him plenty time to purchase the perfect gift for Cat. He was tempted to get her a pencil sharpener because it went right along with his Cat-is-a-dull-colored-pencil metaphor. And Cat doodled a lot in her math notes and doodling just isn't fun with a broken pencil.
"You can't get her a freaking pencil sharpener," Jade deadpanned, crossing one ankle over the other. She was laying across her carpet when her stepmother let Robbie inside, her arms pillowing her head. She remained in the same position, only now she was side-eyeing him in a way that made him bow his head in shame.
"Oh, come on! She likes pencils. She likes drawing. Drawing requires sharp pencils!"
A gasp came from Jade's side of the room and Robbie looked up in time to see her shoot up into a sitting position. "This is about your colored pencils metaphor, isn't it?"
He shrugged sadly, fiddling with his fingers in his lap. "Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But it probably is."
She chuckled, shaking her head. "My God, Shapiro. You should know by now, she's a hopeless case. She'll never be the 'sharpest crayon in the box.'"
"Colored pencil," he corrected, earning him a glare.
"Look, Robbie, get her something that she won't get from her parents in her stocking on Christmas morning. Get her…Get her Little Mermaid! She loves that movie." Jade nodded knowingly, reclining once more.
Robbie piqued up his eyebrows, "Shouldn't she already have it?"
"I could go to her house and break it."
"This I am okay with." He chuckled for a moment before frowning and falling silent, wringing his hands together some more.
Silence. A bark from downstairs. More silence.
"You haven't spoken in forty five seconds," Jade noted, propping herself up on her elbows with a sigh. "And you're making the thinking face. Oh, God. What now?"
He sighed deeply, pushing his glasses up his nose. "I've never kissed anyone."
"No chiz, Sherlock. Neither has anyone else in this room." Her cheeks reddened a bit at this, and Robbie could sense her embarrassment.
In a quick attempt to fix this, he gestured to the poster of Jude Law above her bed. "Sherlock has." He gave a sheepish grin, which only spread when she smiled in return.
"First off, he was Watson in that movie. Second, shut up. I'm trying to make you not feel like a loser." She stared up at the poster for a few seconds before continuing. "What I'm saying is that you shouldn't, like, feel bad or anything. Thirteen year olds—well the normal ones—don't have their first kisses yet."
"But what if I'm bad? You know, when I kiss Cat?"
"She's not going to know if you're bad. She'll be too hyped off of cake and ice cream." She shrugged, scooting over to sit beside him. "Besides, you can Zaplook how to kiss. There's like thirty six thousand articles from magazines about that stuff."
He continued to frown at his hands. "I don't know if I want the advice of teenage girls."
"That's the only help you'll get, Robbie. It's not like we have any friends who've kissed people." He opened his mouth and she immediately interrupted, "Your mom does not count." He shut his mouth again, proceeding to look more miserable.
"Then how am I supposed to sweep her off of my feet with all of the bottle-caused kisses if I suck at kissing, Jade? She might throw me out of her house! She might throw rocks at me! I'll never be able to show my face agai—" and then she had her lips on his.
Robbie didn't know what to do. At first it was just Jade's lips pressed against his and then she was moving a little bit and he wondered if she'd learned how to do that from a magazine because he liked it. He started doing it too, moving his lips with hers, and then she had pulled back and was looking at her lap.
"Jade," he began, staring at her with wide eyes.
"You didn't suck at kissing." With that, she stood, going to her computer and typing in. He didn't know what was going on, so he stood as well, walking to her side.
"Jade," he tried again, but she shushed him and pointed at the screen.
"If my opinion wasn't good enough, there. You've got advice from a guy's blog." She wasn't looking him in the eye. "I have to go let the dog out."
Jade brushed past him and out the door before he could say another word.
He blinked at the empty doorway, then at the empty bedroom, and then at the blog post by Brian from Tennessee. He'd just kissed Jade West. Jade West thought his kissing didn't suck. And boy, her kissing didn't suck, either.
The days leading up to the party were fast and lonely. Robbie didn't speak to Jade much. He tried to, but the only words she'd spoken were brief, the most important being, "I snapped The Little Mermaid in half." He had thanked her, and that was the end of it.
He found himself thinking about her more and more. Staring at her more and more. There was even a moment when he was watching his sister play in his backyard and he looked over at Jade's yard and there she was, watching her Dalmatian take care of business, and he couldn't help but notice how pretty she looked with her hair brushed over her shoulder like that. He'd even had a dream about her, but he tried not to think about it because it made him feel all tingly and weird.
Then it was the day of the party and he was on Cat Valentine's doorstep with a DVD wrapped in silver wrapping paper with a pink bow on top—his mom has suggested it—and he hadn't even rung the doorbell yet. He just stared at the door, as if he were waiting for it to open on its own. He felt uncomfortable in his burgundy sweater and his khakis, but he wasn't sure if it was because of his clothes or if it was because finally, after seventeen months of silent infatuation, he was going to kiss Cat Valentine.
The door eventually did open, tearing him from his thoughts and revealing a grinning, dress-clad Cat. "Ronnie!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly and crushing the bow.
"It's Robbie, actually," he told her, giving her a one armed hug.
"Okay, Ronnie!" She had backed up and taken his hand, when had she done that?, and was pulling him inside when he heard someone coming down the stairs. His eyes flicked towards the staircase, finding Jade hopping onto the ground.
"It's Robbie," she corrected Cat through her teeth, giving him a blank stare before snatching the gift from him. "Everyone's upstairs already." She spun around on her heel and hurried back up the steps.
"She's been weird lately, I think," Cat told him, and he had forgotten she was holding his hand, that was weird, and then she was leaning in and oh God was she going to kiss him?
But no, she only whispered, "By the way, Ronnie, I don't think you smell like girl urine."
They were upstairs not long after, in what he assumed was a den of sorts, and a bunch of girls were talking in the corner and the guys were all on a sofa that looked really soft, but Robbie certainly wasn't going to sit on it. He was too busy shifting from foot to foot by the gift table, not sure what to do with himself. Why hadn't anyone prepared him for the actual party part of the party? He made note to ask Jade about that for next time. If there was going to be a next time.
If she would talk to him.
And then Cat was announcing that it was game time and she pulled a bottle out from underneath the couch. Everyone settled on the ground in a circle. Jade was sitting next to Cat, across from Robbie. He gave her a small smile, Jade that is, but she pretended not to see.
"I'll go first!" Cat proclaimed, giving the bottle a quick spin. Once it had finished rotating, it pointed to the space between Robbie and this boy, Mike Hunt (Mike's parents had gotten pregnant at a very young age). The two boys stared at it, then at each other, before Robbie finally jerked a thumb towards Mike.
They kissed, much to Robbie's disgust, and when it came time for Cat to spin again (Robbie did not understand the rules of this game at all), it pointed over at him. Stealthily, he leaned to his side, making it appear as if Jordan York was Cat's next kiss.
Jade's eyes had been wide and on Robbie for awhile now, and she raised her eyebrows once he met her gaze. He nodded his head towards the hallway and stood, maneuvering himself around the kissing thirteen year olds and out into the hall.
"It landed on you, Shapiro," she hissed, her arms folded over her chest.
"I didn't want it to," Robbie confessed, surprising the both of them. "I want to kiss someone else."
"God, Shapiro! All of that planning for nothing! You made me talk about diapers for fifteen minutes! I had to put a weight in that bottle and that is an incredibly difficult task! You can't just—" and then his lips were on hers.
It was a quick kiss, much shorter than their first, but it was enough to make her smile.
"But your dull colored pencil..?" Jade pointed into the room, where Cat could visibly be seen kissing Mike again.
"She thinks my name is Ronnie. And she doesn't have any grape Kool-Aid." He gave a small smile, looking down at her. "I like sharp colored pencils."
Jade laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck and her lips met his once more, and Robbie couldn't be happier.