"Initiating Stage 1: Confusion," you scrawl in lazy manuscript across the first page of your pocket notebook. This is sure to be an interesting procedure, since he is, after all, your best friend, and you will be taking copious notes. You screw up your eyes in an effort to make out the light graphite scratches on the page. Despite years of practice wearing your shades in altogether unnecessary circumstances, it never stopped being difficult. You fight the urge to remove them for a few moments. Although that is not for a different place or purpose, it is for another day.
You tuck your notebook and pencil back into your cargo shorts and, hands now free, retrieve the bouquet from its tenuous place clenched between your knees. Turning slowly toward the house, you take your first hesitant steps up the driveway. You've walked this pavement innumerous times, yet somehow, this morning, the action seems exponentially more monumental than the rest. Then again, why shouldn't it be?
Taking a sharp left onto the front walk, and then a quick right onto the steps, you move with ease, your lanky legs stretching out in front of you. Now standing on the front stoop, you lift a shaky finger to the doorbell. The only thought that prevents you from turning tail and abandoning the mission completely is, "It's now or never." And it's true. You've been planning this for months. Years, even. It would be a shame to back out now.
The pleasant ringing tones echo inside the house and reach your ears, muffled by the door. After a few agonizing moments, your shorter friend appears, grinning out at you from between the blinds. You shift the flowers behind your back. Another few agonizing seconds, and the knob shifts and turns, opening the door back toward him. He runs a hand through his messy, raven-black hair, which rustles familiarly as it rearranges itself. "Hey, Dave," he greets you, eyeing the something concealed behind you. "What's up?"
Deep breath in. Slow breath out. And then, in one swift motion, you bring the bouquet forward, and present him with a dozen red roses, perfectly bloomed. "I love you, John Egbert."
There is a moment of absolute silence. Your ears tune out the breeze, the birds, the leaves on the trees, all in an effort to hear his quiet, strained reply as he reaches out doubtfully and takes the bouquet from your grasp. He looks down at the blossoms, and then up at you. "Dave, we've…we've been over this. I'm not a homosexual."
"I know."
John stares at you, stunned, his piercing blue eyes scrutinizing you through his clear, rectangular frames. He clears his throat. "Well. I'm going to go…um, put these in a vase." You love the way he says vase. Not vayse, but vaws. With a soft A.
You nod slowly, and he disappears as the door's lock slides into place with a decisive click. Some would view this as failure. But you are Dave Strider, and you have twenty-nine more days to go. "April 1st," you record in your notebook. "Day One out of Thirty."
