Erin stood with her back against the wall beside the lab door. Upon hearing her name from inside the room, she forced herself to stop crying and she took a few deep breaths before pushing herself away from the flat surface behind her. Thoroughly rubbing her eyes, she tried her best to rid herself of looking as though she had just been crying. The only ones who had ever seen her cry in her life were Abigail and her parents and even around them, she had attempted to keep herself looking strong, but they knew her at her most vulnerable. She especially did not want Holtzmann to see her red eyes at this point, so she waited a couple seconds before deciding to turn the corner to enter the room.
When she laid eyes on the nervous inventor, she straightened her posture a bit more, hoping Jill would assume she was doing just fine. She stopped a few feet from the entrance, watching the blushing blonde stare down at the floor with her right hand on the back of her neck. After rubbing it for a minute, Holtzy finally put her hand down and looked up to Erin. "What?" Gilbert finally asked.
Before finding the capability to respond, Holtz put her gloved hands back in her pockets and she kicked one of her black leather boots at the floor. "I'm, uh...I'm sorry. I just-" She stopped speaking as she wasn't quite sure what to say. The hesitation after the start of her sentence soon grew awkward and she began to pick up on Gilbert's look of brief irritation. The brunette was about to speak when Jillian decisively continued. "Go on a date?"
"What?" Erin slightly slouched.
The blonde closed her eyes, missing her yellow lenses again, but pushing through as best as she could. "I mean, uh...you and I should go on a date." She put her arms up over her head, unaware if she was doing this right. "If you want to, I mean. Um, I-" She gave up, realizing she got her point across and the rest was up to Erin.
The lump in the back of Gilbert's throat after crying never went away and she tried to swallow before responding. "I, uh...I would love to, but, um..." Her tongue suddenly got the best of her, as it often did. "...like you said, I should figure out what I really want first. And who knows if that's really you?" Bitter and morose, she turned and headed down the stairs.
"Oh my God! Erin! Erin, check this out!" Patty said with excitement when Gilbert reached the bottom of the staircase and headed over to her own desk in a state of hostility. Tolan lifted up a flap of one of the arms of her massage chair.
"Cupholders!" Abby offered Erin a look, but the moment the brunette sat down, she wasn't budging. She pretended to look and sent both Patty and Abby a fake smile with a hint of condescending snootiness. After said smile, she looked back down at the papers on her desk, attempting to look busy.
They heard another set of footprints descending the steps and Yates and Tolan excitedly turned to see Jillian. "Look! They got cupholders." Patricia decided to try getting Holtzmann as delighted as they were. When she noticed the look on the muddled blonde's face, her own smile faded, as did Abby's.
When Jill took her last step on the staircase, it was as if she finally remembered there were more people in the building other than her and Erin. She looked around at the other three as if everything was fine, though they knew better due to the speed at which she had come down the stairs. Yates looked back and forth between the two of her best friends. "Everything alright?" She noticed the odd tension.
"Yup." Gilbert rudely replied from her desk, another snobby looking smile plastered on her face. "We're all good." She fictitiously nodded and glanced at the blonde before averting her eyes right back down to her papers. "Right, Holtzmann?" She flipped over a page.
One of Holtzy's hands was still resting on the railing behind her, but she let it fall to her side as she attempted to relax her posture. "Oh, yeah. Everything's fine." She nonchalantly nodded. "You know, just..." She glared at the woman at her desk before looking back at Patty and Abby. Before she had followed Erin downstairs, she had put her glasses back on, so she felt comfortable enough for an embarrassing lie. "Just turned down Erin's offer to go out on a date." She said with a sense of pride.
"You what?" Patricia had a feeling the blonde was joking, but she didn't find it funny.
"Yeah, she asked me out, but I said no." Jillian brought both hands up to her hips, hoping Erin would snap...And it worked.
"That is NOT true!" The particle scientist pushed her chair back as if she were about to stand. "She asked ME out and I said no."
"Why?" Abby jumped in a little too quickly and everyone in the room looked to her. "What?" No one answered her and she walked over to her high school friend's desk to whisper to her. "We both know you like her."
Erin stood and walked around her desk to stand face to face with the shortest of the group. She kept looking over to Jillian while she whispered back. "Abby, I'm freaking out."
"What's the matter?" Yates also glanced over to the blonde by the stairs a few times.
"I don't-I don't..." She softly groaned while frustratedly shaking her hands in front of her. "Ugh, I don't knowwww." She took another glimpse at the woman by the stairs who was trying to pretend like she couldn't care less if Erin went out with her or not. But the brunette knew differently and she began to feel nauseous, hating herself for her behavior just a few seconds ago. "What if it doesn't work out?"
"Hey," Abby whispered but Erin was staring at Holtz. "...hey!" She snapped her out of her gaze and she looked to Yates. "Even if it doesn't work out...you're both adults and you'll get over it. But if you don't at least try...you'll probably regret it for a long time. And it may even make it harder for you to work together."
"It will? How?" Gilbert accidentally looked back to the wacky engineer for a moment.
"Because you'll both just spend your time wondering how things could have gone." Abby looked over at Jill herself, noticing the look in the secretly sad eyes passed the yellow lenses. "Besides...even if it doesn't work out NOW, I'm sure you'll both try again later anyways. So you might as well just try now."
There was no response for a while as Erin seemed to be thinking it over and she looked back over to Holtzy. She watched her silently communicating with Patty across the room and a slight grin appeared on her face. 'What is happening?' She silently wondered when she found herself thinking about how admirable the strange woman was. Adrenaline began to surge throughout her body and her face lit up as she was ecstatic for what she was about to do. She looked back to Abby and held both of her hands up to their chests, squeezing them like an excited teen about to ask someone to the school dance. "Okay. I'm gonna do it."
"Yay. Go on." Yates moved away, pulling her hands out of Gilbert's nervous grip.
As Erin took her steps closer to Holtzmann, her smile faded when she recalled how she had just treated her and she stopped a couple feet away from her. Jill looked up at her for a moment before looking passed her and at Abby who moved to stand next to Patty once again. They both pretended to keep fussing with the chairs, though they all knew they were paying close attention to the two by the stairs.
"I, um...I'm really sorry." Erin gulped, her cheeks growing warm and pink. "And, uh...I would," she nodded with her eyes closed, unable to believe what was about to happen, "...I would love to...try...and...go out, on a date...with you. Ummm..." She didn't even have anything else to say, but she said 'ummm' anyway, "...yeah." She nodded again with a hopeful grin. When Jill didn't answer immediately, she spoke again. "Again, I'm really, really sorry. I shouldn't have acted the way I did. I just uh...I get a little crazy sometimes." She laughed at herself toward the end of her statement and nervously awaited the response. "So...?" Nothing. The scholar began to wiggle her fingers at her sides and her voice dropped to an awkward high pitched tone but was almost barely audible. "Why are you not talking?" She asked while staring at the wall beside them.
The blonde finally made a sound...though all it was was a loud clearing of her throat. She reached up and took her glasses halfway off, leaving one side hanging on her ear. Her tone of voice sounded mysterious when she oddly asked, "Are you sure?"
The taller woman rapidly nodded. "I- Yes..I am." She scratched her head before awkwardly saying, "I am if you are." A strange giggle followed and she shook her head, wondering why she was such a dork, though she had no clue Jillian loved that about her.
"You free tonight?" The glorious weirdo scarcely grinned before eagerly opening her mouth and moving her tongue to the right side of her upper lip, on stand by for the answer.
Just now deciding that her favorite feature on the woman was her eyes, Erin couldn't bring herself to speak as she gazed into them with a large smile and a nod. Her somewhat of a response caused Jillian's mouth to close, though her smile grew so wide, she wondered if they could see all of her teeth.
A/N: Sorry this chapter was a bit cheezy and not at all that great. I promise to make it up with the next chapter though. Again, I'm sorry. Please leave comments and reviews. Mwah!